The Independent Uncensored News Views And Analysis

Uganda Telecom Limited (UTL) last week unveiled yet another new product on the other range of services it offers. UTL’s Facebook and Twitter SMS service is now accessible to all UTL subscribers at no cost.

Addressing the media at the launch of the two social networks, Testai Menghastab the chief technician at the UTL said, “the two social networking media will enable Uganda Telecom's subscribers to update and be updated regarding their Facebook and Twitter accounts by SMS, thereby expanding the use and impact of the two social networking tools in Uganda”. 

Mark Kaheru the UTL public relations manager said the Facebook and Twitter SMS service will bring immense excitement and delight to their customers especially those that access the internet only at their working places”. The service is applicable to all types of mobile handset and is free to access. Kaheru said UTL has enough bandwidth to handle the SMS traffic flow.

To access the social networks one has to send ‘fbme’ to 2299 for Facebook and ‘tweetme’ to 2299 for the twitter and will receive instructions to follow to access the networks.

I think this service is an incredible example of the technological innovations that can come from companies tailoring their services to local needs. With mobile technology being so cheap and becoming increasingly pervasive across Africa, it was only a matter of time until the phone and the Internet would begin their merger. In this case it is the cost barrier that has been surpassed, opening the power of the Internet to a much larger audience.

Most important for us bloggers, is that the technology has exciting implications for the broadening of citizen journalism. The lowering of the cost barrier eliminates the biggest obstacle for Ugandans to get news onto the Internet. This is a very exciting development, kudos to UTL for being the first to provide it.

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At the opening ceremony of Busitema University over the weekend, President Museveni had a speech read by the State Minister for Higher Education, Mwesigwa Rukutana. In the speech Museveni mainly spent his time criticising Ugandan universities for not accepting enough applicants. He cited that while demand for university admission is at 100.000, university capacity stands at only 38.000.  Reading Daily Monitor’s article on the event, I couldn’t help but wonder what Museveni thinks the Universities can do. In the end the onus lies on the government to fix Uganda’s higher education problem—its just too big for anyone else to handle.

For a system already under the strains of over-enrollment and too few faculties, an ever growing population just compounds the difficulties. There are over 250% more applicants than there is space in the system. Can universities narrow that gap while also keeping up with the inevitable three percent increase of applicants per year? Without a major drive by the government, it will be impossible to accommodate anywhere near the potential number of Ugandan university students. As if this were not enough, even Museveni acknowledges that demand will triple in the short term solely due to the introduction of Universal Primary and Universal Secondary Education.

How can universities be expected to accommodate such growth rates? It would be bad enough even if corruption and incompetence were not major issues, but obviously that’s not the case. Corruption is bleeding the system of its funds: universities cannot pay their faculties enough or on time. Deteriorating infrastructure means that universities cannot purchase books or any other equipment. Bureaucratic processes within and between government ministries make it impossible for universities to plan their own budgets in advance. Because of these problems, even top universities like Makerere are closing “less desirable” programs in order to cut costs—those that are not being sacrificed are either in high demand or find their funding from other sources.

There is no doubt that universities could be much more efficient in the way they operate but with such a massive problem, it is the government that must mandate the first moves to create a system that works. The future of Uganda’s growth and well-being depend on it.

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There is some new information on the oil front (via the Wall Street Journal) that strengthens the information in Saturday's New Vision article on Tullow Oil possibly blocking Heritage's sale of its assets to Italian energy giant Eni SpA:

"Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Tullow Oil Plc may block Eni SpA’s plan to expand in Uganda by acquiring two Heritage Oil Plc assets that the Italian company is buying for $1.35 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

At stake are two Ugandan exploration blocks in Uganda’s Lake Albert Rift Basin owned jointly by Tullow and Heritage; Tullow may exercise its right to buy Heritage’s 50 percent stake, the newspaper said.

So far 700 million barrels of oil have been found in Lake Albert Rift Basin and Tullow believes another 1.5 billion remain to be discovered, the Journal said."

Of course, the Ugandan government has yet to okay a deal so all of this is probably very tentative. Still, seeing oil companies battle it out for assets is a strong indication that Uganda's oil finds are not small change. The wrangling may attract the eyes of some bigger fish...

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The Land Bill passed yesterday in Parliament after 5-days of intense debate. Even so, Buganda Kingdom officials are saying that if the legislation is accented by Museveni, they would still not comply with it. Such a position would inevitably lead to further confrontation.

Do you think Buganda Kingdom should have the right to fight against such legal statutes? Or are they putting themselves in a bad position by undermining a lawful process? How might this affect the status of impending negotiations between Buganda and the central government?

Comment. Discuss. Have a great weekend!

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Organizers of the Hajj have been planning for months to limit the spread of swine flu during the annual pilgrimage. But they probably weren’t prepared, of all things, for flooding.

Heavy torrential downpours led to flash floods and mudslides in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah on Wednesday. 7 centimeters of rain fell in just a few hours—more rain than the region typically gets in a whole year. 84 people were killed; so far none of them are thought to have been on the pilgrimage.

I can’t think of a more appropriate event to demonstrate that climate change is progressing rapidly. Now, if someone could just convince the major powers to do something substantial about it, and quickly.

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A few days ago, Garrow Online, a Somali publication, revealed that President Museveni is planning, for the first time, to visit Mogadishu in early December in an effort to boost the morale of Uganda’s 2,050 peacekeepers and to hold talks with the Somali President. Surprisingly, the story doesn’t seem to have been picked up by any of the local dailies.

With all the threats from Al Shabaab, the insecurity in Mogadishu and the fact that AMISOM soldiers will not be paid for the next 6 months, it really doesn’t seem like the best time to take such a trip. Reading about the limited ability of AU peacekeepers to maintain control over a 4-kilometer strip of road does not boost my confidence:

“Snipers have taken over where bombers left off in Mogadishu, the war-wracked capital of Somalia where African Union peacekeepers are facing an uphill battle to counter the advance of Islamist insurgents.

Pinned-down peacekeepers here have orders to stay crouched behind their protective sandbags in the centre of Mogadishu.

"Otherwise, they'll take you out," said Lieutenant David Orejcho, one of 4,300 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers of the AMISOM force propping up the weak transitional government in the face of an Al Qaeda-inspired insurgency.

Orejcho's unit monitors the southeastern part of the city from a sandbag-cladded flat roof of an Arabian-style building with peeling paintwork.

"From here we can watch the whole avenue as far as the town centre," he says.

Watching is one thing, but moving about is fraught with danger for the peacekeepers from the moment they leave their headquarters at the airport and take the once grand avenue that leads into the heart of Mogadishu, now just a dusty track where the odd ramshackle vehicle weaves a path between potholes.”

I understand that Museveni wants to make his American allies happy by continuing to support American objectives in Somalia, but it seems to me like a fool’s errand. How long can the AMISOM mission last? With so few soldiers and such a limited mandate is there a long-term plan beyond continuing to prop up a symbolic government that has almost no power beyond central Mogadishu? And with Al Shabaab continuing to grow stronger the mission seems doomed to failure. A foolhardy visit by Museveni won’t change that.

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The Monitor reports:

“For tickling a woman against her consent, Teddy Seezi Tayebwa, a resident of Bugangari Sub-county in Rukungiri District, will spend the next five years in jail.

“According to prosecution, Tayebwa, 36, committed the offence in June 2006 against a villagemate, Lydia Baryomunyena, 56, said to be mentally ill. She had gone to Tayebwa’s shop when he tickled her. Prosecution had wanted a stiffer punishment for Tayebwa, saying he just did not tickle the woman but wanted to rape her, a claim the judge dismissed due to insufficient evidence.”

I feel like the sentence would be appropriate for attempted rape… but for tickling?

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Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, revealed in a radio interview yesterday that The Family, an infamous and influential cadre of religious fundamentalist politicians in Washington D.C., has been funding and influencing many of the major proponents of Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill. Sharlet was able to trace direct funding from The Family to MP David Bahati as well as find ties between The Family and Nsaba Butoro and even Museveni.

The following is a (fairly long) excerpt from the interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, in which Sharlet explains the connections between The Family and Uganda and the anti-homosexuality bill:

 

“ GROSS: This legislation has just been proposed. It hasn't been signed into law. So it's not in effect yet and it might never be in effect. But it's on the table. It's before parliament. So is there a direct connection between The Family and this proposed anti-homosexual legislation in Uganda?

Mr. SHARLET: Well, the legislator that introduced the bill, a guy named David Bahati, is a member of The Family. He appears to be a core member of The Family. He works, he organizes their Ugandan National Prayer Breakfast and oversees a African sort of student leadership program designed to create future leaders for Africa, into which The Family has poured millions of dollars working through a very convoluted chain of linkages passing the money over to Uganda.

GROSS: So you're reporting the story for the first time today, and you found this story - this direct connection between The Family and the proposed legislation by following the money?

Mr. SHARLET: Yes, it's - I always say that The Family is secretive, but not secret. You can go and look at 990s, tax forms and follow the money through these organizations that The Family describe as invisible. But you go and you look. You follow that money. You look at their archives. You do interviews where you can. It's not so invisible anymore. So that's how working with some research colleagues we discovered that David Bahati, the man behind this legislation, is really deeply, deeply involved in The Family's work in Uganda, that the ethics minister of Uganda, Museveni's kind of right-hand man, a guy named Nsaba Buturo, is also helping to organize The Family's National Prayer Breakfast. And here's a guy who has been the main force for this Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda's executive office and has been very vocal about what he's doing, in a rather extreme and hateful way. But these guys are not so much under the influence of The Family. They are, in Uganda, The Family.

GROSS: So how did you find out that Bahati is directly connected to The Family? You've described him as a core member of The Family. And this is the person who introduced the anti-gay legislation in Uganda that calls for the death penalty for some gay people.

Mr. SHARLET: Looking at the, The Family's 990s, where they're moving their money to - into this African leadership academy called Cornerstone, which runs two programs: Youth Corps, which has described its goals in the past as an international, quote, invisible family binding together world leaders, and also an alumni organization designed to place Cornerstone grads - graduates of this sort of very elite educational program and politics and NGO's through something called the African Youth Leadership Forum, which is run by -according to Ugandan media - which is run by David Bahati, this same legislator who introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Act.

GROSS: Now what about the president of Uganda, President Museveni? Does he have any connections to The Family?

Mr. SHARLET: Well, first, I want to say it's important that you said it, yeah, it hasn't gone into law. It hasn't gone into effect yet. So there is time to push back on this. But it's very likely to go into law. It has support of some of the most powerful men in Uganda, including the dictator of Uganda, a guy named Museveni, whom The Family identified back in 1986 as a key man for Africa.

They wanted to steer him away from neutrality or leftist sympathies and bring him into conservative American alliances, and they were able to do so. They've since promoted Uganda as this bright spot - as I say, as this bright spot for African democracy, despite the fact that under their tutelage, Museveni has slowly shifted away from any even veneer of democracy: imprisoning journalists, tampering with elections, supporting - strongly supporting this Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2009.

He's come out just this - just last week and said that this bill is necessary because Europeans are recruiting homosexuals in Uganda, that Europeans are coming in and trying to make Ugandans gay. And he's been rewarded for this because this is sort of where these sort of social issues and foreign affairs issues and free market fundamentalist issues all come together.

GROSS: How did The Family create its relationship with Museveni?

Mr. SHARLET: In 1986, a former Ford official name Bob Hunter went over on trips at the behest of the U.S. government, but also on behalf of The Family, to which - for which both of which he filed reports that are now in The Family's archives. And his goal was to reach out to Museveni and make sure that he came into the American sphere of influence, that Uganda, in effect, becomes our proxy in the region and that relationship only deepened.

In fact, in late 1990s, Hunter - again, working for The Family - went over and teamed up with Museveni to create the Uganda National Prayer Breakfast as a parallel to the United States National Prayer Breakfast and to which The Family every year sends representatives, usually congressmen.

GROSS: What's the relationship of Museveni and The Family now?

Mr. SHARLET: It's a very close relationship. He is the key man. Now...

GROSS: So what does that mean? What influence does The Family have on him?

Mr. SHARLET: It means that they have a deep relationship of what they'll call spiritual counsel, but you're going to talk about moral issues. You're going to talk about political issues. Your relationships are going to be organized through these associates. So Museveni can go to Senator Brownback and seek military aid. Inhofe, as he describes, Inhofe says that he cares about Africa more than any other senator.

And that may be true. He's certainly traveled there extensively. He says he likes to accuse the State Department of ignoring Africa so he becomes our point man with guys like Museveni and Uganda, this nation he says he's adopted. As we give foreign aid to Uganda, these are the people who are in a position to steer that money. And as Museveni comes over, and as he does and spends time at The Family's headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, a place called The Cedars, and sits down for counsel with Doug Coe, that's where those relationships occur.

It's never going to be the hard sell, where they're going to, you know, twist Museveni's arm behind his back and say do this. As The Family themselves describes it, you create a prayer cell, or what they call - and this again, this is their language from their documents - an invisible believing group of God-led politicians who get together and talk with one another about what God wants them to do in their leadership capacity. And that's the nature of their relationship with Museveni.”

Many Ugandans believe that liberalism towards controversial issues like homosexuality both originated in—and is being exported by—the West. I think it’s worth noting that the position of Westerners cannot be so easily generalized. In a country like the U.S., you can find strong support for either side and in this case the influences for the bill seem as “Western” as its opposition. In fact, I think it can be argued that Western supporters of the bill, such as American Evangelicals, are far more prepared to act in order to influence Ugandan policy and beliefs. At least compared to groups that support homosexual rights, which are typically relegated to merely making a statement condemning the bill.


If you are interested knowing more about The Family, their ideology and their foreign policy influence around the globe read the full transcript from the Fresh Air interview.

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Kampala's TEDx is happening right now! It's being hosted by TED fellow Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the internet, founder and Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, and founder of the World Wide Web Foundation.

For those of you not familiar with TED: (in their own words)

"TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds:  Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader."

"TEDx is a new program that enables local communities such as schools, businesses, libraries, neighborhoods or just groups of friends to organize, design and host their own independent, TED-like events."

Looking at the list of today's speakers it is sure to be an incredible day of lectures and discussion.

There's a lot going on right now but for live tweeting of the event be sure to follow the official #ugandalug stream as well as individuals such as @solomonking, @camaraafrica, @uginsomniac, @appfrica, and @ugtelecom.

It is certainly an exciting day for Uganda's tech community!

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There's been a lot of news on the oil front in the past few days. Today, it was announced that Heritage Oil has sold its stake to Italian energy giant Eni S.p.A. for $1.5 billion -- quite a large sum.

Below is the leaked 2004 PSA cited in the Sunday Monitor article by Taimour Lay between the government and Heritage Oil. The memo states that all agreements between oil companies and the government gave the latter less than their claimed 80% share. Instead, the government take is roughly between 67% and 74%. It is worth noting however that Uganda’s negotiating power, even in 2004, was relatively low due to historical instability, lack of infrastructure and Uganda’s landlocked status. Still, whoever was responsible for claiming the 80% figure either made a mistake or had a separate agenda and did it deliberately.

It will certainly be interesting to see the government reaction in the coming days. Finally, it is also possible that a landmark court case this week could use the Access to Information Act to release more recent PSAs.

 

 

CarbonWeb.org neatly summarizes PLATFORM’s analysis of the memo:

“There is currently no transparency over Uganda’s oil contracts, on the part of the Ugandan government or the foreign oil companies. This will prevent positive development outcomes while enabling corruption and environmental degradation on the part of the oil companies. Past experience indicates that without public debate and accountability, the “resource curse” is largely inevitable.

The Production Sharing Agreements signed in Uganda do not represent the great deal publically claimed by the government. Internal figures modelled by the government indicate that the state will receive 67.5% - 74.2% of total revenue.  A Credit Suisse analysis of Heritage Oil predicts government take of between 55% and 67%. PLATFORM’s assessment indicates the government will received between 47.4%  and 79.5% of revenues, depending on the price of oil, size of fields, development costs and other factors. The highest figures will only be achieved if the government takes up the possible 15% state participation. These figures are all below the 80+% regularly trumpeted by the government and the oil companies.

The contracts are highly profitable for the participating oil companies. In the most likely scenarios, Tullow Oil could make a 30-35% return on its investment. This represents a very high profit level for the oil industry, even for risky projects, and indicates excessive profit-taking at the expense of the host government. Even in the least promising (and less likely) scenarios, Tullow would received a 12-14% return – a comfortable profit margin.

Compared to contracts in other countries, Uganda is receiving a worse deal. Modelling the same field under the terms of Heritage’s contract in Iraqi Kurdistan (a more dangerous environment) indicates that the Kurdistan Regional Government will receive a greater proportion of revenues than Uganda, while Heritage will receive a higher rate of return in Uganda.

Uganda’s contracts fail to capture increased rent as the oil price rises. This is a major flaw, especially in light of the recent high oil prices. As prices rose through the 2000s, there was a recognition amongst producer governments that the state has a duty to its citizens to capture the rent from higher prices and that the private companies do not have a right to excessive profit-taking. As the oil price rises, the oil companies make a higher and unlimited profit. However, the state take plateaus at under 80%. Thus the oil companies will take close to one quarter of oil revenues, whether the oil price is $70 or $200 – raking in enormous profits.

Most of the risks lie with the Ugandan state, not the private companies. Price risk lies primarily with Uganda, with the private companies virtually guaranteed a profit even at low prices. While project risk (eg increased costs) are shared between both, Ugandan  revenues will fall significantly further if the project runs over-budget.”

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