THE LAST WORD: By Andrew M.Mwenda How do you govern a country that has average public spending per capita of $450 annually in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)? Is it possible to govern it using the same strategies as a country whose public spending is $22,000 per person annually? Yet all …

On March 31 2016, the total value of all loans in Uganda’s commercial banking industry was Shs21.7 trillion of which Shs528 billion were non-performing loans (or “bad loans”) i.e. 2.64% of the total. Under the effective oversight of Bank of Uganda, especially its director for supervision; Justine Bagyenda (known in …

How corruption has disabled mechanisms through which the business community can fight for better tax laws THE LAST WORD: By Andrew M. Mwenda Uganda’s ratio of taxes to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has remained almost stagnant for 19 years. In 1997, it was 11%. Since then it has risen to …

Slavery in America may have ended but the US state has reproduced it through mass incarceration of blacks and police violence in poor black communities due to its hidden economic gains  THE LAST WORD: By Andrew M. Mwenda Recent events in the United States; where police shot and killed two …

Why our country remains poor with high unemployment in spite of 28 years of huge expansion in GDP Last week, I spent an entire day at Uganda Bureau of Statistics crunching numbers with the staff on our GPD growth between 1986 and 2014. There is only one route for nations …

Why the story of Rwanda’s economic success keeps being juxtaposed with human rights abuses Last week I was in Kigali, Rwanda, after only two weeks of absence. Driving from the airport to the city, I found two new roundabouts near the new Convention Center complex. On my right was a …

Why obsession with investment in mass public education and health in poor countries could be less optimal policy Let me articulate a heresy. I am increasingly suspicious of the obsession by governments in poor countries to invest in “education and healthcare for all” as a strategy to combat poverty. This …

Why good leadership at a national level is not enough to make a country successful economically THE LAST WORD: Let us do a thought experiment. It is often said that the problem of Africa is poor leadership: if our continent had leaders dedicated to serving their people rather than lining …

What the uproar about her visit to a shrine tells us about the crisis of post-colonial Africa THE LAST WORD by Andrew Mwenda Rebecca Kadaga caused uproar when she visited a traditional shrine to thank the spirits of her ancestors for her election as Speaker of Parliament. Every pundit of …

The triumph of security over politics in Museveni’s quest to contain Besigye’s defiance From Saturday, May 28 to June 03, Uganda has been a host of two visiting dignitaries – Presidents Park Geun-hye of South Korea and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. For most of the entire week, the road …