How Besigye’s failure to inspire Ugandans out of Museveni’s failures led to Bobi Wine’s narrow ethnic base THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | The government of President Yoweri Museveni is old and exhausted. It has no zest for anything new or imaginative. Lacking its own project of national transformation, it now …
Read More »How Rwenzuru king was set free
The secret moves involving Gen. Saleh Kampala, Uganda | MUBATSI ASINJA HABATI | On June 14, the Directorate of Public Prosecution dropped charges of terrorism, treason, murder and aggravated robbery among others against the cultural leader of Rwenzururu Kingdom, Charles Wesley Mumbere and 217 others. The DPP’s dropping of the charges …
Read More »Uganda’s budget rat hole
Why government’s biggest problem is not the size of its debt but its cost of borrowing THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | Uganda’s 2023/24 budget, like all previous ones in the last few years, has generated a lot of controversy about the role of public debt in our national life. Growths …
Read More »Shooting oneself in the foot
How Western threats of sanctions are bad for the struggle for the rights of homosexuals in Uganda THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | Last month, Uganda passed the most draconian and barbaric anti-homosexual law in the world. The law has a death sentence for some acts of homosexuality but does not …
Read More »Time to get out of Somalia
Why UPDF, the AU and Western powers should let Al Shabab take over power in Somalia THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | Last week, Al Shabab militants made a devastating attack on a UPDF base in Somalia. They claimed to have killed 138 of our soldiers and taken many more hostage. …
Read More »American Tower Corporation partners with NEMA to restore Mabira Forest Reserve
Jinja, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | In a bid to restore the Mabira Forest, National Environment Management Authority recently partnered with a telecommunication infrastructure firm, American Tower Corporation (ATC), and National Forestry Authority to plant trees ahead of Environment Day celebrations. The partnership was also implemented as part of …
Read More »Politics in plural societies (Part 2)
How good institutions become dysfunctional in heterogenous countries with deep interethnic divisions THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | So, we begin from where we stopped last week with lessons from my former lecturer at the University of London, Mushtaq Khan. Studying South Korea and Pakistan, he found that what makes …
Read More »Politics in plural societies
How good institutions become dysfunctional in heterogenous countries with deep interethnic divisions THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | Last week, a friend sent me a long dissertation about Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, a book by James Robinson and Daron Acemoglu. Why Nations Fail is …
Read More »Retreat from neoliberalism
Lessons for the rest of Uganda’s economy from the local content rules enforced in our oil sector THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | For over thirty years now, Uganda government generally and President Yoweri Museveni specifically, have promoted an open-door policy on Foreign Direct Investment. Foreign firms are given freedom to …
Read More »The evil power of prejudice
Why homophobic Ugandans are not evil people to hate but ignorant people to pity THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | Sometime in 2014, I went with my son, Michael, then a lad of 19 years, to Serena Hotel in Kampala for lunch. I was in Constitutional Court challenging the Anti-Homosexuality Act …
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