Last Updated on: 9th April 2023, 11:53 am
In his Easter message to Ugandans, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, 79, says Uganda’s economy is expanding both quantitatively and qualitatively.
“Picking five examples is enough to illustrate this,” he says. “The five examples are the following: coffee, milk and tea. Coffee production in 1986 was only 2 million, 60kgs bags; it is now producing 8.5 million bags, targeting hitting 12 million bags soon. Tea was 3 million kgs in 1986. It is now 60 million kgs. Milk was a mere 200 million litres per annum; it is now 5.3bn litres per annum. The portion that comes to the factories, is 3.6bn litres.”
After the independence, he said, “Some of the politicians have joined the corruption. Before independence, the few politicians that were around, such as IK Musaazi, had no access to power (decision-making). Hence, they had no opportunity to be corrupt or otherwise.”
“The war is between the genuine wealth creators farmers, manufacturers, fishermen, service providers) on the one hand and the parasites in the form of some corrupt civil servants, now joined by some politicians who sell decisions for bribes.”
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Elite corruption in Uganda, for example, is through “a patronage system which has been aggravated by foreign aid”.
Since independence, the 60-year-old country has received a large number of funds and resources from the West. Coming in “millions of pounds and dollars”, aids has lured many public officials to “eat it” while the most vulnerable wallow.
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Every sector of the government, including the population is limping. Karamoja sub-region is a good example as their iron sheets have been shared by top-notch government officers – and only the scandal’s ringleader is being tried in the Courts of Law.