UGANDA: Why economic development tends to increase social insecurity leading to anger THE LAST WORD | ANDREW M. MWENDA | A couple of months ago, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics produced its survey showing that between 2012 and 2017, the number of people living in poverty increased from 19 to 27%. This provided …
Read More »The problem with Africa
The problem with Africa: If our countries remain poor, it’s because its leaders and elites are too kind to their people to force transformation THE LAST WORD | ANDREW M. MWENDA | Last week, President Yoweri Museveni tweeted a picture of himself pushing a bicycle in some village “promoting” an irrigation scheme. …
Read More »The challenge of state legitimacy
Government can only govern if people comply with its demands, but why do people comply? THE LAST WORD | ANDREW M. MWENDA | The German sociologist, Max Weber, argued that if the state is to exist, the dominated must obey the authority claimed by the powers that be. Then he …
Read More »Fashionable nonsense
How the debate on governance in Africa is a toxic combination of high emotion and little knowledge THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | It is fashionable across our continent to condemn governments for poor delivery of public goods and services. This, it is argued, is caused by corruption, …
Read More »Reconsidering governance in Africa
Reconsidering governance in Africa: Why our obsession with copying and pasting western institutions causes more harm than good THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | If you follow debate on Africa anywhere in the world, everyone will tell you that the main problem with our countries is governance. Yet this claim is …
Read More »Is America a shithole country?
How Trump and his African admirers judge the quality of something based entirely on money THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | Just before the outbreak of the Nama-Herero rebellion in modern day Namibia in April 1904, Chief Hendrick Witboi of the Nama tribe penned a letter to the …
Read More »The poverty of Africa’s elites
THE LAST WORD: Why the tendency of African intellectuals to blame leaders for the failures of our nations is escapism THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | I recently had a Twitter debate with Prof. George Ayittey; the Ghanaian author of `Africa Unchained: the blueprint for development’ (Palgrave/MacMillan, 2004) …
Read More »The tragedy of Robert Mugabe
How Western cunning exploited African gullibility to demonise the Zimbabwean president THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | President Robert Mugabe is leaving power under duress after 37 years as leader of Zimbabwe. His fall has been celebrated as the “end of an error.” He has been vilified as an ageing, …
Read More »Lessons for Museveni from Mugabe, and for Uganda, from Zimbabwe
COMMENT: Lessons for Museveni from Mugabe, and for Uganda, from Zimbabwe COMMENT | Andrew Mwenda | The fall of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has been welcomed by many Ugandans with excitement. For many people tired of President Yoweri Museveni’s long rule, Mugabe’s fall gives hope that their nightmare is …
Read More »Crisis of the state in Uganda
How foreign interests have captured Uganda’s politics thereby turning our people from citizens to clients THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | Police recently raided the offices of some Non-government Organisations (NGOs) including Action Aid Uganda and Great Lakes Institute for Strategic Studies (GLISS) and froze their accounts. The government …
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