|
|
Uganda: To Develop, Do Away With Villages
 |
 |
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
The Monitor (Kampala)
OPINION
12 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008
Kiggundu Amin Tamale
Uganda is poor, underdeveloped and cannot feed its people. What can be done to solve all the intractable problems facing our country?
Should we hire former presidents of economically vibrant countries such as Singapore and Malaysia to rule us? Should we all go for kyeyo (odd jobs) abroad? Should we invite the British to come and re-colonise us?
Some regular writers in the local newspapers, such as 'development lecturer' President Museveni, as well as Okodan Akwap of Kampala International University, have proposed that Uganda should emulate the Asian tigers such as Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia by adopting an industry-based development strategy and promoting exports of value added products.
Others such as the smooth-tongued Ethics and Integrity Minister, Dr Nsaba Buturo (see God did not curse Africans, New Vision; September 19, 2007) have suggested that rather than depend on foreign ideas and external expert knowledge, Uganda and Africa in general should adopt locally designed development programmes.
There is also a fad-like and seemingly arcane philosophy that the promotion of the East African Federation would help promote exports and elevate Uganda's economic status. While some of the above development policy proposals are plausible, their local promoters have tended to ignore Uganda's unfavourable location.
Unlike the 'Asian tigers', Uganda is a land-locked country with limited access to the sea, which is the cheapest means of transport. More importantly, Uganda lacks good infrastructure such as modern roads, modern rail systems, or well-established information and communication technology-related facilities such as the Internet and telephone to reduce the cost of production.
So, unless deliberate and efforts are made to address the location-induced challenges such as the excessively high transportation costs, the plan by the government to expand Uganda's industrial base and promote exports of value added products is likely to hit a brick wall.
Perhaps more importantly, the obsession with exports tends to obscure the fact that the domestic economy matters and that this sector is as important as the external economy (export sector).
Related to this, the government's interventionist policy stance has tended to focus more on regulating foreign currency markets to promote exports, ignoring other important market-ravaged economic sectors such as public transport. Due to the challenges associated with building a strong export-oriented economy in Uganda, it is important that a new strategy is adopted to expand the domestic economy.
My humble view is that the best development policy for Uganda today is urbanisation---that is, the transition from a rural-based society to an urban-based one.
An urban-based development policy is important in part because modern economies are built, organised and managed in cities and not in the villages. For example, Bangkok City accounts for about 44 percent of the entire Thailand gross domestic product (GDP) of $197 billion.
A further benefit of an urban-based development policy is that urban centres serve as domestic markets for both industrial and agricultural products. Of equal importance, there are strong links between urban centres, especially the real estate sector, and other economic sectors such as the steel industry, the banking industry, the insurance industry, brick-making industry, the cement industry, the power sector and piped water sector.
The links between the mentioned economic sectors are essential in creating new jobs and providing the badly needed economic stimulus.
Urbanisation can also help in reducing the cost of providing infrastructure such as roads, schools, hospitals, electricity and piped water.
Due to the scattered human settlement patterns as well as the existence of small villages in Uganda, it is almost impossible for a resource-constrained government to provide the above mentioned infrastructure at the lowest cost possible.
But with the building of well-planned new urban centres, it becomes easy and cheap to establish a few big schools, modern hospitals, modern roads, piped water and power facilities to serve a large number of people living in one place.
In short, there is need to restructure Uganda's village dominated population (official statistics show that about 86 percent of Ugandans live in villages) by creating urban centres that will provide markets and jobs as well as to stimulate the domestic economic sectors such as agriculture.
Also, it's almost impossible to transform a rural-based society because in the villages there are no ideas, no role models, no good roads, no good schools and no good hospitals. Villages are just incubators for ignorance, diseases like Ebola and malaria, misery as well as despondence. They should be eradicated!
|
Dr Kiggundu is an urban and transport expert, executive director of Centre for Urban Studies & Research, as well as associate consultant in urban planning at Uganda Management Institute.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2008 The Monitor. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
