There is so much enthusiasm about Barack Obama among Ugandans, but the mood is not shared in Kampala's corridors of power. Angelo Izama examines why Uganda's leadership preferred a Hillary Clinton presidency to that of the first African American whose roots are in East Africa.

Ugandan leadership had banked on a win by former American First Lady Hillary Clinton in the current US Presidential race.

Ms Clinton lost to Barack Obama in a hard fought campaign during the Democratic Party primaries but at State House in Entebbe there has been a slow if not clumsy turn-around to the reality that the White House is likely going to be the home of Barack Obama for the next four years.

"They have made no in-roads into the Obama team," said a senior diplomat who cannot be named because he has no authority to speak publicly about foreign policy matters. Not that it matters very much, as most analysts expect little to be changed about US-Uganda relations or US-Africa policy priorities for that matter.

Former US President Bill Clinton and President Museveni when the former visited Uganda in 1998. The Kampala leadership banked on a win by former First Lady Hillary Clinton and is yet to make any inroads into the Obama team. FILE PHOTO

Indeed, there is a growing consensus that an Obama presidency is likely to focus on domestic American problems like the economic crisis as well as traditional foreign policy concerns for Washington like the Middle-East, the war on terror, China and so forth.

Advising Obama on Africa policy are old hands from the Clinton years including Dr Susan Rice, former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during the second Clinton administration with a number of her old team. Dr Rice, who is on leave from the Brookings Institution to advise Obama, was also adviser to the failed presidential bid of John Kerry.

If Dr Rice does take up a senior position (speculation is for the job of Secretary of State. She is no relation of the current holder of the position Condoleezza Rice though) she will confront old problems that were around when she last worked in this region like peace and security.

Whether or not Kampala-Washington relations will take a turn for the better will largely depend on Uganda's own strategies. To begin with, Uganda has a foot in already.

On January 1, Uganda will begin serving on the UN Security Council when the question of who is President has already been decided.

The question of peace and security (Uganda is also on the Africa Commission of the African Union) will remain on the agenda and has been moved to the fore with the recent fighting in Congo, which is projected to become even more volatile as Uganda considers how to confront the Lord's Resistance Army inside Congo.

Broadly, the landscape of Great Lakes politics is moving along the path of negotiation as opposed to armed confrontation and more integration along both economic and military lines.

If Uganda were to play a role of "honest broker" in this situation, as it is a declared mission, according to Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Henry Okello Oryem, the intersection between its role and the US policy could yield a closer relationship with an Obama presidency.

If not, old problems will persist. There is a major problem at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which has to do with how foreign policy - a term that refers to declared approaches on external relations based on known principles- is operated.

In general Ugandan methods of work put more stock in personal relations between key figures and personalised actions than approaches operated on the scale of the institution.

Indeed, foreign policy declarations are often unwritten, undebated and come directly through the actions of the Presidency which also controls the politics of Uganda's external relations and the military as well.

In Washington, diplomats put a lot of faith on President Museveni's personal relations with the Clintons and did not win over policy wonks related to the Democratic Party and Obama.

Uganda's paid advice provided for by consultancy of Rosa Whitaker is itself available to the Presidency and not broadly shared its quality itself being questionable.

Kampala [at least by October 2007] had another hired lobbyists it owed over a million dollars which was unpaid- a lobbyist whose work was not widely shared either. These methods of work highlight foreign policy has a series of highly personalised projects which in broad terms are not just unsustainable but difficult to quantify.

Currently for example, Uganda has neither a written strategy on how to utilise its UN Security Council seat nor a budget for it. Job squabbles over the expanded positions in New York are adding volatility to how effective it will be.

With its plate full of diplomatic opportunities including its role in Somalia, as regional broker and with an election just three years away, one would expect a more nuanced approach to foreign policy but this is not so.

In the coming days for example [and despite intense lobbying] Uganda is unlikely to qualify to receive over a half billion of American aid from the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA).

It goes to show that while an Obama presidency is important in such historic terms - Uganda may need to draw more lessons from its own recent history with successive US presidencies and perhaps that it may not matter who becomes the next US Presidency as much as who is running things in Kampala and how.