{UAH} Uganda’s real challenge is a human resource problem

Commentary

Uganda's real challenge is a human resource problem

It has been my singular privilege to travel on just about every road and lake of our beautiful country, from Kisoro to Kabong, from Rakai to Kitgum, from Busia to Buliisa, on MV Kalangala and MV Kyoga. The thing that has glared at me the most on my countryside travels is the great chasm between the actual and the potential living conditions of the people, the great gulf between what is and what could be, the grand gifts of nature and their flagrant abuse or neglect. To travel through Uganda's countryside; to see haggard, starving and piteous men crouching out of low, fragile huts even when the virgin land around them is the commercial farmer's dream, is to face stark evidence that our human resources are utterly dwarfed by our natural resources. Observed at close range, the incongruity rends the heart, can even bring dampness to the eyes.

You then wonder what the excitement about oil is all about. We have never lacked natural resources; it's our human resources that are pathetically inadequate. I don't, of course, refer to the population figures; if the problem was of that sort, the globe-topping fecundity of our women would soon solve it. Our villages are crammed full with people, but they lack the willpower or the capacity to harness the immense natural resources within their proximity. Their willpower has partly been crippled by the mentality that the solutions are in the cities – that if they are to come to the village, they will come in cars. The capacity they lack is partly cognitive – they have not had the benefit of education in agriculture – but also technological – even if they knew what to do, they would need tools and equipment.

When you look closely, you realise that the appalling and costly incapacity of the people in the countryside is linked, even traceable, to the incapacity of the people that sit in city boardrooms and offices. If the people in the city were competent and less corrupt, more education and more agricultural tools and equipment would reach the countryside. But many of our bureaucrats are either uninterested or incapable of effecting positive changes in their spheres of influence. Even those that join the ranks full of ideas and idealism soon succumb to the crushing pressures of contagious corruption, in a manner reminiscent of Chinua Achebe's Obi Okonkwo. They soon settle into the mentality that salvation will come from overseas; the same way villagers believe that it will come from the cities. If it wasn't sad, it would be funny how many African elite believe that every developmental project must be donor-funded.

Many government bodies and agencies have long documents spelling out their objectives and values. Many of these objectives are noble and nationalistic, but they are soon overwhelmed and stifled by the unwritten personal objectives of the bureaucrats and politicians. Efficiency is invariably one of the values, but if you examine the activities and methods, you find that they are grossly inefficient, with minimal concern for quality and excellence, simply because they must fit in with the personal objectives of the bureaucrats and politicians.

For instance, our parliamentarians jostle to go on overseas trips, and we spend a lot of money to fund those trips, but there is hardly any evidence that these trips have made them more effective as legislators. I believe it would be a much more efficient use of money to buy a book for each of these MPs. When you listen to them, you realise that many of them have narrow and shallow minds. Books would cost a negligible fraction of the costs of overseas trips while doing more for the competence of our MPs that trips ever will. But nobody, certainly no MP, would pay attention to such an idea. The appeal of overseas trips isn't in how they serve national objectives, but in how they serve the personal objectives of participants.

With the huge tax revenues and abundant natural resources that we have, Uganda could, in fact, become a middle class country by 2017, if there was any real concern for efficiency and the official objectives of government organs and agencies.

nicklison@yahoo.com

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Without God, our week would be: Sinday, Mournday, Tearsday,Wasteday, Thirstday, Fightday & Shatterday. Remember seven days without God makes one WEAK!!"And if Allah touches you with harm, none can remove it but He, and if He touches you with good, then He is Able to do all things." (6:17)