Museveni’s mission to Somalia

Why the Western powers may keep financing Museveni even when some think he has passed his sale-by date
 

My recent visit to Mogadishu and seeing what our troops have done there made me proud. Yet perhaps the greatest lesson from Somalia was not necessarily the good that our army is capable of doing in foreign lands but how smart President Yoweri Museveni is at geo-strategic positioning. Museveni has cultivated a very good understanding of the dynamics of regime survival in Africa, a factor that explains his decades of rule.

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Kagame victim of own success

The world tends to hold him to very high, sometimes unrealistic standards 
 

Over the last one month, a rebellion has been ragging in eastern DRC against the government of President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa. As I write this article, over 40 armed groups, some of them former members of the Congolese army, have taken up arms against his government. However, international diplomatic activity, media coverage and human rights campaigns have been focused on one rebel group, M23 and one country, Rwanda and its president, Paul Kagame, for allegedly sponsoring the rebellion.  Even an interested observer may easily think the rebellion is taking place in Rwanda, not DRC. Why is Kabila against whom mutineers and rebels are battling for control of the DRC missing in the news?

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Uganda’s anti-corruption rituals

To understand how theft of public resources flourishes, one has to observe how it is fought

Last week, court dismissed as “no case to answer” charges of abuse of office and causing financial loss against Maj. Gen. Jim Muhwezi in the Gavi trial. Muhwezi had been taken to court on flimsy evidence that even state witnesses – the Accountant General and the former Permanent Secretary in the ministry of health – said he had not authorised any payments. A similar situation attains to the charges brought against former Vice President Gilbert Bukenya and the current charges against ministers Sam Kutesa, Mwesigwa Rukutana and John Nasasira.

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Rwanda’s donor aid cuts

Doesn’t a country that lost a million people deserve to protect its people against the threat of another genocide?

In a space of one week in July, the Netherlands, Germany, UK and USA  announced they would cut their aid to Rwanda over its alleged involvement in the ongoing rebellion in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are another pointer to the dangers of Western aid to poor countries. The use of aid as an instrument of blackmail is a common practice by Western Europe and its offshoots in North America, Australia and New Zeeland. In almost all official and unofficial relations with recipients, Western donors keep rubbing in the fact that those recipients should behave themselves lest… This “lest” includes a series of threats such as cutting aid, sending a leader to the International Criminal Court (ICC) or imposing sanctions. 

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Stiglitz’s Mubiru Memorial Lecture

Failure to define the necessary market regulation deprived lecture of the necessary nuance

The lecture by economics Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz about the failures resulting from deregulation of financial markets in the United States and the need for a strict regulatory regime was engaging and frustrating at the same time.

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Democracy holds NSSF hostage

How a tiny minority of trade unionists have used politics to wrest control from the majority of the fund’s subscribers.

In his State of the Nation address, President Yoweri Museveni said government was going to borrow money from the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) to finance infrastructure development. Later, the Chairman of the Uganda Investment Authority, Patrick Bitature, said government should do so without consulting workers. Since then, Bitature has been under attack.

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Mrs. Museveni’s life’s journey

If anyone wants a slice of the intimate life of the Museveni family, his wife’s autobiography delivers it

I have spent eight months trying to shape my views on Mrs. Janet Museveni’s autobiography, My Life’s Journey. An autobiography is an attempt to tell others that:  “This is who I am” or “This is how I see myself” and “This is how I want you to see me.” So it is an intimate self examination. Then of course, the challenge is how much to reveal about oneself – your triumphs and setbacks, aspirations and frustrations. In My Life’s Journey, I felt Mrs. Museveni did this with much greater success than most people would.

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