{UAH} K.K@Govt must always undertake mega infrastructure developments with a bird's eye!

Dear fellow UAH elites,including that one from capiteni-Dubai,

In May 2013, President Joseph Kabange Kabila led a team of technocrats from the DRC together with even a bigger team from South Africa's Eskom to Europe to pitch for financing the Grand Inga Dam (39,000 MW, 80 Bn USD!) with a guaranteed off-take by South Africa, now financiers are falling over themselves in trying to come in board.General Kayihura, Mr. Ahmed Katerega, Mr. Robert Atuhairwe and other young "elites" in NRM 'kintu'- please advise the 65++ members of the cabinet that thats where the world has moved too and we ought to catch up rather than distributing money in gunny bags!!!

President Museveni can come up with similar concepts for other infrastructure projects and take lead in the pitching rather than issuing edicts and waiting for Bafere in Kampala to introduce investors (read infestors!!).We are still finding it hard to kickstart a 600MW dam in Karuma! Yes, i understand that in our cabinet people there don't discuss, they listen. If one have ideas, one wouldn't be there in the first place, but they need to find a way of passing on such messages to president Museveni.

I think president Kabila's take is a good one, the finance comes from Europe and it is sold to South Africa- proceeds pay off the loan and be used to finance other sectors!!! That's how China kick-started its revolution under the Four Mordernisation System of Deng Xiaoping and they have never looked back.......very soon much of the western world will not know what hit them...in almost all aspects of development.

Going to our neighbourhood, Tanzanian government built UDOM with funds borrowed from NSSF worth about 500 bn UGX. It is currently taking about four mega projects with its own resources. In Uganda, on the other hand, our experts in govt acknowledges that our electricity projected consumption by 2020 will be about 6000 MW and we are talking of 600 MW Karuma, while Ethiopia is talking of 6000!!! Government must always undertake mega infrastructure developments with a bird's eye!

What the Ethiopians have started is an eye opener to most African states because according to the following agreements,Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea leave alone Kenya and Uganda have been deemed by those agreements not to put any development along the Nile, or its tributaries that can affect the level of water flowing through Sudan to Egypt:
1) the Tripartite agreement signed between the British, France and the Italians on 13th Dec 1906;
2) the Anglo Italian protocol of April 15th 1891; and
3) the agreement between the British and the government of the independent state of the Congo of 9th May 1906.

That said, we should not borrow so much money for every project we wish to do in Uganda.Any development projected funded by Europe in Africa has conditionalities that kind of put that African Country on her knees. The Arabs, Chinese, locally generated revenues with minimum 'leakages' can push Africa better. That's why I support the Presidents move of having the Energy Fund in Uganda and through the fund, we have achieved a lot without begging. Europe and America in the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th centuries developed without loans from world bank or IMF bse they were not in existence though. Read a book "kicking away the ladder" you will understand the politics of loans, IMF, World bank and foreign finances invested in core hard ware development needs such as roads, energy, etc. even at a personal level should u keep borrowing for construction or those who have taken up mortgage financing will for ever keep paying.

Good luck!

H.OGWAPITI
-----------------------------------------------------
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that  we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic  and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
---Theodore Roosevelt