Uganda 8: March 23, 2004

Though we loved our short return to Thailand, Liz and I were happy to get back to our home in Uganda. However, our drive back to Kampala from the airport in Entebbe provided vivid evidence of Ugandan safety concerns -- two separate accidents with likely fatalities judging by the pools of blood next to the mangled wreckage.

If you can brave Ugandan highways, Uganda has many interesting places to visit. Last month, I spent a couple of days in Jinja visiting local manufacturing sites. Jinja, located about 1.5 hours east of Kampala, formerly was the center of Uganda's thriving Indian population, which controlled most of Uganda's industrial output. Idi Amin expelled the 80,000 Indians, leaving a gaping hole in the Ugandan economy from which the country still is digging out. Though President Museveni welcomed the community back when he came to power in 1986, the Asian population today stands at only 30,000. In the meantime, the Ugandan population has increased from 12 to 24 million. Many Indian Ugandans, which had fled to the UK, Canada, US or back to India, quickly re-established themselves in commerce and several Indian families (though many are third or fourth generation Ugandans) control many of Uganda's biggest business concerns.

Slowly recovering its industrial base, Jinja retains a sub-continental feel with many low slung buildings constructed 40-70 years ago in (what I think is) Rajasthani style, with the names of the Indian families who owned the buidings still carved into their fascades. The roads are broad (for Uganda) and the city has decently kept sidewalks making driving slightly more relaxing than in Kampala. Jinja is on Lake Victoria and a few hotels have popped up along with a marina or two. Housing outside the small downtown area is a mixture of crumbling British colonial and what appears to be a Ugandan/Indian art deco fusion -- vaguely like South Beach in Miami before its 1990s restoration (OK, very, very vaguely). Jinja also hosts Uganda's largest textile facility, its largest brewery, and several fish processing plants -- the reasons for my visit.

Right outside of town is the Source of the Nile, where the river pours out of Lake Victoria to begin its many thousand mile journey to the Mediterranean. There's a small park and you can rent a boat to go out to the very spot where the Nile begins. A little upstream are the Bujagali falls, where Liz whitewater rafted in October. For the equivalent of 25 cents, local youths will swim the rapids buoyed only by a plastic jug. Between the source of the Nile and the Falls is the Owens Falls dam, which provides most of Uganda's (occasionally intermittent) electric supply. A few kilometers downstream is a pleasant hotel, Jinja Nile Resort, where you can eat fresh fish and relax by the pool while watching the river glide by and a troop of monkeys scamper about in the trees. At night, the stars are clear and bright and you wake up to look out at local men boarding their fishing canoes and local women washing clothes.

Work has been quite busy for both of us. Liz's job will take her all around the country visiting projects and has two trips to western Uganda scheduled for the next few weeks. Last month, she attended a conference in Rakai designed to prevent domestic violence. Last week, she traveled to the far west with the Ambassador and goes to Hoima, three hours northwest of Kampala later this week. She's taking lots of pictures and I'm trying to get her to write her own reports. I've been swamped with visitors. Surprising I guess considering this is Uganda, not Thailand, but Uganda is perceived (with some justification) as an African success story and US agencies love to come see us. In a four week span, we had ExIm, OPIC, the African Development Foundation, and the US Trade and Development Agency. This month, we've got the FAA, Treasury and State Department biotech negotiators. Next month, USTR and Department of Agriculture. I've got a few interesting projects, including lobbying the Ugandan government to modify its proposed standards for the importation of used clothing and working with a local brewery and the Government of Uganda to build a wastewater treatment plant. Before we headed to Thailand, I helped organize the East African franchise seminar, which brought 200 potential franchisees from all over the region to Kampala to learn about opening US franchises. Liz has visions of Starbucks dancing through her head, I'd settle for a Kinkos. For my efforts, I managed to get my photo on the front page of the East African Procurement News. Not quite the Financial Times, but it's a start. This week another local paper, the New Vision, carried a photo of me which described me as an American "financier." Not sure about that.