The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | An expert at the ongoing 4th Annual Conference of the African Pension Supervisors Association (APSA) in Kampala has said urgent steps need to be taken to reverse a trend in which the continent has only 10% pension coverage of its population.
Sundeep Raichura, Group Chief Executive Officer Zamara says that before African experts can talk of extending pension coverage, they must first admit that the continent has no working pension system, so that leaders focus on getting home grown solutions.
“In Africa, talking about extending coverage, is actually missing the point. We should be saying we do not have a pensions system, with the exception of 10% of our population. Then we can see the weight of the challenge, and come out with homegrown solutions, that we need to address the challenge of pension inclusion on our continent,” Raichura said, on day one of the APSA conference, at Serena Hotel Kampala, on Monday.
Raichura argued that Africa is a demographic ticking time bomb. “We have 600 million workers in Africa who do not have anything to fall back upon in their old age. In the next 20-25 years, there will be about 225 million people above the age of 60. We cannot wish this problem away. We need to think about it,” he said.
Pension sector supervisors and regulators from all over Africa are in Kampala to discuss ways of extending pension coverage to more citizens around the continent.
Pensions inclusion
Sundeep Raichura from Zamara said he feels in many ways experts are not even correctly framing the challenge Africa faces in order to give it the weight and the urgency it needs. Zamara is a Pan African financial and insurance solutions provider which is headquartered in Kenya and whose footprint extends to other African countries including Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Malawi.
“The whole subject of pensions inclusion is not just an imperative, not just critical, but it is also extremely urgent for our continent. In terms of impact, if we get this right, we all stand to benefit. But if we don’t, I do not even want to imagine the consequences of not getting this right,” Raichura said.
He remarked that talking about extending pension is a good discussion in the more developed world because they already have a system, unlike Africa.
“We say this is the youngest continent; the median age is about 19 years, so we say we have a demographic dividend, which is great, and hopefully we will benefit if we get things right.”
The APSA conference
The African Pension Supervisors Association (APSA) is a platform that brings together pension industry regulators and supervisors from across the continent. The Association seeks to enhance pension supervision and regulation by providing a platform for collaboration, co-operation and exchange of information and ideas to better supervise, regulate and grow the pension sector on the continent.
Organised by the Uganda Retirement Benefits Regulatory Authority (URBRA), the 2023 APSA Conference has brought together a diverse audience of over 100 public and private sector stakeholders from Africa and beyond to discuss strategies to make pension and retirement benefits more inclusive, to alleviate old-age poverty. Under the theme Sustainable Pension Inclusion in Africa, the conference will discuss ways of achieving sustained voluntary retirement saving by non-salaried workers with modest, intermittent incomes.
Board Chairperson, Uganda Retirement Benefits Regulatory Authority Julius Junjura Bigirwa gave the opening remarks while the keynote address on day one was by Augustine Kpehe Ngafuan, Country Director, Uganda, African Development Bank.
The 4th Annual APSA Conference is supported by FSD Africa, and PinBox Solutions, as well as Prudential Assurance Uganda and Sanlam Investments East Africa.
LIVE COVERAGE
It appears these smart graduates are aloof of the African way and perhaps looking through false lenses for example, does the western financial system operate successfully in Africa? In the west, you have to buy a car using a credit card; if you buy a car for cash e.g. USD 20,000 you could be investigated for tax fraud, money laundering, etc … and they also have this death tax on a deceased person’s estate which could take like 25% of the deceased person’s entire wealth including cash in the bank which is included in the equation.
But see, USD 20,000 is like UGX 70million in e.g. Uganda where people are buying used car for UGX 150 million cash and no one throws a feat. We also have ancestral property handed down throw the generations and now one has ever had to worry about death tax. In fact, people are selling off their property and buy news freely as long as the tax man gets his cut – I bet some even never see the tax man and so people here have huge cash reserves on hand. It’s most the “learned” in those white collar jobs that are in these pension schemes and all that and we know for example some pensioners from more than 40 years ago are still “demanding” unpaid pension. Then, you see these things mbu insurance, but Africans have had there unique insurance via e.g land and all that for generations. Who told these bookworms that everything / system runs the same in the world? You can’t be copy-pasting stuff; you must adapt!