The people in government like doing what appears to outside observers, as doing nothing.

The media in Uganda has shouted itself hoarse about inflated costs of road construction and maintenance. A fitting monument to the extraordinary cost of road construction in Uganda is the 21 km Kampala Northern Bypass which four years and Shs118 billion down the road, is incomplete and will not be usable unless more billions are poured into it.

Finally the bureaucrats decided they need to do something about the cost of road construction and maintenance; they convened a workshop to discuss the matter! While the workshop was going on the world was gripped with the fear of facing a global recession as an aftermath of the ongoing financial crisis. There are things that Ugandans have gotten used to over the last decade or two that will change because of the ongoing financial crisis.

For years, Uganda's economy has grown annual rates of 5% to 10% but that is likely to change. Even if we achieve growth of 5% as predicted by the Governor of Bank of Uganda, inflation is already more than 10% which means real economic growth will actually be negative.

For a long time Ugandans have been used to single digit inflation but even before the financial crisis, the rise in fuel and food prices had pushed our inflation to double digit figures. The financial crisis will ensure that we maintain double digit inflation for some time. For most Ugandans the cost of living will increase faster than the increase in income.

For instance, if you have children in boarding schools, because of frequent increases in food prices, you will be seeing increment in school fees every term; or if you are paying rent, the land lady will ask for a higher rent every three months. Banks will charge higher interest rate on loans and that will hurt businesses, salary loan holders and mortgage holders.

We will likely witness the return of widespread retrenchment. If donors withhold funding then projects will no doubt close which will result in loss of jobs and income for project employees and people who earn money from supplying goods and services to those projects. If the economy declines for a long time, businesses will be hit hard and they will look to lessen the impact on their pockets by laying off staff; some businesses will find the going so hard that they will close down which means loss of income to such business owners.

Even those who are already jobless should be afraid if more people begin to lose jobs because that means: a) it will be much harder to get back into employment; b) the people who have been supporting you with some money will also be struggling to survive and will be less inclined to share the little they have left.

To overcome the gloomy economic future, first we need to turn to God in prayer. Our prayer should be directed at two things: a) that the global financial crisis ends sooner and before it turns into a full blown economic crisis in the developed and emerging markets' economies; b) we should also pray that for once the leaders in our government will be serious about good management of the economy, we certainly don't need another workshop on the global financial crisis.

Secondly, Ugandans need economic and financial behavioural change.

If you have a job now, guard it jealously because it may be very hard to get another one in the near future; save a lot more than you have been doing that will keep you going when times become harder; we must become productive i.e. have some good or service to sell because income from deals and commissions are going to shrink drastically.

If you have got some money there are people who are selling off assets cheaply because of panic; buy those assets. When the crisis bottoms out it is likely that these assets could make for very good investments in the future.

Mr Abola is the team leader for Akamai Global