In the year 2000, we met
here and agreed on the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) for 2015. They are: Goal 1, the eradication of
extreme poverty and hunger; Goal 2, achieving universal
primary education; Goal 3, promoting gender equality
and the empowerment of women; Goal 4, reducing child
mortality; Goal 5, improving maternal health; Goal 6,
combatting HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases;
Goal 7, ensuring environmental sustainability; and Goal
8, developing a global partnership for development. As
we can see, they cannot be sustainably achieved unless
we achieve socioeconomic transformation. That means
building a new society comprised of the middle class
and the skilled working class out of the pre-capitalist
societies that characterize underdeveloped countries.
Our old society of traditional Africa had and has
to undergo socioeconomic metamorphosis, just like
the insects do, taking on new forms of life — egg,
caterpillar, pupa, adult butterfly or other insect, and so
on — of the same organism. That means fewer people in
agriculture than in industry and services, more people
in urban centres than in rural areas, no illiteracy, and
modern agriculture rather than subsistence traditional
agriculture or uneconomic colonial cash crops that
bring in little for the affected families. I hope that no
one had imagined that we could sustainably attain the
MDGs while maintaining a backward economy.
We in Uganda discovered the following bottlenecks
to socioeconomic transformation.
The first is ideological disorientation. The
second is a weak State — no army and a weak police,
judiciary and civil service. The third is inadequate
infrastructure, including inadequate electricity, lack of
roads, lack of a railway system, lack of information and
communications technology infrastructure, and so on.
All of this means high costs for doing business in a
given country. That scares away business, and without
business there can be no employment, no production of
goods and services and no expansion of the tax base. It
is a vicious circle.
The fourth bottleneck relates to human resources
that are undeveloped on account of lack of education
and poor health. An illiterate and unhealthy population
cannot be the agent of socioeconomic transformation.
The fifth is the issue of small internal markets resulting
from the colonial balkanization of Africa. Those had
to be worked on through regional market integration.
One cannot sustainably produce if sufficient numbers
of people do not buy one’s goods.
Sixth, a lack of industrialization and a failure to
modernize services meant that we continued to export
raw materials at 10 per cent or less of the final value of
the final product, thereby losing money and jobs to the
outside world. The lack of modern services meant that
we could not attract tourists and had to import services
from outside in the form of professional and medical
services, inter alia, in addition to jobs not being created.
Seventh, the failure to modernize agriculture
inhibits the earning capacity of the affected portions of
the population and the country, stunts job creation and
affects food security.
Eighth, the additional mistake was made of
interfering with the private sector, influenced by
an incorrect analysis of the national interest. Was
the private sector causing the national economy to
haemorrhage by repatriating dividends, or was it
creating an infusion of fresh money and knowledge and
expanding the size of the economy? Fortunately, that
mistake has been corrected in Uganda and in much of
Africa.
Those are the bottlenecks that directly affected the
rate of socioeconomic transformation. I do not wish to
go into the political bottlenecks here.
In Uganda, therefore, we were clear about all of
those from the very beginning. It was not possible to
talk of the MDGs sustainably without talking about
those strategic bottlenecks. You could not sustainably
base yourself on donor support to achieve the MDGs.
In spite of the fact that a number of mistakes were
made by some of our actors, Uganda will have achieved
the following MDGs by 2015.
First, eradicate extreme poverty and
hunger — already achieved; second, achieve universal
primary education — already achieved; third, promote
gender equality — already achieved; fourth, reduce
child mortality — already achieved; fifth, improve
maternal health — achieving this one has been slow
to be achieved because of mistakes on our side; sixth,
combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases — we are
on track to achieve this, except as concerns new AIDS
infections, which have increased slightly; seventh,
ensure environmental sustainability by increasing the
electrification of the economy, so as to stop the cutting
of forests for firewood and for primitive agriculture
by modernizing agriculture and shifting a greater
portion of the population towards industry, away from
agriculture.
We have been working on Goal 8, developing a
global partnership for development, first and foremost
by working for economic and political integration in
Africa and for market access to the rest of the world on
the basis of mutual advantage. The process of market
integration in Africa has already started in the form
of the East African Community, the Common Market
for Eastern and Southern Africa, the Southern African
Development Community, the Economic Community
of West African States and the Economic Community
of Central African States.
As part of the global partnership, we should be
very careful not to lose the easing in global tensions
that came with the end of the Cold War. In the Book of
Matthew, Jesus says :
“ By their their fruit you will recognize them.
Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs
from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears
good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good
tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot
bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good
fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus,
by their fruit you will recognize them.” (The Holy
Bible, Matthew 7:16-20)
A good system will prove its superiority by
example. The Book of Matthew also states:
“In the same way, let your light shine before
others, that they may see your good deeds and
glorify your Father in heaven.” (ibid., Matthew 5:16)
We do not have to create new global tensions in
order to deal with criminals. Where there is a need for
international action, regional and global consensus
should be sought so that we unite the many to defeat
the few and isolate the enemy to the maximum, as the
late Chairman Mao Zedong used to say. Where there is
a need to fight for freedom, oppressed people can fight
for themselves. They do not have to be sponsored by
external forces. Those who seek external sponsorship
as their primary aim are suspect, to say the least.
Still on the issue of global partnership, I cannot
fail to stress our anger vis-à-vis actors who are
beginning to make it a habit to ignore African Union
positions on African matters. One of our slogans in the
decolonization struggle was “Africa for the Africans”.
Some people seem to think that that was an empty
slogan. They are wrong. Although the patriotic forces
have been taken by surprise by this renewed arrogance
by the old mistake-makers, they will react appropriately
to protect Africa from hegemony.
The latest manifestation of arrogance is from the
International Criminal Court (ICC) in relation to the
elected leaders of Kenya. Many African countries
supported the establishment of the Court because we
abhor impunity. However, in a shallow, biased way,
the ICC has continued to mishandle complex African
issues. That is not acceptable. The ICC should stop. Our
advice to it is from very capable actors who know what
they are doing and who know what they are saying.
Kenya is recovering. Let it recover. We know the origin
of the mistakes of the past. The ICC way is not the right
one for handling those mistakes.
In our struggle for socioeconomic transformation,
our biggest problem has been funding. The small
modern colonial economy of Uganda was destroyed
by Idi Amin. Initially, as we struggled for minimal
economic recovery, we had to depend on external
funding. Although useful, that funding was limited,
slow in coming, not always focused, and erratic.
Although our economy succeeded in achieving an
average annual growth rate of 6.5 per cent per annum
over the past 20 years, we could have achieved much
higher rates of growth, especially if we had had reliable
funding for infrastructure,
Now that we have a little bit of our own money,
we are able to implement infrastructure projects much
faster. Even without oil and gas, we were able to move
much faster in terms of infrastructure development by
relying on ourselves. Of course, additional external
funding, if it is focused, sizeable and on time, can be
very useful. Without a doubt, Uganda and much of
Africa are moving forward robustly. With the resources
from the oil and gas we discovered a few years ago,
we will be able to fund all our infrastructure needs.
The future is bright and our forward movement is
irreversible.