{UAH} UG vs Rwanda: by Ian Ortega

Ian Ortega

If I am to judge Rwanda by where it has come from to where it is now, I will say "Rwanda has achieved." 

Beyond that Rwanda  is still another third world country. Uganda is still much better. If Kagame left today, Rwanda would crash on all fronts. If Museveni left today, Uganda would probably grow even much faster. On all economic indicators, Uganda leads Rwanda despite Uganda putting in much less effort compared to Rwanda.

In Rwanda, Rwanda succeeds because of Kagame's personality. In Uganda, Uganda succeeds inspite of Museveni's peasant personality. 

In the grandscale of things, give Uganda some good PR, and you may think we have a First World Country. Take away Rwanda's PR and there ceases to be a Rwanda to talk about. 

Rwanda does one good small thing and everyone in the country will talk about it, Uganda does a million good things and rarely anyone will talk about it. Rwanda is that one poor performing student who survives a retake and mentions it to everyone.

Uganda is that fairly good student that does much but still is not impressed by himself.

Given the effort Rwanda puts in to achieve the things it achieves, contrast it with Uganda's laissez faire effort and you can see that Uganda succeeds even without trying. Rwanda only succeeds with too much effort. 

We were once reviewing internet penetration statistics. We all know Rwanda has done a million things to encourage its citizens to use the internet. It turns out Uganda that had almost done nothing on the ICT front had a higher penetration than Rwanda. I rested my case. The equation didn't add up. Why did Rwanda that had done so much achieve so little compared to Uganda that had done too little?

Years back, we almost made the worst business mistake. We had decided to launch BigEye.rw. We thought the future of digital media was in Rwanda. Time forward, there are more online media houses coming up in Uganda than in Rwanda. There is a success story in Rwanda but that is only if one bases it on the hole out of which it has dug itself.

Uganda is what Nassim Taleb calls "anti-fragile." It commits too many mistakes but always comes out better from them. Rwanda is fragile; "one small mistake and you almost have no country."

If I were asked where I want to live? I would prefer messy Uganda. It works even when everything says it shouldn't.

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