By Erik Solheim The most important of all financial flows are the illicit funds that pour out of so many developing countries OSLO – Poverty is not only about not having enough money. It is also about exploitation and oppression, and about armed conflicts and wars that make it impossible …
Read More »Museveni’s rupture with traders
By Andrew M. Mwenda Is the standoff between government and traders the tip of an irreparable breakdown of their relationship? Last week, striking traders paralysed business in Kampala. Negotiations between their association, KASITA, and the government did not yield much. As with all previous strikes and demonstrations in Uganda over …
Read More »Electricity cost going up 40%
By Andrew M. Mwenda But who benefits most from subsidies to UMEME? A cabinet sitting on Wednesday Jan. 11 discussed increasing electricity tariffs by 40 percent. Cabinet should remove these subsidies altogether because they are not economically sustainable and benefit the rich at the expense of poor citizens. Over the …
Read More »Looking at failure of public services
By Andrew M. Mwenda It is not corruption per se but the fragmentation of power that explains Uganda’s crisis. Two things stand in contradiction of one another regarding corruption in Uganda: On a positive note, it seems not to have undermined economic growth – at least, not yet. Uganda has …
Read More »Media challenged on anti-corruption fight
By Victor Bwire Most of the reports now being discussed in Parliament relating to corruption have been lying in newsrooms As the demand for accountability in the use of public resources in Uganda intensifies, with parliamentarians on top of the efforts, one wonders how Ugandans will be mobilised to join …
Read More »A battle six years in the making
By Andrew M. Mwenda My latest attempt to qualify Rwanda’s progress to the incredulous mind of a critic Over Christmas, Timothy Kalyegira and I got involved into a heated SMS exchange about Rwanda, a subject I am deeply interested in and one that he is equally obsessed with without noticing …
Read More »The political value of corruption
By Andrew M. Mwenda How theft of public resources has been used to build a broad multi ethnic coalition that sustains Uganda’s political system The last Quarter of 2011 in Uganda was filled with one corruption scandal after another. Yet in spite of many corruption scandals unearthed, the mass media …
Read More »Continued peddling of lies and falsehood
By Hilary Onek The 7th Parliament never asked Nandala Mafabi and others to step aside during investigations that they took millions in bribes from Mukwano I could have chosen to ignore the article “Mbabazi, Onek playing bad model to young generation” (Sunday Monitor, December 11, 2011) but I will respond …
Read More »Tobacco to kill one billion people
By Henry Zakumumpa Epidemic already killing more people than AIDS, TB, and malaria combined The Tobacco diseases epidemic is already with us in Africa’’ says Prof Peter Odhiambo, Chairman of Kenya Tobacco Control Board. ‘’Soon you will hear people announcing that the epidemic is coming to Africa. It is already …
Read More »Occupy the classroom?
By Dani Rodrik Economists get stuck with the charge of being narrowly ideological because they do not communicate fully CAMBRIDGE – Early last month, a group of students staged a walkout in Harvard’s popular introductory economics course, Economics 10, taught by my colleague Greg Mankiw. Their complaint: the course propagates …
Read More »