When the president came to power in 1986, Museveni had a clear vision for Uganda and he conveyed it with a simple message. He wanted his presidency to be remembered inter alia by the eradication of poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, subsistence agriculture, dependency on foreign aid and raw material exports, sectarianism and corruption. Above all he wanted to eradicate Obote’s record by performing better. This vision was conveyed in his speeches delivered at home and abroad. I have read most of his major speeches and heard his statements delivered at the United Nations General Assembly Hall in New York.
President Museveni was convinced that he would eradicate poverty in Uganda because the country has what is necessary to do the job – fertile soils, good rainfall, natural resources and resilient people. With good leadership and a clean government the job would be easy. Since he was convinced he would eradicate poverty, Museveni refused to use the word “reduction”.
Because he used wrong performance indicators – economic growth and per capita income, and ‘false’ statistics about poverty reduction (S. Mallaby 2004) – he was not able to trace how the benefits of economic growth were being distributed among sectors and regions. He put too much emphasis on market forces, laissez faire and trickle down mechanism. As a result 70 percent of economic growth is concentrated in Kampala and its suburbs and has not trickled to the countryside where some 90 percent of the population lives.
The mushrooming diseases of poverty – jiggers, scabies, trachoma, cholera, etc – have demonstrated that poverty eradication requires more than economic growth and per capita income, leaving this goal unfulfilled.
President Museveni was particularly emphatic about ending hunger in Uganda. All that needed to be done was to strike a balance between production for export and domestic markets. He also stressed that production for the domestic market should pay attention not only to quantity but also to quality so that consumers access adequate carbohydrates, proteins, fats, minerals and vitamins for a healthy, active and productive life. Along the way, the president digressed and focused more on the accumulation of foreign currency than on feeding his people. He decided to diversify exports by selling – in neighboring countries and beyond – foodstuffs like fish, beans, sesame etc that had traditionally been produced for the domestic market.
Shortages developed in Uganda and have pushed prices so high that most consumers cannot afford three balanced meals a day. Consequently, over thirty percent of Ugandans go to bed hungry, some forty percent of children under the age of five are under-nourished, some thirty percent of Ugandans are suffering from neurological disorders in large part because their diet is inadequate – constituting mostly cassava and maize – and twelve percent of infants are born underweight with permanent disabilities including early death because their mothers are severely undernourished.
Modernization of agriculture was one of President Museveni’s principal economic pillars. He hoped to transform subsistence agriculture into a modern sector of Uganda’s economy. This meant ending the culture of hand hoe cultivation and reliance on rainfall, eliminating food losses through processing, storage including cold facilities for perishable produce and easy transport from production to consumption centers. The record so far has been a disappointing one.
What about education and healthcare? The idea was about improving the quantity and quality of services not only by constructing schools and clinics but more importantly by staffing them with qualified teachers, doctors and nurses and providing sufficient instructional materials and medical supplies. Photographs showing patients lying on the floor in referral hospitals as in Masaka, and reports of children dropping out of school because the government cannot provide school lunches are clear demonstrations that the promise has been broken.
In a recent interview (April 2010) with Uganda Monitor’s Managing Editor, President Museveni admitted that he had failed to eradicate corruption. And the fact that Ugandans are openly discussing sectarianism without being arrested under the anti-sectarian law is a confirmation that sectarianism cannot be hidden any more.
The goal of eradicating reliance on foreign aid and raw material exports has fallen far behind. Uganda still relies on some seventy percent of donor money for its budget and export of raw materials has increased more than before signaling failure in this area.
This leaves us with a comparison of Museveni’s record with that of Obote. Because of disruptions caused by Museveni’s guerrillar war and withdrawal of support by major donors, many analysts and commentators have absolved Obote for the rather poor performance record between 1981 and 1985. Obote I record in the 1960s surpasses Museveni’s since 1986 in quality of education and health care, construction of more durable infrastructure including rural hospitals and roads.
In all, President Museveni’s performance record in the areas reviewed above has fallen far short of the vision he articulated at the start of his presidency in January 1986.