COLUMNISTS

By Andrew M. Mwenda The scandals in OPM and the ministry of Public Service show a breakdown of the government’s financial management system Two scandals were exposed in Uganda simultaneously as 2012 came to an end; one in the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), the other in the Ministry …

By Andrew M. Mwenda Rugasira’s book shows the gulf between rhetoric about value addition and the outcomes of the actual policy process All too often, most of the literature on doing business in Africa is by non Africans mainly from the Western world whose lenses are colored by their institutional …

By Andrew M. Mwenda An examination of the growing power and tyranny of international human rights organisations International human rights groups largely founded and financed by the West have increasingly become powerful voices shaping politics in Africa. Their voice is respected by governments and mass media in the West. Given …

By Kavuma Kaggwa How he put politics aside, to concentrate on industrialization, farming and building Uganda economically In the last fifty years of Independence, Uganda produced one great man, James Senkali Mulwana, who had exceptional natural intelligence and `political smartness’. James Mulwana was a fountain of knowledge in industrialisation and …

By Taeho Bark WTO can help governments achieve their two entirely different objectives; growth and distributional fairness If you chase two rabbits at once, the old saying goes, both will escape. And yet this is precisely what many governments are required to do: pursue both growth and distributional fairness. The …

By Andrew M. Mwenda Why the opposition needs to transcend their biases about Museveni if they are to ever have a chance to defeat him In early 2010, my friend Prof. Jeremy Weinstein from Stanford University (then working at the White House) sent me results of an opinion poll on …

By Alan Berube Trade efforts worldwide  are recognising that cities, not countries, are the real centers of global trade Recently, a group of officials gathered to plot a new trade strategy. It was a typical trade-policy discussion: the participants diagnosed competitive export sectors, identified key trading partners, described how public …

By Masari Aim Smith The late Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt would still be presidents if it was that easy What could have been in the mind of President Yoweri Museveni when he made remarks that army may take over government? I would ask this same …

By Morris Komakech Mike Mukula and the insect that hoped to become a bird In November of 1993, the famed Paris-based Congolese Musician, Koffi Olomide released a song called Papa plus. A portion of the preamble to that song has since been translated to me, from Lingala to English. In …

By Brendan Greeley Would it really be so terrible to reintroduce some congressionally sanctioned bribery? I haven’t seen so much lard,” said Ronald Reagan, “since I handed out blue ribbons at the Iowa State Fair.” It was March 1987, and the president of the USA was using his weekly radio …