COMMENT | CRISPIN KAHERU | Anyone who watched Olara Otunnu face the UN General Assembly in this week’s interactive dialogue saw something different in modern diplomacy. He answered hard questions without notes, without hedging, and without losing his composure, meeting probing queries from ambassadors with clarity and, occasionally, his characteristic …
Read More »Africa’s right to unite or perish
COMMENT | CRISPIN KAHERU | Africa stands at a defining crossroads: unite or perish. A fragmented continent will remain comparatively poor, insecure and vulnerable. A united Africa has all it takes to be prosperous, stable and influential, transforming the right to development from a legal aspiration into a lived reality.Economically, Africa …
Read More »The Right to Development: Why Uganda must close before it can open
COMMENT | CRISPIN KAHERU | Before any serious building rises in Uganda, the first thing to go up is the mabaati – corrugated iron sheets that seal off the site. Behind them, foundations are dug, concrete is poured, and steel is welded. There is noise, dust, and confusion. Trucks …
Read More »‘For Sale’ or ‘Not For Sale’?
COMMENT | CRISPIN KAHERU | Somewhere in Kampala today, a signboard reads “For Sale”. Passersby are nodding knowingly. They have worked it out. The name is right there, embedded in the transaction. Sale. Salim “Sale(h)”. It is practically a confession. Somewhere else, another board reads “Not For Sale.” The nodding continues. …
Read More »Why Uganda must guide its democracy
COMMENT | CRISPIN KAHERU | Come to think of it, the problem is not democracy. The problem is the bureaucracy of democracy. It is the forms, the noise, the elbowing, and the sudden appearance of all manner of candidates who discover public service only when a chair is about to …
Read More »Witchdoctors, pastors and Uganda’s Cabinet frenzy
The Politics of God & god in Africa COMMENT | CRISPIN KAHERU | With President Museveni’s swearing-in 12th May 2026 and a new Cabinet expected to follow shortly after, the scramble for ministerial positions has once again turned into an industry. An industry that feeds not only political brokers …
Read More »Press freedom needs discipline
COMMENT | CRISPIN KAHERU | Sunday, 3rd May 2026, was World Press Freedom Day. I showed up at the UBC grounds in Kampala for a simple reason – to walk, listen, and absorb wisdom. Indeed, we marched about seven kilometres. That was light work. My step counter barely noticed. Then …
Read More »How nation-building really works
COMMENT | CRISPIN KAHERU | Nation-building is like construction. Different leaders play different roles. Some break ground. Others raise the walls. Others will one day roof. Yet history often praises the finished building. It forgets the hands that dug the foundation. The real story begins long before the finishing mouldings …
Read More »Uganda’s story outside the headlines
COMMENT | CRISPIN KAHERU | Lately, Uganda keeps appearing in international headlines. Usually it is about politics, security, or some geopolitical something. That is how the world often meets us. But if you walk around the country itself, the story feels different. Recently, I attended a forum where a joint British and …
Read More »From the Bush to the Marketplace: Africa’s real revolution is economic
BOOK REVIEW | CRISPIN KAHERU | History often remembers revolutions by the sound of guns. Yet the most transformative revolutions are quieter. They happen in the mind first, then in the marketplace, and finally in the lives of ordinary people. That is the central lesson from ‘My Psycho-Economic Evolution’, the reflections …
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The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price