Andrew Mwenda

MWENDA: Gossip dies when it hits a wise person’s ears! BE THAT WISE PERSON ON THIS, LABOUR DAY In ancient Greece, Socrates was reputed to hold knowledge in high esteem. One day an acquaintance met the great philosopher and said, “Do you know what I just heard about your friend?” …

  Why we need to think of how to develop national capacity to manage our economy By Andrew M. Mwenda Uganda is going through the worst economic performance since 1987 when the government of President Yoweri Museveni began liberal economic reform. In the first quarter of this financial year, the …

As Sierra Leone’s president seeks to amend the constitution and extend his presidency, it is time for Africa to pause and reflect By Andrew M. Mwenda The president of Sierra Leone, Ernest Bai Koroma, wants to amend the constitution and remove term limits on the presidency. Koroma is not the …

How the opposition leader has blundered on the chance to promote his political project – if he has any By Andrew M. Mwenda Media reports have recently indicated there are attempts to organise talks between the government and the opposition. For such talks to be meaningful, they have to involve …

Why very few poor countries will escape poverty by taking gigantic leaps into the service industry  By Andrew M. Mwenda Two weeks ago, I had a disagreement with the president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, at a conference in Kigali, Rwanda. Kim had argued that increasing automation and …

Why this communist state, with per capita income like ours, manufactures nuclear weapons and satellites while we can’t By Andrew M. Mwenda Last week the U.S. announced its intelligence showed North Korea was planning to test another nuclear weapon. If it does, it will be the sixth nuclear test by …

How, barring a major surprise, the current power structure in Uganda makes lifting presidential age limit inevitable By Andrew M. Mwenda Those debating the succession issue in Uganda should refer to Rome in 44BC. Rome had been a republic since 509BC when the patricians rose in revolt and deposed King …

Why our intellectual elites need to begin an entirely new conversation about our nations By Andrew M. Mwenda African intellectual elites exhibit a conceptual contradiction. When economic performance is poor they argue that the major source of the problem is bad leadership. And when they talk of leadership, our intellectual …

By Andrew M. Mwenda How the new US president is bursting the Washington bubble and annoying the nation’s hypocrites For many decades, American journalists have deluded themselves into the belief that they are unelected representatives of the people. They are convinced that their profession places them above politics as impartial, …

  THE LAST WORD: By Andrew M. Mwenda How our overblown expectations of what oil is going to do for our country are likely to cause trouble I had always thought about the “oil curse” in terms of the “Dutch Disease” and the adverse incentives it creates that foster corruption …