To all Ugandans, especially the Buzzukulu

Greetings. I have concluded my countrywide tour

of the 20 zones. My idea of using these 20 zones
for sensitization comes from the 19 Independence
Districts, which themselves had grown out of the
15 colonial districts. The colonial districts were:
West Nile; Acholi; Lango; Karamoja; Teso; Bugisu;
Bukedi; Busoga; Mengo; Mubende; Masaka;
Ankole; Kigyezi; Tooro; and Bunyoro.
This is according to a clockwise movement from
West Nile.

At independence, on account of the cultural and

linguistic considerations, four new Districts were
created. These were: Madi out of West Nile; Sebei
out of Bugisu; Kasese out of Tooro; and
Bundibugyo (Bwamba) out of Tooro. This brought
the total to 19. Kasese and Bundibugyo were
created during Amin's time, responding to the
resistance by the Bakonjo and Baamba to the
mistakes of the managers of the Tooro kingdom,
before the abolition of the kingdoms in 1967.
1
During the NRM time, in addition to further
decentralization for ease of service delivery, we also
created the Kampala zone out of the colonial
Mengo district. Hence, the total of 20 zones.
During this sensitization campaign, my staff
handled Kampala with Wakiso, out of the former
Mengo district.

These 20 zones are convenient for communication

on account of the dialects used. In each zone, I
either speak in English or in the local dialect if I
have good command of it and there is only one
translation for most of the zones. However, in a
few, we are forced to have multiple translations.
In, for instance, West Nile, we must have
translations into Lugbara, Alur and Kakwa. In
Bukedi, we must have translations into Lugwere,
Japadhola, Ateso, Samia and Lunyole. In some
areas, like West Nile and Bukedi, I use Swahili.

On this tour, my message was, again, to continue

to assault the bottleneck of the archaic tradition of
subsistence farming - okukolera olubuto lwokka,

2
okukorera enda yoonka, erikolera erirya riisa, tic
me cam keken,aisoamaikin akoik) etc. etc.

In the pre-colonial, pre- capitalist times, Ugandans

mainly worked for food, ensuring simple shelter
such as the traditional huts (ebifuuha), collecting
firewood (okusheenya), collecting water from the
well (okutaha amaizi, okussena amazzi), raising
cattle or goats for bride price, using cattle or goats
to come to the help of a friend in need (munno mu
kabi, kushumbuusha), using cattle or goats for
empaano (friendship gifts) and using goods (ghee,
hoes, pangas, bark-cloth etc.) for barter-trade
(okuchurika).

There was very little use of money and families or

communities were self-sufficient but at a low -
level of technology, as seen above. The families
would build their own houses etc, because,
technologically, it was possible to democratize the
skills of house -building. However, even at that
time, the need for specialization (emyooga) was
becoming clear. While everybody, together with
family members and neighbours, could build the

3
traditional huts, not everybody could be a
blacksmith (omuheesi); not everybody could be a
mubaizi (carpenter); not everybody could be a
munogoozi (clay workers -potters); not everybody
could be a mukomagyi (bark-cloth maker); not
everybody could be Omutanagyi (the maker of
bows and arrows); not everybody could be a
omuriimbi (lake men - that operated canoes or rafts
- ebiba); etc. etc.

Therefore, even in the pre-capitalist, pre - colonial

times, specialization had started. You did not have
to do everything that you needed for life yourself.
You only needed to have the means to barter or
buy for everything you needed. They were using
cowrie-shells (ensimbi) as currency.

With colonialism, in some isolated instances,

technology advanced. More sophisticated houses,
using cement, steel bars (mitayimbwa), mabaati,
matafaari (bricks), mategura (tiles) etc., were
introduced. That meant that not everybody could
be a builder. It is the civil engineers, the brick-
layers etc. that could build those modern houses.

4
The rest of us, therefore, had to have enough
money to pay the specialists to build the modern
houses for us. While it is still easy for almost
everybody that can walk to go to the well and
collect water, or go to the forest and collect fire-
wood, it is neither convenient nor efficient. It is
more convenient to use gas or electricity for
lighting and cooking and to have the National
Water and Sewerage Co-operation to bring water to
us through pipes and take away sewerage through
other pipes. We no longer have bachuura - the
people that would come at night in towns to take
away people's faeces that had been deposited in
buckets (obulobo). The bucket system in the pre-
modern towns all over the world was, of course,
some sort of improvement on the open- defecation
that was common in villages - just easing oneself
in the bushes.

Therefore, with modernity where you no longer

build your own house etc., the need for money is
accentuated.

5
You need money for a good house; you need money
for some of the foods (sugar, coffee, tea, meat, salt
etc.) even when you grow your own food; you need
money for the education of the children that do not
get Government bursary; you need money for the
household non-food needs (clothes, furniture, etc.);
you need money for clean water( piped or not); you
need money for electricity; you need money to buy
a modern means of transport (pikipiki, car, etc.);
etc., etc.

Therefore, the traditional way, where you only

work for the stomach (subsistence farming), is a
disaster for the African families. Subsistence
farming in the modern times is like a fish out of
water. It cannot survive. It is out of place and in
danger.

During the colonial times, the traditional mainly

non-money economy had a modest change that
mutated it into an "enclave economy". "An enclave
economy" means an island of pseudo - modernity
surrounded by a sea of backwardness. The Island
of pseudo - modernity was comprised of the 3Cs

6
and 3Ts, as the colonialists themselves described
it.

The 3Cs stood for: Coffee, Cotton and Copper; the

3Ts stood for: Tea, Tobacco and Tourism. These
represented a very small proportion of the
Ugandan families. In Ankole, for instance, only a
few families in Ndeija grew coffee and maybe some
in the Igara - Sheema area and some families in
the Kyamuhunga area grew tea. Certainly, in the
two parishes of Kikoni and Nyaburiza in
Ntungamo Sub-County, I do not remember
anybody (any family) that was engaged in cash-
crop growing. They were all, democratically,
working for the stomach only. It could be that
some coffee farmers in the Buganda area got some
reasonable money from coffee. There were a
number of good permanent buildings in that area.
That must have been on account of getting good
money from coffee, most likely. In Northern and
Eastern Uganda, where the main colonial cash-
crop was cotton, there was some progress
especially in paying for education, buying bicycles
etc.

7
However, housing remained mainly the traditional
grass-thatched houses. Why? Was it because the
people did not want better houses, or was it
because the money from cotton was not enough to
cover the education costs and improved housing?
In 1969 when I made a personally sponsored study
tour of the Northern Uganda, some women in Arua
town were still walking around with only leaves
tied around their waist but, otherwise, totally
naked; at Kalongo Hospital, I found about 50
women, waiting to deliver, in the courtyard of the
Hospital, all bare - breasted. I do not have to talk
of Karamoja because for that area, there was no
attempt to introduce any cash crop at all.

With coffee, you can make good money even in a

small acreage. With cotton, you can only make
money if you have a big acreage. In the North and
East, in those years, the populations were still
small, and, therefore, the land could not have been
the problem. What, then, was the problem? Why
were people not building better houses? In the
Ankole area, the people were staying in grass-
thatched huts because there was no cash-crop

8
production- no coffee, no cotton, no dairy industry,
no serious beef industry beyond the monthly cattle
auction markets that, again, only catered, where
the parents were enlightened enough, for school
fees, like in my family's case. By 1954, I can only
remember 3 mabaati-roofed houses in the two
parishes of Kikoni and Nyaburiza - two belonged to
local colonial chiefs and one belonged to a trader.
Apart from the mabaati roofs, the three lonely
houses were made of the flimsy wattle, reeds and
mud walls (emuli- emiingo and ebikondo). The
bricks or the Cement blocs were unheard of. Yet,
many families had a lot of land, cattle, big banana
plantations etc. It was, however, all for, mainly,
traditional purposes of subsistence - erikolera
erirya riisa, okukolera ekidda kyonka, okukolera
olubuto lwokka, okukorera enda yoonka, tic me cam
keken, aisoamakin akoik.

Therefore, by independence, there were two social-

economic problems for the population of Uganda:
Continued living under the social formation of
primitive self - sufficiency at low technological and
organizational levels and where cash crops had

9
been introduced, engaging in cash crops for the
benefit of the colonial industries such as the textile
factories of Manchester in the U.K but without
taking the homestead economics as the primary
factor. The primary factor, should be to make the
family rich and not just the factories rich.
Therefore, by independence, many families had no
source of sustained cash and the ones that had
some sustained sources, the amounts were small
except, probably, for coffee.

In comes Idi Amin in 1971. He destroys, almost

completely, the small modern economy, the cash
economy of the 3Cs and 3Ts. Cotton and copper
disappeared completely. It is only coffee that
continued to limp on at 2 million, 60kgs bags per
annum. Tea declined from 23million kgs per year
to only 3million kgs per year. Tourism
disappeared. Tobacco continued to limp on but
with reduced volumes. By 1986, therefore, when
the NRM finally came to power, the economy of
Uganda had become more subsistence than it had
been in 1971 but, of course, with a bigger
population.

10
This is where the NRM played a decisive role in
reviving and propelling forward the economy of
Uganda. First, we had to bring back the small
“enclave economy”, the small island of modernity
surrounded by the sea of backwardness. Tea has
gone from the 3 million kgs of 1986, passed the 23
million kgs of 1971 and is now at 60 million kgs.
Coffee has gone from the 2.392million bags in FY
1985/86 to 4.305.million bags FY 2017/18. Even
cotton has gone from almost zero in 1986 to now
189,444 bales in FY 2018/19. Tobacco is still
being produced and in FY 2017/18 Uganda
exported 21,393 tonnes. Tourism has grown by
leaps and bounds from the 16,950 of 1968 and the
almost zero numbers of 1986 to now 1.5million
tourists bringing in US$1.5bn per annum. It can
and will grow more. Of the original 3Cs and 3Ts,
therefore, it is only copper that has not yet been
revived.

In addition to reviving the 2Cs and the 3Ts, the

NRM has successfully commercialized many
completely new products as follows: maize, milk
and milk products, beef, fish, timber, bananas,

11
fruit, cocoa, vanilla, palm oil, flowers, sim-sim,
sun-flower, cassava, etc. etc. All these are agro-
based with factories being fed by them. Many of
these agricultural products have been transformed
by factories into final products: textiles from
cotton, fish products, cooking oils and soaps from
palm trees and sun-flower, plywood from timber,
juices from fruits, starch from cassava, powdered
milk and other dairy products from milk, tyres
from rubber, etc.etc. There are other factories that
are not based on agricultural products. These are:
cement from limestone (einooni); plastics from oil;
steel products from scrap and now from iron ore
(obutare); fertilizers from phosphates; gold bars
from gold ores; batteries from recycled batteries;
etc.etc. Some of the factories use imported raw-
materials such as PVC.

This spectrum of the sources of the raw-materials

– agricultural, forest, fresh water, minerals or
imported, as well as the peaceful atmosphere, has
already attracted a total of 4,900 factories
employing a total of 700,000 workers. Therefore,
sector one, commercial agriculture, is already

12
linked with sector two – industries - in some
significant ways. Also mining, to a limited extent,
is also getting linked to industry.

Then, there is the services sector comprised of the

hotels, transport, banking, insurance etc. with a
total of 200,000 companies, employing 1.5m
persons. This is sector III.

Finally, there is the ICT Sector with 1,200

companies employing a total of about 10,000
persons. These ICT companies include companies
like Techobrain, iSON Technology which do BPO
operations which involve, among others, linking
businesses across the World.

Therefore, the Ugandan economy is one of the

fastest growing in the World on account of the
NRA/UPDF ensuring peace, the NRM ensuring
reconciliation and democratic empowerment of the
Ugandans, the NRM ensuring macro-economic
stability as well as the NRM ensuring some limited
infrastructure rehabilitation and development. It
would have grown faster if the 6th Parliament had

13
not delayed the construction of Bujagali dam and
if we did not have corrupt actors asking for bribes
before delivering services or those corrupt officials
doing shoddy jobs and inflating costs. The
corruption issue, however, is a software issue and
not a hardware one. Given our transparent
democratic system, the corrupt always get exposed
and, on account of our massive educational
system, nobody is indispensable.

In 2006, I put my foot down with the 7th

Parliament and we prioritized the roads, defence,
electricity, health, education and ICT. With
adequate electricity, the economy will roar.

There is, however, one structural problem in the

society and that is the residual pre-capitalist
phenomenon of subsistence farming (okukolera
olubutto lwokka, okukolera enda yoonka, okukolera
ekidda kyonka, erikolera erirya rissa, tic me cam
keken, aisoamaikin akoik) already mentioned
above. It is this continued disabling factor that I
have been battling eversince 1966 after my A
levels. Tropical Africa is very deceptive and

14
dangerous for those that do not sharpen their
insight. The good climate means that even the
lazy can survive. I used to see two madmen in
Ntungamo – Katukuuza and Kaboogyi. They would
go round completely naked but they would not die
immediately. In the cold climates, you cannot
survive like that. In the Tropics, you die slowly
and without drama. By not dying dramatically,
however, it does not mean that the Ugandans’
quality of life is good; not at all. How do we
measure this? We have a number of
measurements such as: the infant mortality rate;
the average life-expectancy; the percentage of
people with stunted growth; etc.etc. Infant
mortality rate in Uganda was 122 per every 1,000
infants born alive in 1986. It has now fallen to 43
per every 1,000 infants born alive within the 1st
year of life. In Sweden, however, the infant
mortality rate is 3 in every 1,000. The average life
expectancy in Uganda was 43 years in 1986. It is
now 63 years. In Japan, however, it is 86 years.
In Finland it is 81 years. Therefore, this abstaining
from modernisation has got a cost to the society.
Yet, some people refuse to see this.

15
You get religious people preaching on how “God
has called” the deceased. My question is always:
“Why does God like to call Africans more than
calling the other people e.g. Japanese?” It is not
God calling Africans; It is Satan calling them on
account of the Africans failing to use the “talents”
(in the Book of Mathew 25: 14-30) God gave them.

This inadequate quality of life is on account, in

part, to the 68% of our people refusing to get out of
the tradition of only producing for the stomach. It
is the failure of the leaders that live near these
people, to tell them how to improve their lives by
going commercial in their production efforts. In
1966, when we confronted the phenomenon of the
stagnation of the Banyankore Society, we proposed
4 steps to be taken: step one – stop nomadism.
The Banyankore, like the Karimojong, had that
additional problem of nomadism that I analysed in
the Booklet: “From Obwiriza (grass thatch) to
Matafaari”, which captured that campaign. As a
result of that campaign, the Banyankore settled
down and started fencing their lands and doing
semi-modern animal husbandry.

16
Unfortunately, Amin came in, in 1971 and we had
to embark on fighting that lasted 16 years, until
1986.

When I came back in 1986, I found many of the

Banyankore settled but still in the phenomenon of
only working for the stomach. After some detailed
analysis, I proposed 3 steps. Step one, go out of
only producing for the stomach and also produce
for the pocket (money). Step two, as you work for
money, do so with ekibaro (cura, aimair, otita).
Step three, once the families have started earning
incomes, the new danger is when the head of the
family dies and, then, the children descend on the
property and destroy it by fragmentation, just like
white ants. In step three, we, therefore, de-
campaigned inheritance by fragmentation and
recommended inheritance by shares (emigabo). In
this way, we divide what comes from the property,
surplus income, rather than dividing the property.
In that way, what the late property owner left will
be preserved and it will produce new companies
for each of the descendants of the late owner.

17
On the issue of cura (ekibaro), our
recommendation is that for somebody of four acres
or less, the following activities are recommended:

(1) Coffee;
(2) Fruits (oranges, mangoes, pineapples, grapes,
apples, straw-berries);
(3) Food-crops;
(4) Pasture for dairy;
(5) Poultry farming for eggs in the backyard;
(6) Piggery in the backyard;
(7) Fish-farming in the periphery of the wetlands
(emiiga), but not in the centre of the wetlands.

Therefore, the aim of my recent campaign is to

wake up the sleeping 68% portion of our
homesteads to join the transformation efforts. If
each of the 8million homesteads of Uganda earned
Shs.20million per year, that effort would add an
extra US$44bn to our economy. The size of the
economy would, therefore, jump to US$74bn by
the foreign exchange rate method.

18
In 1966, before we started the anti-subsistence
farming campaign, I had some disagreement with
the Banyankore elite. Their view was that the
traditional Banyankore could not change. They
were “impossible” (tibarikubasika). My question,
then, was: “What, then, should we do?” Their
answer was: “Obarugyeho”; “okore abyaawe”
(“leave them alone; do your own personal things”).
I could not believe in this line because I was living
with my mother, originally a traditional woman
herself, but who had been transformed by the
limited Church efforts and oburokore (being
saved). She had learnt the hygienic practices of
boiling milk instead of drinking it raw; she taught
us to abandon the unhygienic Banyankore
practice of eating from the same big plate
(orusaniya) or a heat - treated (kubabura) banana
leaf (olulagala, orureere) in favour of each
individual having his own plate, his own cup, his
own kyanzi (milk - pot). She had learnt the
knitting of sweaters. She could even read the
Bible. This was all influence by the two self -
sponsored six months’ courses each of oburoonde
(baptism and confirmation courses) which, at

19
personal expense and staying with the Katungyis
(family friends of my grand-parents), “abroad” at
Kinoni (25 miles from Ntungamo). All this was in
addition to the great personal discipline of no
alcohol, no smoking (okureetsa), no kikaambi
(chewing tobacco), no loose living etc. I, therefore,
believed that the Banyankore could change; but
we had to undertake the efforts. Besides, we had
to try.

Recently, I was in the Sub-county of Kanyaryeru.

70% of the homesteads have food security and are
in commercial farming with good ekibaro (cura,
otita, aimar) of dairy and bananas. In the 9
Villages around Kisozi, the percentage is 85% for
the 1,997 homesteads.

How do the 68% move forward, following the

present campaign? My answer is that there are
already four funds for Wealth and Job creation.
These are: the Operation Wealth Creation (OWC)
Fund; the Women Fund; the Youth Fund; the
Micro-finance fund and the Innovation Fund. This
is a total of Shs437.2bn. This money has been

20
there every year, in some cases, even since the
year 2001 as NAADS money. The complaints are
now that, this money is given to the ones “who
already have”. The have-nots do not get. It is the
“haves” that access this support. This cannot be a
big problem. The big issue is that the money is
there. If the routes through which it is passing
have a problem, then we shall get better routes.

Besides, we shall add an additional 3 funds: the

value addition fund for the 20 zones depending on
the locally available raw-materials; the myooga
funds; and the leaders’ SACCO fund. We have
already supported the youth of Kampala,
Rukungiri etc. with metal cutting and bending
common-user machine tools, the common-user
machines for carpentry etc. We supported some
youth with grain-milling and animal feeds’ mixing
machines. We are now to aim at the whole
spectrum of value addition, area by area. The
immediate industry I am about to launch is
leather - tanning at Kawumu, Luwero, using the
skins of the meat-packers so that Uganda is self-
sufficient in leather for shoe-making, making

21
leather-bags, making leather-covered car-seats
etc. We shall, then, target the whole spectrum of
industries.

There are, then, the myooga. Omwooga (singular)

emyooga (plural) are Runyankore words meaning a
specialization sector (blacksmithing, carpentry,
pottery etc.). We identified the following myooga:

1. Boda Boda Association;

2. Women Entrepreneurs’ Association;
3. Carpenters’ Association;
4. Salon Operators’ Association;
5. Taxi Operators’ Association;
6. Restaurant Association;
7. Welders’ Association;
8. Market Vendors’ Association;
9. Youth Leaders’ SACCO;
10. PWDs’ Association;
11. Produce Dealers’ Association;
12. Mechanics’ Association;

22
 13. Tailors’ Association;
14. Media Operators’ Association;
15. Fishermen’s Association;
16. The Performing Arts’ Association.

Each of these will have a district-wide SACCO with

branches at convenient points (Parish or Sub-
county).

These mwooga - specific and district-wide SACCOs

may be better than the katogo (mixed grill) ones
that were, moreover, numerous and not covering
specific geographic areas. These myooga SACCOs
will cover all the miscellaneous activities that are
not agriculture. Agriculture is still being covered
by OWC and Uganda Development Bank (UDB),
the latter for the rich. These myooga SACCOs will
also cover some of the social groups: Women,
Youth leaders, PWDs and some are suggesting the
Elders.

The final and also district-wide will be for the

elected leaders of the Local Government or the
political Parties. Many of these either get no pay
23
or low pay. Yet, they are not allowed to access the
other Wealth funds on the grounds that they are
leaders. This is not fair, especially, since they use
their time for the benefit of the community and,
sometimes, they do not have enough time for their
own affairs. The leaders SACCO will fill this gap
and they should remain members even when they
retire.
All this is choo (waking up) from working for the
stomach only (tic me cam keken) using
Government money. The people of the parish of
Rwengaaju, Kabarole, however, demonstrated that
you did not have to wait for Government money.
As soon as they got my message in the year 2008,
they formed their SACCO and raised money from
among themselves starting with Shs.3million from
60 members. You can, on this, contact Mr.
Richard Nyakana on telephone who is the leader of
these farmers and other wealth creation warriors.

I invite all of you to join in this sensitization effort

so that our society is transformed. We cannot go
on with a society that still accommodates
irrational archaic practices in the modern times
24
when the Americans are celebrating 50 years of
going to the moon and coming back. It is suicidal.
I thank you.

Yoweri K. Museveni (Gen. Rtd.)

PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF UGANDA

6th August, 2019

25