Skip to main content

LET THE UN BASE SAGA BE A LESSON TO US



I have watched with much interest as the issues of the UN base in Entebbe have played out in recent days.

At the beginning of the month it was reported that the UN secretary general Antonio Guterres, had signed off on a new structure, The Global Services Delivery model, that it was suggested would see Uganda losing the Regional Service Center in Entebbe (RCSE) to Nairobi.

Under the new model the UN would have three key centers in Hungary, Kenya and Mexico.

In response to a letter by President Yoweri Museveni, Guterres assured him that the RCSE would remain in Entebbe. Though some functions will be relocated to Nairobi in the short term, in the middle to long term he sees the role of RCSE expanding and growing in importance.

The new development takes effect from 1st July this year.

According to their website the RCSE serves more than 20,000 personnel on the continent, does administration and communications support for thousands more around the world and has an annual budget of $33m (sh122b).

Of course there was a lot of concern for the assumed development and with good reason.

It’s been almost ten years since the base was set up. It has provided employment for more than 400 Ugandans and created numerous economic opportunities for the residents of, the once sleepy town, Entebbe.

Real estate values have jumped, as have rents. Businessmen in the hospitality and transport businesses have thrived. New services in education, health and logistics have sprung up. It is safe to say the lakeside town has received a shot in the arm, to the benefit of its residents and businesses.

The effects of the pull out would have put a lot of livelihoods in jeopardy and nip the town’s economic boom in the bud.

On a much wider level the base’s exit may have affected our currency and weakened our influence in international fora.

But there are some lessons to learn from this event about how the international community operates and our place in the grand scheme of things.

To begin with, while it seems like this development came out of the blue, Guterres in his letter to the President points out that the conceptualisation and implementation of the global services delivery model had been going on for at least six years.

The last minute flurry of activity by our officials if the UN had decided to take our base away would have been a waste of time at best or at worst playing to the gallery – in this case the Ugandan public.
The UN, the world’s biggest bureaucracy, like any other bureaucracy works slowly and once decisions are made, no amount of jumping up and down will change things.

I am loathe to suggest our diplomats were caught napping, but if the UN had decided to take our base away, which they did not, we would have lost it anyway despite our government’s last minute efforts to salvage the situation.

It is clear that we need to be more proactive in fighting for our interests and seeking out new opportunities that may be floating around international corridors. This calls for a beefing up of our diplomatic capacity.

This is important because beyond vying for markets for our goods abroad, there are real and lucrative markets for our services too. The 400 Ugandans working at RCSE are but a fraction of what we can offer to the world, given the tens of thousands we pass out of our universities every year.

There is also the issue of leverage. The RCSE base is not only lucrative but strategic as well. Our commitment to international peace and security that the base represents will always be a card up our sleeves in international discussions. We should not take its importance for granted.

We dodged a bullet this time.  Next time we may not be so lucky. Let us use this incident as a learning opportunity for our government to pay more attention if they are to promote and defend this country’s best interests.

(MAY 2018)

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

OUR WOMEN AMONG THE BEST ENTREPRENEURS BUT…

A study carried out in 57 countries around the world established that Ugandan women are among the most entrepreneurial in the world. The 2018 Mastercard Index of Women’s Entrepreneurship released last week showed that one in three businesses or 33.8 percent of businesses in this country belong to women. Our women were third behind their counterparts in Ghana, 44.4 percent and Russia, 34.6 percent. Survey after survey has shown that Uganda is one of the most entrepreneurial counties in the world, so it should come as little surprise that our women are among the most entrepreneurial in the world.  This does not in any way take away from their own initiative and resilience in surviving our competitive business environment. Our entrepreneurialism was forced upon us by the hard times we faced as a nation in the 1970s and 1980s, when few if any salaries could carry families through the month. For the majority of us who did not have the option of leaving the country...
Post a Comment
Read more

LET US GIVE SMEs A CHANCE

Something is wrong when most of Ugandan business is shut out of the government procurement process. This is happening in Uganda today. Micro-, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) account for 90 percent of the private sector. These account for 65 percent of national output (GDP). On the other hand 75 percent of our now sh32trillion national budget is earmarked for public procurement but the MSMEs’ share of this action is only 15 percent. It does not take a rocket scientist to see that such numbers are behind the huge inequalities in our society and why the majority of us do not have hope of a better and brighter future. Thankfully this is not an insurmountable problem. If MSMEs had access to more opportunities accruing from the national budget the benefits to themselves and to the nation as a whole would be huge. These would include increased production which would lead to job creation, raise incomes at household levels, leading to reduced income ine...
Post a Comment
Read more

UMEME A RECOGNISED SUCCESS BUT …

  Recently the World Bank did a survey of the power utilities on the continent. Of the 39 utilities surveyed only two, in Uganda – Umeme and in Seychelles, were able to cover their operating costs and capital expenditures – maintenance and expansion of the grid. The report went on to point out that only 19 or about half of the surveyed utilities were able to meet their everyday costs like salaries. Essentially most of our power utilities on the continent are technically bankrupt. This has far reaching ramifications for the industry as a whole. When you, the client, pays your bill, Umeme then passes money up the line to pay the transmission and generation companies. If Umeme does not collect the revenues due to it or does not price the power at an appropriate rate, the pain will be felt up and down the sector. The transmission company would not be able to maintain and extend its network and the generation company would not be able to generate efficiently or build ...
Post a Comment
Read more

DEAL WITH PLASTICS BEFORE ITS TOO LATE

The first rainy season seems to have passed. Not too soon for some of us. It has become standard now that with the rains come the floods and with every season these become not only more and more daunting, but spread all over Kampala. While KCCA has done a lot of work in improving drainage, we are undoing the good work with our bad habits. Everyday we dispose of tons of plastic improperly, these find their way into the existing drainage systems of this city. These cause blockages, which we go about blissfully unaware of until the rainy season begins. The rainwater not only struggles to go past existing blockages but comes along with its own load of plastics to reinforce the existing blockage. The water, which should be finding its way to Lake Victoria, swells out of the drains and finds its way onto the road, into our offices and our homes. That’s the simplified version of events.  This is before we even start examining how we are building in the wetlands ...
Post a Comment
Read more

OUR HISTORICAL SITES SHOULD NOT GO UNATTENDED TO

Recently I was at Makerere University to attend a wedding ceremony. I hadn’t been on the university’s grounds in a while. I was shocked at how run down Mary Stuart and Lumumba Halls were. They are in need of serious work. These thoughts were reawakened with the recent launch of the coffee table book “Beyond the Reeds and Bricks” promoted by the tourism ministry, the cross cultural foundation of Uganda and the European Union Delegation. The book which is aimed at the protection of historical sites and buildings in Kampala, Entebbe and Jinja, is a moving collection of pictures of buildings and sites we know, but probably take for granted when we pass them as we go about our business. "Entebe za Mugula in Entebbe, Mackay’s Cave, the post office in Entebbe, the Stanbic Bank Branch in Jinja, Hamu Mukasa’s house in Mengo, the main building at Makerere , the Bahai Temple, Kibuli mosque and many other sites have pride of place among the 60 pictures in this book, which is ...
Post a Comment
Read more