Angelo Izama | Uganda's Growing Pressure Cooker: Youth, Oil & the Future

Uganda is often described as a country full of potential. But beneath the optimism, many Ugandans are navigating rising costs, economic pressure, uncertainty, and growing skepticism about the future. 

In this episode of The Long Form Podcast, journalist and analyst Angelo Izama discusses Uganda's changing mood, the rise of drug use as a coping mechanism, the country's oil strategy, AFCON 2027, youth frustration, and what the next major economic shock could mean for the region. 

We also explore the future of Uganda after Museveni and whether the country can translate ambition into lasting prosperity.

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Produced by LF Media 

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:42

This conversation is brought to you by Akaguera Medicines, a biotech company that is majority owned by the Roman people. Akagera Medicines is not only committed to expanding access to healthcare, but also supporting conversations that inform, educate, and empower. Learn more about Akagera Medicine by scanning the QR code on your screen or by visiting their website at Akaguera Medicines.com. Uganda is often described as a country of opportunity, but for many people, unfortunately, that is not how it feels. Because alongside ambition, there is pressure, rising costs, limited opportunities, and a growing skepticism about whether the system is actually working. My guest on the long form podcast today is Angelo Izama. Angelo is a Ugandan journalist, writer, and analyst whose work has focused on political economy, security, and how decisions are made in Uganda and across the region. He's a former Knight Fellow at Stanford and the co-founder of Fanaka Kwawote, a think tank that studies governance, human security, and policy in East Africa. So today's conversation moves across a few difficult areas. The mood of the country, especially among young people, the ways people respond when pressure starts to build, the gaps between national ambition and public trust, and how economic shocks, political decisions, and long-term strategy shape what comes next. Because to understand where a country is going, you first have to understand what it feels like to live inside it today. Angelo. Welcome to the Long Form Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_05 2:25

In beautiful Kampala.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

Beautiful Uganda.

SPEAKER_05 2:29

Amen. Let me ask you what I call a dumb question, but I think it will kind of place this conversation in that context. If you had to describe it honestly, what does it feel to be Ugandan today?

SPEAKER_02 2:56

It's not a dumb question at all. It's a very difficult question. So Uganda is very, very many things. And you mentioned that, and I my mind just went to Mao Zedong and his maximum like a thousand flowers bloom. I know we are just shy of 50 million people, but Uganda packs into that number first the most acute rendering of Africa's generational position today.

SPEAKER_05 3:39

What do you mean?

SPEAKER_02 3:42

I now at my age are just just part of the 14% of 51. Yes. But you know, not just 51. I think in another 10 years I will be almost in the 10th percentile of Ugandans of my age. Compare that to say Japan and much of Europe and America. Africa is is young and poor, uh, mostly and full of promise. And because the the median age in Uganda is 15 years or about there. In that demographic, there you have, you know, what Africa's future really looks like. So to be Ugandan, to answer your question today is to face this sort of uh uh part frightening, part hopeful prospect that the the seeds of Africa's future are planted firmly in this soil.

SPEAKER_05 5:00

Off camera, you know, you and I we've known each other, and that's I think that's the beauty of the internet, is that because of all these interactions on X or Twitter as it was known, you hear someone's thoughts on various topics, you read their writings again because of the power of the internet and your blog posts. So I I feel like I've always known you, but literally today was the very first time that we actually met face to face. And we were talking about elites and and how who's an elite, who's not an elite, how do those two groups I guess deal with each other? What do Ugandans of a particular age, let's say your age, how they define how it is to be successful and to be worthy of respect versus say someone who's maybe 35, 32. You said a few things that were quite profound, and I I I it got me thinking about the this generational challenge, right? You you talked about Uganda being super young. It's very super young, super young, but it's being it's largely led by people who are, I will not call them super old, but of an older generation. You could call them super old. They're seasoned.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

Yeah. Well, I mean, that's a qualitative uh and uh if they're watching your show, and many of them I'm sure I do, are you being polite?

SPEAKER_03 6:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:55

I think that they would be honest because many of them they grew up in so what the cards that the world dealt them at the time were very different. You know, the generation of leaders today we have came out of their teenage years after the Second World War had changed the world. And then they were led by dreamers like Kromar and even Obote and Gireri. And these dreamers were now in charge of so-called independent states, and the young people wanted more. So they entered a period of real strife, you know. But because, you know, of those experiments in their dreams, you had a wartime generation, especially here in Uganda, that for 25 years after independence was just preoccupied with fighting. And that dream got deferred. And then the other 10, 15 years after that, they had to deal with you know brutal social changes, pandemics, HIV. Then now the end of the world war, the liberation was replaced by the post-liberal world order. They had to deal with all kinds of new social changes and economic realities. And all of these things is to say that, you know, I'm just being kind to that generation. Is that, you know, when we think about them empathetically, uh, they have carried their share, their their share of that burden of the African story. The super young people today, I feel carry even a bigger burden. Because the the the the economic pressures even persistent and much more deleterious. The social pressures, as you've seen from the culture wars, are much more acute. That generation of uh what we now consider banner phones, you know, eh? Because that was a big technology at the time. Now I have to watch while the younger people are dealing with, you know, this aging internet and now artificial intelligence. So you see, it's a I feel if you take every generation on its own account, you know, so these so-called young elites are carrying their own very, very different share of that burden. And I want to say that it's as much as the older generation, you know, as you know the phrase, each generation has its own burden. So I feel that, you know, if you separate that, if you divide that that burden, it is equally heavy on our on this current generation. In many cases, I feel heavier because there are many more of them. That's a different reality now. The resources to be shared are less and less. So they have to think about how to do that. And the culture is is much more uh you know confusing to navigate.

SPEAKER_05 10:26

Talk about the culture. There's something there's something that you said that young people now want everything big. Big cars, big house. The last one it was big-bodied women.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

Because every time I go online, I sometimes I see the Nyash Tuesdays or something like that. I actually started an article which I didn't complete.

SPEAKER_05 10:56

You know, about Nyash.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

It is about the culture of the article, it was titled What is in an IV? And it was because I encountered one of my younger friends who had asked me, okay, you know, I'm coming to do a treatment here in Tinder, which is nearby where I'm recording this. Yes, for for the glow. I said, What do you mean? I said, you know, you know, it's it's it's meant for skin glow.

SPEAKER_05 11:24

What do you mean?

SPEAKER_02 11:26

If you look, the aesthetic that sort of personifies the young person today, it's all exhibitionist, you know. I know in the in the 60s, no, no, no, we are we are all consumers of the culture. So you know the big platform shoes and the colorful cante and all those things. And fella cool tea. You know, every generation has a bit pockets of this, but today there is you have to express yourself amongst others in the other amongst others in how good your skin looks. So anyway, the IV is basically a vitamin C infusion by IV into your into your body. It takes about an hour, an hour and a half, and it's supposed to create this glow on your skin that can last you two, three days. And I asked myself, why?

unknown 12:23

You know.

SPEAKER_05 12:23

I mean, that's the that's the question, why?

SPEAKER_02 12:26

Part of this is that consumerist exhibitionist culture, and and this is a good point, uh Sunny, because I feel that one of the things that the generation before us had, including ours, was that the absence of technology meant that you know we could talk to each other and you had word of mouth, and any special systems were much more ever present. You had to interact with them physically. Today, the culture is such that you can curate your life, okay, without anyone present. It's all done online, and these online currents have so become mainstream that you know you could start, you could, you know, make something of drinking that glass of water, it can become viral. It can go from here to South Korea and carry on a life of its own. So the skin glow is one of those things that have come and is part of the Zeitgeist, it's part of you know who these young people are. I also did this, I but I came to this article by you know just going and observing. So I went to a place in uh one of the town centers here, and the whole floor was full of beauty technicians, manicurists, pedicurists, hair salons, you know, then you have got this Ivy business. So, you know, individuals today and how they present themselves, but not just so people interact with present themselves online, has become part of that, you know, culture. And it's not just, you know, global, it's many of this is local.

SPEAKER_05 14:28

You know, it's something that's now that you brought it up, a few episodes back, I I had a financial expert discuss with me how do young people get ahead. And one of the things that he said, he referenced the average salary of a 25-year-old uh university graduate in either Kigali or Kampala, they're earning about between 200 to about $500 if they hit if they get a job. Now my social media team clipped that and sent it out into the into the ether. Till today, I'm getting you know comments on it, and the overwhelming sentiment is those statistics are lies. We barely get a hundred dollars a month if you're laughing. To now bring it back to what you're talking about, all these about the elites. Yes, okay. Who's paying for those treatments? Because those treatments, you know, when I wanted vitamin C, I'd eat an orange. Treatment done.

SPEAKER_02 15:57

And and eat an orange other fruits consistently over time, you know, Europe. You'll be fine.

SPEAKER_05 16:02

Yeah. Right? And and I I mean, you're in beautiful Uganda. Fruits are not your problem.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

No, they're not.

SPEAKER_05 16:09

This is not Sweden.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 16:13

Why are we seeing this? You've kind of defined that, which is, you know, it's a look at me kind of world that we're living in. But in our contexts, all those treatments seem are more likely to be expensive. Over a hundred dollars, over $200. Who's paying for this? And is it the young women or the young men? Because I don't want to assume that it's only women doing this. And what does this mean? Listen, I know just how annoying it is when, just in the middle of a really interesting conversation on YouTube, an ad appears. That frustration is why we've created the long form Patreon. For just $4 a month, you can enjoy ad-free listening, early access to conversations a full day before they're publicly released, and you're directly supporting the work that we do here. Every episode takes time, research, and sometimes playing tickets. We don't do it for money. We do it because we genuinely believe in sharing stories and conversations that matter. If you want to be part of that journey, you can join the long form Patreon by scanning the QR code that you can see right now on the screen or using the link in the description. And if membership is too much of an investment, you can still support us by making a one-time donation via our MTN Momo using the code registered under LF Media 95462. Thank you so much for believing in what we do. Here's the question: what are your secrets worth? And how far will you go to protect them? Every day, tens of thousands of hacked credentials for emails, social media, and other services are bought and sold on the dark web, all without victims suspecting a thing. If you're like me. And desire some peace of mind, Threat Informant is for you. Built by KillTech Hub, a cybersecurity company, Threat Informant is a dark web monitoring online solution that allows you to search the deep web for hidden markets, detect your leaked data, and react before any damage is done. And here is the best part. It's available for government agencies, businesses, and individuals like myself. It's simple. If your data is out there, Threat Informant will let you know. So take control of your digital safety today and scan the QR code that you can see on your screen, or click the link in the description to sign yourself and your entire organization up. You cannot protect yourself if you don't know you're under threat. Get Threat Informant today. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

So this is the biggest story about the lost opportunity. It's a story about waste. Okay. And we can get that get to that. And the way I wanted to describe this is the billboard culture, you know, look at me, okay, uh, is only in response to the fact that people are no longer alive in their communities, the way they used to be. I was hanging out with young friends and you know, we were at a bar, and the young lady said, Oh, you know, to her husband, you know, I am leading myself, which is the Pentecostal thing. I can't make it. And he's like, Oh, no, don't worry about it. Ask someone else, do when we do it online, you know. So she went aside and you know, went online. Yeah. And now, you know, little religious services are also streamed. I'm telling you this because you know, back in the day, where you met community was you had the market, you had the church, you had the school, you had the compounds. Okay. Today, a lot of that is displaced. And you could use to use the word misplaced, we can get to that later. Displaced means that now you do not have the forms of interaction that allow you to organize better. The story of waste in Uganda, some people talk about it as corruption, okay? If you look at the massive uh pilfering of the public purse, that money goes somewhere. Okay?

SPEAKER_05 21:05

It trickle down economics.

SPEAKER_02 21:08

Not only does it go somewhere, it f it is tailored along a social path whereby if I steal a billion shillings, okay, where am I gonna spend it? Recently we would, you know, I may take someone to Dubai or Shishell or Mauritius or South Africa, okay? But that's just a portion. So I buy expensive phones, I spend some time in the spa and the bar. I'm just describing a typical, I may spend some of that on drugs, okay? It's a consumerist culture, but it's a spending culture and it's a spending culture on waste. Now, if you think about the person who had Magendo money during their many years, it is still a form of corruption.

SPEAKER_05 21:58

So, for those who don't understand, right? Magendo is smuggling.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

Yeah. If you think about those Mafutamingi people, they will take that money, right? Buy a piece of land, buy a truck, and they're the reason why we have a lot of the enterprises we have today, right? Today it's different because you don't have these forms of culture or of organization. The heroes of our consumerist culture are those who can spend on Bentley's, on acid dispenses, and have, you know, people around them that emphasize that living large, you know? And it's not just in Uganda, by the way, you can see it in East Africa. It's the same in Kigali.

SPEAKER_05 22:42

It's a large conversation.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

So the waste, because I want to come down to the waste. The waste is part of that misplacement. Because you know, the money and the opportunities that money could pursue are displaced, you've got this group of people who are really misplaced. They are misplaced because if they had organized better, if they were in a social system that, you know, gave them different, and you mentioned it earlier, you know, different cues of what respect looks like, of what uh excellence is about, okay, then we wouldn't have you know the some of the problems we we are having today. You know, in my world, if I had to live another lifetime, which I won't, of course, if there was a problem that I would solve as a as a as a citizen, would be the housing problem. Housing planning, just giving people a sense of good shelter, okay? Communal shelter where you can have a house, it's designed a way that you can know your neighbor, that you have got schools that approximate, playgrounds, ETCTC. I know that the money is here, and I'm telling you this because I actually was at one time I held a directorship in uh in a in a state company state institution, the investment authority of Uganda. And and you know, looking at this question of housing shortages and the opportunities to do better planning, I could now see in retrospect that it's all about that waste, all about that displacement, because the wealth is there. Okay. Those young people, for example, even with a 300 about it, dollar income, okay, their peers in the rest of the world would walk out of school, maybe borrow money from their family, meet someone they like, foreclose on a mortgage, okay, and spend the next 25 years building equity in a property that is well situated. They may refinance that mortgage. I tell the story all the time, to take a holiday somewhere, to do something else with their lives. And that is all a question of organization. Now I know we have come full circle because we were saying earlier, let's be empathetic to the burdens that the last two generations and ours have borne. Okay? There is a reason why we are in this place where we see massive opportunity and yet we also see massive waste and we see massive displacement, you know. And it is it is part of our material and spiritual sickness that we are living in an era where there is so much technological innovation, so much wealth, but unequally distributed across the world. Okay, so much hope because we are living in a with a very young population, and yet we see so much desperation because we're not organized.

SPEAKER_05 26:18

You know, the conversation with around the plight of young people really touches my heart because I I see them, and all I can think about is the fact that life will be super hard for them. You know, whether I I tell a story, you know, when I just got married a decade ago, and I wanted to buy a piece of land.

SPEAKER_02 26:50

By the way, congratulations too. You know that we are seeing now that marriages that last beyond a decade, yeah, in terms of the percentage of overall marriages, are reducing.

SPEAKER_05 27:03

I mean, I mean, listen, I just I I had an okay job, but I I I wouldn't say I was the rialthiest, but I was able to buy a small farm and I said, you know what, I want to buy a small farm, I want to do this, because I'd seen, I was trying to mirror what my father's generation had been able to do. And then I got a couple of years down the line, I got a mortgage. Now we have a little house, uh home that we call our own. And I talked to young people back home in Kigali, and and I I I look at them and say, I don't know how you'll be able to enjoy the blessings that I had. Affordable housing, cheap farmland. Is that is that something that you see here, and is that what you think is fundamentally driving the challenges that you're you're describing about, you know, waste and are they saying I'll never buy that piece of land, therefore let me buy this Mercedes Benz?

SPEAKER_02 28:11

In in some ways, I'm the wrong example, because if I I'm to be utterly honest, you know, I don't own any property.

SPEAKER_05 28:21

You know, explain that as uh as uh an amine generation child.

SPEAKER_02 28:27

How do you not have this part of that of Uganda? This is this is part of that that the I could say side effects of the kind of intellectual journey I have taken. And I I would say it is just unique to me. When I meet people, I tell them, you know, I don't own property. I have been traveling, I had I do have a family, my wife is a college professor, and we, you know, you know, have a residence outside of Uganda residency. But I remember having this conversation uh with her at some point when the Ugandan dream is today you can define it for a generation above 40, even the ones who are 35. It is the plot of land where you spend 10, 15 years building a house.

SPEAKER_05 29:26

With no mortgage, no debt.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

No mortgage, no debt. And in that period, you're raising a family, so you've got the plot of land, school fees. Now you have extended school fees to the second degree or third degree that both you and your partner are going to take because our sense is the more papers, the more secure you are. That is the curse of my generation because it is so consuming that you meet a 50-year-old today and they're done. They have gone through that burn. The kids, if they started early, are now teenagers, some of them may be leaving the house. But you've got the house, which is the dead asset. You're debt-free, but you know, if you look back, if you if you value it in market terms, you know, if one of them falls sick, then you had to dispose of an asset, okay, it would likely be the house, and then things are. That is the reality for a generation ahead. The economic system that we really deserve is the one that you described, where instead of waste, okay, you conserve and you build equity. We don't have an active mortgage market here. And I kid you not, if you look at property prices on this hill, okay, you compare them with property prices at some luxury piece of real estate at the cost of Africa, you'll probably it's more expensive to stay here. So this there's so much waste, but also the political insurance system yet has not produced a vision, okay, that can allow the the young people both here and maybe in Chigali to say my actual path is going to be I live, thank God I've been educated by my parents, okay, or I'm educating myself. When I get a job, I'm able to take my money, okay, and instead of spend it out of pocket, like my generation has done, which is like buy bricks and buy cement, okay. I may pay Sunny's company, okay, to get a home I can own, or now I can rent to own, and that's also possible now. And that while I build equity, that equity is stable over time, okay, and can be transferred so that you know that asset actually grows, rises in value. There are modern ways which you don't have, you don't need to reinvent. But like I said, we are going through this period of relative decadence, okay? And I use that word painfully because it means that we have taken several steps forward as far as our political liberation is concerned, and several steps backward as far as social amity, social progress is concerned. And this is just the way history works. There may come a time, maybe when your sons, my age, when this is not a problem, where it is quite clear that you know the social and economic system is organized to reduce waste, to prioritize growth, okay, and to and and and to build together the kinds of things that we all say we want, but we're now no longer trying to get it individually. There are mansions in this city of ours that would put you know certain people to shame, you know. Guys, I'll tell you the story. I went to to catch drinks with good friends of mine, they're younger, and one is a techie, the other one is an engineer but an entrepreneur. They have a company, and they showed me one of their side gigs, which is building home cinemas. You know, I've never heard of someone, I've seen it in the movies, and I've traveled, okay? But Ghans are like luxury home cinemas that are family-sized, you know, for five seats, and they're now building bigger home cinemas. You see what I'm saying? There is a sense of uh there is a sense there that you know you can achieve individually but not collectively, and in between there, there's just so much waste.

SPEAKER_05 34:27

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SPEAKER_02 36:40

So the three-part series.

SPEAKER_05 36:41

Yes. I I only saw the two.

SPEAKER_02 36:43

The three-part series.

SPEAKER_05 36:44

The third one I haven't had a chance to read. You described something striking for me. You described drug dealers operating almost like a service economy, helping people cope, uh stay functional, and escape pressure. You know, that suggests something much deeper. It's not just decadence, it's something more insidious. What in your researching of that, those articles? What did that make you understand about the experience of young people and younger people in Kampala and and their need to be able to survive and just function as citizens?

SPEAKER_02 37:48

Yeah. The story about that it took a couple of years. But I want to credit a young girl uh called Pamela Kangwaji. And uh I haven't seen her. Tell me about her. She when I was working at the monitor, her mom used to run the the stuff restaurant. And I met her, and then it turns out that we had common friends. And then years later, she partnered with someone I grew up with, you know. And then both of them were dealing with, now they have said it publicly, with the serious substance issues. And now he runs a serenity center. I think she does something similar. But I was a political journalist. My bread and butter was slaying uh the big stories, you know. I I was going after political corruption, I dabbled doing national security stories. And, you know, I came from a very, very small group of journalists in the newsroom who took risks.

SPEAKER_05 38:58

What politics were you doing that were so dangerous?

SPEAKER_02 39:01

Uh you know, I was a producer for a program called Andrew Mental Alive. And we got into all kinds of trouble. But it was the sharp tip of the spear of uh Ugandan journalism, and you know, we're in a sense very fearless. You know, now when you think back at, you know, with with in retrospect, the stakes, statecraft, you know, you're from Rwanda, but you know, you were I was a journalist when Uganda was prosecuting a war in the north. There was a situation with the SPLA, you know, these liberation movements are going around. And you know, you take two steps away from your generation. And now when you think about it, the guys who are balancing the scales were dealing with some pretty serious odds. But, you know, they had to deal with journalists who were wondering about these strategies, dealing with the the huge losses that came in terms of um human beings and lives lost and you know treasure lost. And these are the things we are dealing with. But this is a story about the drug story. So one time I was at a at a club or pub, and then I met Pamela, who I chastised me. He says, you know, Angelo, you claim to speak for young people and the problems of you know Uganda. This occup is my preoccupation, you know, is doing this analysis and uh presenting them in wherever platforms are accessible to me. I said, but you know, I can tell you that there are young people who are so desperate who will come to the city and will have no money to eat or whatever, but they need money for drugs. She explained to me how you know this thing was was was not just creeping, but it was the reality for a lot of people who when they came and showed up, but they really just want some something to get by. And drugs, even the excessive alcoholism was consuming them, and they were responding to this sense of hopelessness. And the hopelessness was because you know life was getting increasingly difficult, you couldn't hope you couldn't get a job, hold a job. Anyway, she said, no, look, you know, don't pay too much attention to these political shenanigans and other things. Try and focus also on the social problems that are right here beneath. You know, just you can see you don't know them, but they're there. And then it it allowed me to you know to start focusing. You know, journalism is all about observation. And I had an exercise I did in the newsroom where even when I took a complex political story, okay, say, you know, why isn't this generation of Ugandan leaders able to build wide roads when the Karakas of Uganda could do so? You know, I would get out of the newsroom and I'd walk around and I would look at ordinary people and I ask myself, so meditation. Is what you're going to write able to express what these people would like it to say? And I would go back and then I would complete my writing. So I'd gone through this process, you know, with you know, with Pamela, and I kept in the back of my head, but just before COVID, I started, I had decided to pivot away from the hard economic and political life to much more social things. And I confronted the drug issue again. But again, as a journalist, I try not to bring, you may have seen that series, a moral judgment to it. I try to see it the way it is. It is. And you find, and this is the reality, that privileged kids, you know, I profile there, you know, educated abroad, come back to Uganda, confront this inertia, retreat to a life of drug taking, okay? Because they are bored and they just don't get a sense that, you know, you know, his friend is in Hong Kong doing some crazy stuff. And he's here where his privileges keep him under comfort, but it's not the world, the world that he wants. Supermany suicides, you know, nasty stuff for those who are privileged. Then you had the real walkabies, like the woman I profiled who was working in a bank and got introduced to drugs by her pastor.

SPEAKER_05 44:21

Excuse me?

SPEAKER_02 44:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 44:24

So I will not allow you just to pass that so quickly. What do you mean she was introduced to drugs by her pastor?

SPEAKER_02 44:34

So she is a religious person. Yes. Spends a lot of time in the prayer circle. Uh-huh. But was competing for one of two sports in a bank. That meant coming, being the first person in, last one out. Last one out. And doing the extra assignments besides her master's, she was studying. You know? And all of this, of course, is enveloped by her religious worldview, which is, you know, this sort of uh Pentecostal materialist thing that you know if you work hard and if you pray, God will give you God will give you. And the pastor, I think, in an attempt to help her keep alive, burning the candle on all sides, you did you start to cocaine.

unknown 45:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 45:30

So cocaine was was was what she was using.

SPEAKER_05 45:32

I'm hearing what you're saying, but my brain, my my neurons in my brain are just the connection is not working.

SPEAKER_02 45:43

Okay.

unknown 45:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 45:47

And this is in Uganda in okay. So maybe this might be a ha we maybe we might have to veer into a conversation about Christianity and and Christianity and how it's practiced in certain parts of Uganda because I would think the one place, the one person who would not give you cocaine. I was thinking that maybe this pasta would give the young lady Adderall, which is at least a pharmaceutical drug that will allow you to, you know, for amphetamine, which is also not great, but the cocaine from quote-unquote brother Joshua.

SPEAKER_02 46:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 46:38

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SPEAKER_02 48:10

But I was one of those who objected very early to the wealth gospel. And I remember where exactly I was, but I'm just saying this because you know, I now I grew up with people who then became pastors.

SPEAKER_05 48:25

Sorry, I'm laughing. This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard ridiculous.

SPEAKER_02 48:30

You but you're you're dealing, you're dealing, Sunny, with the contradictions, right? And I wanted to tell you that the contradictions are part of that waste.

SPEAKER_05 48:39

How is a pastor a pastor?

SPEAKER_02 48:43

A shepherd of the flock, yeah, a personal spiritual guidance, giving counseling.

SPEAKER_05 48:50

Giving someone who is struggling with their ambitions in life, not the word of God, but the very best of Colombian white. That is the craziest thing.

SPEAKER_03 49:04

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:10

But okay, I like I said, just selling it as it is. And she, by the way, got the job, you know, which is great. Okay. But that whole thing's Red Bull. Yeah, that's so many things that the whole thing actually led to a dependency that was not great. The dependency was both for her and her spiritual guider, you know, that pastor, and the dependency on the drug. Because you know, if you remember in the series, the drugs were an expression of class and access. So at the top you had cocaine, at the bottom you had dirty marijuana and some really, you know, combinations of that of all sorts of a very, very, very dangerous alchemy uh of you know uh crude cocaine, crude heroin and marana that was killing a lot of kids.

SPEAKER_05 50:07

Was the lady able to tell you the name of the pastor? I'm not I'm just asking. I'm not I'm I might not ask you to reveal the name.

SPEAKER_02 50:18

Yeah, I know the person.

SPEAKER_05 50:20

Okay. Is he still practicing?

SPEAKER_02 50:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 50:23

Bloody hell.

SPEAKER_02 50:24

Yeah, he is.

SPEAKER_05 50:25

Have you ever had a conversation with him?

SPEAKER_02 50:28

No, no, no. I I kind of stopped. Uh he's well known. I kind of stopped dealing directly with you know people in this world. I'll tell you why. When I first, you know, my first encounter with the drugs as they are was from a security point of view. Like I said, I'm a journalist. My I was dealing with big picture things. So I could tell you, like I had, I was part of a study with the Institute of Security Studies in South Africa, where the lead researcher, and I quote that study in that series, said of the 40 to 50 tons of heroin that passed through the East African coast, eight to ten tons were now remaining for local consumption. And this is like 10 years ago, you know, eh? This is 10, 10, 15 years ago. It's a well-established route for drugs originating largely in the in the in Afghanistan and Pakistan and coming down the coast. And I remember being a trainer to police officers in Shishels with a group. You know, senior police officers were there, you know. And when I arrived in Mahe Island, I immediately realized they had a drug problem. Between the short distance between at the airport where we were staying, I was able to talk to, and eventually I spoke to the police officer who was in my class about the problems of drugs in Shishell's. That's a small population. They're literally like just a share of 100,000, and a massive drug problem. All the drugs are flowing in the Indian Ocean. There are colonies in Tanzania now of people who are dependent on state care because of the drug addiction, and Mumbasa and others. In Kampala, we have seen this present itself as an overwhelming pressure on the mental health institutions that are here, which are not built for to deal with substance abuse. And now there's a whole private ecosystem. But families and society at large, I feel, have not really confronted this issue, honestly.

SPEAKER_05 53:13

I mean, if the pastors are giving out the drugs.

SPEAKER_02 53:16

And you know, take my experience example.

SPEAKER_05 53:18

Probably also the headmasters as well, and the police officers.

SPEAKER_02 53:22

Yeah, yeah. Of course, that economy I describe in the series. And during COVID, because I completed that series around the time, I realized just how ingenious. This is the funny thing about a double-edged sword, right? Your drugs, they have a bad effect. But the people who are the enterprise managers really displayed some ingenuity that I you know is looking at looking from the outside in.

SPEAKER_05 53:51

Customer service.

SPEAKER_02 53:52

Great customer service. You could sit somewhere in a spa, in a restaurant, in your home, and just order it the way you order. You know, hamburger. Yeah, hamburger. And I was like, this is like next generation, right?

SPEAKER_05 54:11

And I also talked to people who are like, oh, you know, the And this is during COVID when, if I'm not mistaken, here Kampala had a hard lockdown.

SPEAKER_02 54:21

And remember, it separated the dealers from their customers. So they had to find ways to keep people, and people had more need because you know, COVID was mind-bending isolation. You know, so people relied a lot on this sort of things. In that series, I describe this young lady who was had been separated from her dealer, who used to send stuff via the border, realized the border guy now was an entrepreneur as well. And he came by and said, But you know, you haven't really ordered in a while. And she says, Yeah, you know, money says, No, no, no, it's okay. Take this for free, okay? Give us some sample. And come when you're ready. Of course, you know. This is like, you know, one-on-one, one-on-one marketing, right? Samples, you know, they live at your doorstep at no cost. Convenience. Convenience. This is that whole story about waste. I uh I was referring to waste and displacement terms I want to use, because that sheer vote, that sheer talent could go into a different direction. And the sense of desperation is really the inverse of a sense of hope. Because desperate people just simply are dealing with what they see as a bad situation, but they wanted to get out of it. And if you flip it, it is just the kind of hope that drives uh change. And you look at societies that have gone through massive social trauma, they always get to a point where that desperation is converted by leaders with vision into a pathway for hope and progress. And this, I'm hoping, is what would happen, you know, in here at some point. But without crisis, there won't be change.

SPEAKER_05 56:37

But what you've told me is that there's crisis. Why are we not seeing change? If you know, when you think about social ills like corruption, you know, you you you're thinking it's usually government and people in government are stealing. But what you've described is societal. Right? Very often when we talk about state building and government and change of government and transitions, we're always thinking all the problems will just be solved by new leadership.

SPEAKER_06 57:26

Paul Kagami can leave tomorrow.

SPEAKER_05 57:30

The challenges that Ronda faces at the societal level will remain and we have to deal with them. If Museveni was to leave tomorrow, what you've just described is I laughed because it's a level of rot that even I can't I've seen I I thought I'd I'd heard it all. You just blew my mind, and and then I think how do we get out of that? How's if that's what has been normalized? If a pastor is giving his flock drugs, not because he's even a drug okay, uh, he might be a drug pusher, or who he's fundamentally thinking I'm doing a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 58:26

Yeah, I think he's an entrepreneur. That's a captive market.

SPEAKER_05 58:30

Or maybe, you know what, because I you know what, because he's a pastor, I'm I'm trying to give him a way out. I I'm thinking maybe he cared so much and saw this person struggling, and he maybe does not know better, and he's giving this person these drugs to be able to. What is the way out? Because Uganda is growing, you know, it's it's it's for it to grow the way it wants to grow, I think they they want to five hundred trillion GDP, I think something in 50 years.

SPEAKER_02 59:26

10x. 10x. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 59:28

So that's 10% GDP growth every year on year.

SPEAKER_02 59:32

It actually has to be 16 and above.

SPEAKER_05 59:35

But now with all the things that are happening, it it could work. But then that's even more money to do even more spot treatments and even more cocaine. Oh my goodness. More beauty treatments. That's super scary. How do we how do we get out of this?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:08

How do we emerge from this wilderness and will John the Baptist emerge out of the internet to lead us to, you know, a savior of some kind? I don't know. You know, the the thing about human nature that is so endearing to me is our ability to remain resilient, to regenerate. To remain hopeful. And to regenerate. That is why, of course, I'm very passionate about Uganda and East Africa and Africa. I fear there is now a generation that don't think, you know, the way that we are wired to think, which is when you wake up in the morning, your first instance is to think, okay, where are we going? You know.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:09

What are they wired to think now?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:12

Well, where you're going now is basically, you know, do I where do I do I catch a car, maybe a border, and you know, it's you know, it's much more uh functional, you know?

SPEAKER_05 1:01:22

Not where am I going?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:24

Not the imagination, you know, eh? And even when it comes to our creatives who are good and in some cases at par with the rest of the world, they are much more uh distracted. You don't see big themes. I know this, for example, I collect art, okay? At least I said I don't own property, but I do own some art pieces. I like to surround myself with art. And I develop a relationship with great artists, realists, individual artists. You know, I pay attention to what artists are doing, right? Now, there's a painting that's hanging in my house that we should come to visit of a girl who was murdered, uh, called Suzanne Magara. You remember Susan?

SPEAKER_05 1:02:15

I heard I heard the story.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:16

Yeah, bless her. I may have had her dad after he saw the painting I'd commissioned. It's done by you know the guy I collect the most. It's called Daniel again. Now, I visited the art collective because my cousin was working with them, had said, we have this art collective, but you know, getting the right pricing for a piece of art is difficult. Like we put in so much work, you know, materials cost. So I went in there and I said, I told them, look, art grows in value when it connects to something, society feels. It's what I'm saying. That if your piece of art is an expression of the times or captures the zeitgeist, it will grow in value. So a lot of the industrial art that you see is tasteless because it doesn't say anything really. You will go to a hotel, you know, there's some picture or something, you know. You don't look at it and say, oh. One of the artists I know is for Wamala, you know, he has a painting in the hotel here of Akiwa, John. And you know, you can see Akibas, you know, Olympic colours, you know, when you walk in this particular hotel, like that's John Akibwa. But immediately when you see John Akibwa, you think about effort, grace, progress, you see, eh? And so even the image of Akibwa, okay, that is it captures something about Uganda. And there's a story about Suzanne. Susan was kidnapped for ransom, and the story dominated Ugandan headlines for like three weeks. When I arrived at that conversation with this young man, I was like, guys, all of us are talking about the whole country is talking about this kidnapping. You know, they they cut off her, you know, fingers and said the parents, the president of Uganda, President Seveni got involved. This is a major effort to save her, but eventually she died. I said, look, I want to commission painting. I will, I'm gonna talk you through it. First, I need you to paint Susan as some as her brother's friends, she's the Rotarian, would remember her. Okay? Because we have been suffering because the the the personal tragedy of her family has been inflicted on all of us. So when they name her, they do something to us as well. So you see the the the um the violence against her as a social violence. That's why we are paying attention.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:27

All families are everyone with a girl.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:30

Yes. I think you have to capture that. So the painting I have of the Led Magara is a painting where she's covered with celestial rings, bright colors, and she's smiling, and she's got the rotary sign here. It's one of my favorite paintings, someone I never met. But it reminds me of that ability to see things differently. So through that app. You could say that we do not relive because I could have gone a different direction and did the grotesque painting of this young lady that reflects uh the tragedy she suffered. But this is a it is a point about hope and growth. We know why my blood temperature, which is doing badly these days, but why it doesn't rise as much. Even if you're dealing with like you know, global wars and displacement and refugees and all the kind of things we're dealing with today, is because we have lived through crisis and we've survived. And yes, I know you're concerned about, you know, so what happens when you know Conrad Museni leaves and his generation works our way into history. I feel that ability to to pivot to something better is always there somewhere. And I I hold the faith that something good will come out of it.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:05

Absolutely. You know, you're you're talking about the Magara story. Because I I obviously don't live here, and I read it. Did they ever find her killers?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:19

People were arrested. I don't think anyone has actually been convicted. I I haven't followed it as as closely lately.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:26

There's a story, man, and and I I was I really wasn't planning to take this conversation to that this direction that I'm now taking it towards. There's a story about a young man, maybe 30 years of age, Sally, and who went into a a nursery school and and just started murdering children. And I I wonder if there is a certain correlation between what happened to Susan Magara, what we're seeing with the beauty treatments, what you're seeing with the corruption and all the money, and also what we're seeing with this kind of violence that is so cruel that it almost leaves you thinking, you know, if you're not, I'm I'm like I told you, I'm not religious at all, but it might it starts making you think, is this the devil at play here?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:44

But don't worry, our churches are full every Sunday, and most evenings too.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:48

Yeah, so so when we see all these things, is this what what how do you map this out to make some kind of coherent narrative? Is it back to the waste?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:02

Yeah, it's this it's a waste and displacement. But let me take a stab at it. So I told you, like in my other life, I want to think of myself as uh someone who tries to contribute positively. I did it as a writer. I've always thought of myself as a public servant, and I like to sort of be mentally in that role, even if I'm doing other stuff. As a public servant and as a thinking man, this issue that you raise fits in the category of society. I want you to remember that often when we deal with leadership, and you can see the headlines, they'll be talking about institutions. Public institutions are the parliament and the presidency, you know, and public money and rituals. But society is its own living, breathing thing, and societies that have connected the two, okay, where the society and its culture, even its civilization, gives rise to public institutions that reflect its values. That is a thing that remember Africa missed, right? Because remember, we were colonized, and the institutions we have today are not institutions of our choosing. Can I pivot and say one of the things I admire about Rwanda, which we I often cite, is the uh gachio self-manifesting purpose where you see beauty in who you are, okay, you embrace a standard of dignity, okay, that is high, and you reflect in what you do every day. You know, I tell people, I'm a student of African social and political culture. I teach myself, okay? But if you go past negritude in West Africa, past the anti-colonial struggles, if you go down to South Africa and you look at the African National Congress and the fight against racist apartheid, the only other of those three ideas of what social progress looks like has come from Rwanda. And this is a gachi. A gacho, by the way, for me, is like an idea, an ideology, even, okay, of that's based on dignity that is comes out of the culture. And that is now, of course, since you're Rwand and you live there, it is now part of the social, cultural, and political and economic system that Rwanda is building. And so it's not by accident that you know many people will say, oh, you know, Rwanda wants to do big things. For me, who's outside here, when I hear uh poker, that may say, okay, we want to do a Formula One racetrack, or we are constructing some arena to the best possible global standards, or we are building a new airport, or we are going for high-end tourism that is of the highest global standards. All I see are aspects of agatio. Now, look closely then at where in the case of Uganda, where we are situated, where political institutions, okay, do not reflect social goals. We talked earlier about simply something like decent housing, okay? They don't reflect uh social values because we are 46 tribes and many other contradictions along the way, and there's some value in that diversity. The institutions of the day simply anchor the hard state in place, okay, allow for stability and maybe a certain level of planned public service, okay? But it is not drawing from some of the long-term cultural ideas that can confer dignity and purpose, okay, that comes from that society. And in that displacement, you have these seeds of really bad things. Some of it is internalized trauma that we have carried on from the days of the wars and whatever. But there's a certain cynicism here today and cruelty that has been normalized. So you see the reaction to scandal is ah, people shrug their shoulders. When members of the armed services, or anyone actually who is part of the disciplined security services, kill or maim, the culture seems to say that it takes the human beings away from that. Yes, they're just like, oh, that is just politics, you know, eh? People have died, you know, soldiers killed, you know, whatever. They use terms like, you know, security did this or security did that. There's a void there, this inability to see the human being, okay? To be present with that human being, and to want to build, you know, rules that govern that person, that you know, maintain and sustain their dignity and protect it, all of these things are going out of the way. But the dark vision actually is that this cynicism, cruelty is normalized. It's almost seen as a privilege now for you to want your human rights to be respected. You know, I for 10 years I was part of uh Chapter 4 Uganda, which is a civil liberties organization. And we dealt with all kinds of uh human rights issues. And our clients are from you know outside the system, inside the system. It's seen as a privilege for you to actually have your rights protected. You see what's wrong with that, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:16:18

Which is also super strange because you know, you're speaking about you know, this nation state of Uganda, which is made up of a certain level of diversity. But I remember speaking to last year when I had an interview, I sat down with uh Daudim Panga, a very well-known lawyer, and we're discussing values and value systems. Right now we're having this conversation in Kampala. Kampala is in Buganda, Buganda or the Waganda have a way they relate to each other and and the way they relate to leadership and the way leadership relates to them. Same. Same. West Nile, where you come from. There's a there's a way that in these I like to call them nations, there's a way they relate with each other. And there when you talk about human rights, there's very human rights within those different contexts. So the idea that a Ugandan cannot be kind, a Ugandan cannot be a human rights defender, a Ugandan cannot be disciplined, it a Ugandan can choose to be an upstanding citizen is should almost for me be as simple as being a Muganda. It's it's in you.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:06

But remember that um you you should read the book written by uh here's a guy in Asian called Rational Ritual about how these sort of state rituals, common rituals, create common knowledge. And common knowledge is something that you and I don't have to say. We all know. I know it because I know you know it. So, for example, if an elderly pastor came, our instinct is to stand up. But it's very rare these days, okay? That sense of common knowledge is out the door. I agree with you, and that's why my hope is resident in uh in you know Ugandans, because individually and in their communities are very generous. People will go out of their way to do something good, but at the same time, the level of tolerance for the completely absurd, okay, and for the cruelty and the especially the violence, that I think requires some reckoning. And I'll I'll give you just maybe again, like I said, I take a stab at it to situate it properly for you who's curious and who is making a life out of interrogating ideas and people. You know, to what extent really do state institutions, state laws reflect the people the people. And when they don't, the people separate themselves and they practice something different. You know, you talked about being in Uganda. The uh the communications regulator, I was up last night, just banned a song sung in Uganda by this guy who's encouraging people to take those pavers, and you know, this is a violence in the ghetto, right? You know, you know, it's called PEVA. Paver is like a brick. And the the communications commission said this song will be banned because it encourages violence. Okay. Of course, I now I listen to the song because I wasn't paying attention. I listen to the song, and it seems like what is extracted by this artist, he thinks about other things. The paper is a is a metaphor, you know, for heated hard. And is he but it's like it's just a drawing of the violence that has been normalized. That has been normalized, right? I've always wanted for political leaders uh to lead with social analysis first. But if you lead with social analysis, and there are successes here and there, okay, the programs you end up bringing forth are the ones that will have the uh the trust of society and draw the best efforts of that society. That includes uh law enforcement. You know, law enforcement we have is still drawn from the British and things like that. But you know, the average person knows that doing criminal things is frowned upon by society. If you take that idea, and the president was trying to do something the other day with it, he said, with regard to the uh the the what looks like a mentally disturbed guy who killed the Nasser kids, that take that and try it in the field. What he was referring to is our culture of, you know, someone has done something bad, the whole community comes and says, You, we're not gonna allow this, you admit to it, and they punish you right then. Okay? That is what he meant. So ideologically saying, you know, you take it to society, let society judge, not your court system. Court system. I mean he there he's got stuck because he referred to the DPP and the court system to take it to side. I'll give you a couple of scenarios which have involved me personally. So I I live partly in the UAE, and uh when I got there, I heard from Ugandan officials about the high suicide rate amongst Ugandan males.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:55

And now UAE or in the UAE.

unknown 1:22:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:59

And I visited some health facilities and come close to, you know. And then in my mind, I was like, it makes sense at a certain level that if you go from Butambala or some other part, you know, of Uganda, you arrive in Kampala for the first time, go to NTV, go straight into a complex society like the uh like the Gulf, okay? Be separated, displaced, okay? And I'm now you know I'm channeling fun on. You can get into mental states that are unusual. That explained that you know, someone who's trapped there, stole their land, they can't come back, they may be desperate, they may be, they may have been exploited, don't have papers, they're stuck in the floor and they choose to kill themselves. That's one scenario. I'm talking about the a real experience of you know, how if you look at suicides generally in in Uganda society, one of the areas it happens the most is in the diaspora. Second, gun violence. I was actually having this conversation with the now his justice minister, uh Norbert Mao. Nobody do we do this intellectual sparring from you know from time to time. You know, our people in the north are Republican by nature. Every man is his own boss. The guy will be desperate here, he doesn't even have what to wear when you come into his space.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:40

But it's his space.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:42

His space, yeah. That's how they are raised. So you have to speak with respect to him, regardless of his uh condition. They have a very, very, very high ethos when it comes to honor. When something disturbs that honor, they react with extreme violence. So if you think about it, disproportionately the number of armed people who shoot others tend to come from the north.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:14

And those are within the security services or people just with guns?

SPEAKER_02 1:25:19

Even with like private security guards or whatever, of course, they are represented there in now in large numbers. But how do these things? So, you know, you have to do something about the training of these northerners, okay? That's what I meant by leading with social analysis. To say that if you confront some guy, his name starts with the O, and he's armed, and you insult his owner in some way, okay? You look badly at his, you know, you talk to him badly, you may go after his wife. Their reaction often, and Mao says, if you insult their mothers, okay, you're going to be dead. And that is not something you capture in police training manuals. See what I'm saying? But it has to be factored in somewhere. That there's an owner society, okay, that uh has got this non-bantu people for whom they are social ethos, okay, is slightly different. In Buganda, you know, you may you may insult Muganda and he just be clever about it. It's like, oh no, but Sunny said something, and what does it matter? Okay, I still have my way. That reasoning won't happen if you confront some soldier, you know, in the in the in the north. Yeah. I could tell you stories about this because I I spent some time giving Mao examples. Another social thing which came up in this thread that we are following. Do you remember a time when there was a large police investigation into child sacrifices here in Uganda?

SPEAKER_05 1:26:59

Yes, I I mean the I remember reading about, you know, you'd find during a construction of a house. Actually, I had a friend of mine, very close. She's married to a Ugandan, she's Rwandan. She's married to Mufumbira. So what we'd call the Kenya Randa speaking Ugandans. And she with a beautiful son, and she had refused to come here to visit.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:42

For fear of this.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:44

Because the son did not have piercings or anything of the sort, and he was like, you know, this round cherubic, brown, you know, light skinned baby. And she said, I am not going. To visit my in-laws in Uganda, I will not have house help kidnap my child and murder this child because they want to earn untold wealth.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:16

Illuminati and But I don't know if, you know, that's a thing with us with the media. Sometimes they get one story and it becomes much larger than the other.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:26

There is certainly a belief system that is constructed around and a cultural belief system constructed around human sacrifices. And I don't want to take you back to your history in the Interlacastrian region, but let us say, in contemporary terms, if you looked at uh the police reports about child sacrifices, okay, you can draw a B line that separates the non-Bantu people from the Bantu people. All the child sacrifices happening in the south and center of the country. It's a different kind of violence. In the north, you have suicides because of that owner society. Okay. And you have got some because of the wars and other things, you've got a certain type of violence, but it doesn't touch killing for this purpose. All of that happens south. If you're not just a criminal lawyer, but you know, you're now in a position of responsibility. You're not going to learn, you know, even if you watch CSI shows and your modern methods of crime detection, whatever, you're not going to learn of these things from some academy that you went to school with. You have to supply yourself with sexual analysis, okay, that is here. Why is the none but two person more likely to resort to personal violence when they're insulted or they feel insulted? While some other person seated somewhere in town in Buganda conspires, the same Kono, for example, is a good place for all of this nasty business with sacrifices, thinks that going to a witch doctor or some other person, grabbing a child that has no blemishes, okay, and killing that child is a way to get ahead. Why are these both types of uh violence separated by cultural orientation? So leading with social analysis, you know, I feel is one of those missing bits. You know, we earlier we talked about we talked about where do you see hope for regeneration? There will come a time when, you know, smart, young, public-spirited leaders will sit back and say, okay, let us look honestly at ourselves and at our moorings, okay, and come up with public policies that are much more tailored to how we are actually, not separate the state and the hard state from society in this way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:36

You know, Uganda is such a I always it's a fascinating country. You know, so much ambition. So, so, so much ambition. And not just ambition just for its own sake, it's also the it has an ability to actually live up to this ambition. But on the other side, right? So you I'll see you writing uh pieces, I'll see Andrew writing pieces, I'll see about the ambitions of Uganda. When I drive around, I say that this ambition is is grounded on some actual fundamentals. Much bigger population than say Rwanda, right? So close to three times, actually more than three times. A ton of fresh water. Amazing people, because I always we always talk about extractive in this, you know, extractive sectors and oil and gas and um I always say the people are the true gift of God. And you have a level of peace, there's there's a reason to be ambitious. Every so often when you actually want to, you pull it off. On the other side, there's just so much frustration. I'll give you an example, and this is something that I saw. There's going to be an AFCON 27, uh 2027. It's going to be the it's the Pamoja AFCON. Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania. It's a big deal. Very big, it's huge. Now I saw that Uganda was going to build steady and do this and and get ready to invite Africa into Uganda and get ready to receive the best of African football. And I was excited. As an observer, I say yes, why not? This is a good thing, this is something that should be celebrated. But then there is also a ton of skepticism, and actually the skepticism is especially online, but sure the same in the media, there's a lot more skepticism about oh, Uganda cannot do this. Uganda cannot. Where we as an observ someone outside looking in, I'm seeing one thing. Right? I'm seeing the ability to you're not poor, all you have to do is just get your minds right and choose.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:01

No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:02

You're actually so rich that you can actually have the best of both worlds. There could be both waste and a certain level. You you have runway, you have a certain level of runway that allows you to do amazing things if you truly put your minds at it. But somehow, the way I see you as an as an outsider looking in, and the way the insiders look at themselves, what does that gap tell us? Has cynicism almost become uh the Ugandan default mindset that we will fail?

SPEAKER_02 1:35:47

There's an article I wrote about. It's actually the handbook changing the mindset. In the interest of full disclosure, I totally aware of many hats. In fact, maybe what I should do is reduce the number of hats I wear in the coming years. But I did volunteer for uh for a role in uh AFCON. Okay. So I am I am actually on one of the most important committees for AFCON Events and Operations.

SPEAKER_05 1:36:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:20

I'm on a subcommittee.

SPEAKER_05 1:36:22

That's part of the local organizing committee?

SPEAKER_02 1:36:24

Yes, yeah. So LOC has got various committees that do various tasks. And then the heads of those committees form the main LOC, which is led by the first lady and the sports minister who are conveners. And the way the Afghan Pamboja is organized, of course, is that you have the loc, which is now sort of a body corporate, you know, that spends money, and then money is spent first, you know, as something that Uganda has committed to doing to meet standards for this whatever, and also spent alongside CAF, which is the Continental Football Body, which has stipulated how those budgets, you know, meet the standards of the game. So we had a dry run with Chad, and that August last year I spent the entire month on the games. So and they went successfully, reasonably. The one thing I appreciated, of course, and I kept telling uh my colleagues, is the funds. You know, if you sit in the boardrooms, you can walk away depressed. Yeah, I'll be honest about this. Why? Uh because of what it takes to organize to move together. I'll tell you, I'm a government appointee on that on that uh on that subcommittee, uh, which is made up of civil servants, and then it's made up of people from the Football Federation, and then it's made out of me who just like other persons like me who are just public-spirited citizens who are there to make a contribution. Now, I'm just trying to get into your cynicism. The cynicism is actually justified.

SPEAKER_06 1:38:40

Really?

SPEAKER_02 1:38:41

It is justified because many times, you know, the level of commitment is below power. The types of response, okay, to high standards is below power. And I'll tell you stories about this. But the moments when we are working together, we produce miracles. There was a moment in the in the Chan Games when we had a visitation. For the games, we are commingled with CAF officials. They, for example, you all the branding there is CAF. They have inspectors of security on health. I was in charge of health teams. And they one of them came and said, Oh, by the way, you know, you guys are working at a standard that's higher than Kenya and Tanzania. How are you managed? Like this is great. But then when we went and asked the stewards, they hadn't been paid the whole week. How are you guys managing? And the Uranian official said, but you know, even us guys have not been paid. But we shall be paid at some point, you know. Of course, you know, in my world, excellence means that someone who has planned well shouldn't have a steward there. And the stewards are those guys who take care of the stadium. Who has come, I don't know, from corner, paid their own transport, doesn't have the recommended number of bottles of water, hasn't had lunch served at the right time, in the right place, okay, to maximize his time. But these are aspects of planning that ought not to be rocket science, okay? They ought to be part and parcel of the package of excellence. Instead, what we see is the commitment of those unpaid people and those of us who are there, in fact, everyone, okay, trying to support a planning process that could have been done better. That's why I'm saying from the outside in, you know, the synthesis may be justified because there are people who are out there and they're saying, ah, you know, this is a game of chances, you know, it's a hit or miss. We could get it right or we may not. However, the bottom line for me was walking into that stadium, okay, and seeing the energy and the just the emotional commitment of the fans who are there. And that's why I know that AFCON is gonna be like a huge success. Uh, because there are some aspects of Uganda, okay, that are fundamentally good. Okay?

SPEAKER_05 1:41:46

Yeah, I actually think that there are a lot of aspects of Uganda that are fundamentally, in fact, they're largely fundamentally good. Now, I've in my previous life also, I have uh I've worn a few hats like you. I I did a bit of work around events and creating events, and one of the hardest things is just is not just necessarily the event, it's everything around it. And and so again, now that you've you've informed me that you're part of the LOC, let me just ask you a very blunt question. Just how when are the games? It's next year, what, summer?

unknown 1:42:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:34

No, I think they actually announced the actual dates. It's usually at the beginning of the year. Yeah. It is, I need to just go out. I know the dates, the dates were announced in the last 48 hours.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:47

Right. That's not a lot of time. You maybe give or take 11 months if you're super lucky. Now, one of the challenges when when Rhonda was trying to have some, I think we also had the Chan a few years back. And one of the challenges was that we need we need we didn't have enough stadia. So we had the ones in Kigali, those were not a problem. Then we had the ones in what we call Huye, or some people still call it Butare, it's older name. So there was a stadium that was built, but then CAF came and said you need to at least have X amount of four-star hotels. Fortunately, we had a little bit of time. That's Butare, for those who don't know, is probably the third biggest city. It's it's where the the big national university is. It's a huge university town. So there was always a little bit of tourism anyway, and it's on the road to Burundi. So there was there was some hotels there, and there was a they just needed to get up to standard. Now, one of the things that I've I've I've noticed is that there is going to be various stadiums in various parts of the state.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:09

And there's some some concern about your home.

SPEAKER_05 1:44:13

No, and this is just me, just like I've because I've I've known just how difficult pulling certain things are. Do you feel confident that the cynicism, because it goes back to the cynicism, right? So again, I'm reading this like there's no way in hell that you're going to have private sector, a person who owns a hotel who do X, Y, and Z back home in Ronda, because of, I guess, of the way our system is set up. People can sit, we can put a local organizing committee of business people, government, the Ronda Development Board, the Ministry of Sports, and even say from someone from the office of the president, okay, what's the plan? We need to build a hotel here, here, here. Okay, how are we going to get the money? Okay, let's also get someone from the Bank of Kingali. Let's make sure, okay, how do we ooh, but the 18% is a bit too high quickly. Let's see how we can how could how we can lower the how we can de-risk this so that the interest rate is not as high, so that this person can actually build. Okay, what do we do with training? Oh my goodness. Because obviously the hotels need let's invite the tourism training people, right? But then we don't have enough of those. Let's go to Kenya. Right? So everything kind of happens.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:39

You know, but it's we've almost made it easy.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:44

Yeah, it's not part and parcel of how we do it.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:46

It's it's just how we do things. From what it seems is from here, it seems that there's still pockets of excellence that don't align. Speak together.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:46:01

You know, so if you if that does not exist, then how do you pull off miracles? Because that's what you're fundamentally trying to do. Yes, indeed.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:10

You know, I am part of a think tank we started in 2008. And I remember for a while myself and my our colleagues since tried to define what the problem is in Uganda, and we zeroed it down to okay, there are other ways of looking at it, but the term we applied there is asymmetry. Okay, that we have fundamental asymmetries that cut across you know public life, you know, affect the public purse, affect planning. And I feel like in this whole conversation, when we talk about displacement and displacement, okay, it's all about finding the right symmetry or what Ugandans like to call alignment. But asymmetry is a disease that pervades the public sector.

SPEAKER_05 1:47:12

What are the symptoms of the disease?

SPEAKER_02 1:47:15

People working in silos. There is a certain territoriality amongst the government, ministries, departments, managers, it's my budget. Yeah. It's my budget, it's my thing. And it's you know, sometimes it produces positive effects in that there's competition, but there is a lot of duplication, and that's part of the waste story. There is also just broading efficiency. And that you see it in any time you organize something or you try to solve a problem, okay? Public sector problem, you will find massive asymmetry. Now, there are positive aspects of this, which by design, but that's in the political realm, because stability also means that you've got multiple layers of checks and balances. Okay. So when you have groups of elites at each other's throats, okay, you know, they ensure they forget to go to the bush. They are they they they ensure that the system uh creates a certain parity we call stability, you know, right over time. It's I cannot tell you, yeah, I cannot emphasize it, especially for Ughans who are watching that, you know, that's how come you can build the most expensive road in the world.

SPEAKER_05 1:48:49

I I mean I went on it, it was nice.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:51

Yeah. At the the longest time it takes to build a road in the world. Even the Romans, you know, Roman engineers or military engineers would have done it for shorter time.

SPEAKER_05 1:49:05

And probably cheaper.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:06

Of course. Because I know to be fair, the Romans use slave labor and other things, then, you know. So that inefficiency is ingrained. Uh, I am happy for uh Afghan Pomodia because sometimes what it does, it's it forces it's a call like a compressor. So it forces people to actually contend with one purpose and you know get things done. So you've had that in Hoima City, the whether it's a lack or not, but then they got a good contractor and they put up a good stadium.

SPEAKER_05 1:49:44

Summer.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:44

Yeah. And there are some adjustments, but it will be it's already Afghan ready. I saw just the other day that actually I read it overnight, that a budget has been allocated. For the nearby airport. You know, as a director at the investment authority, I took a delegation of my fellow board members to Belisa and Hoima, because the oil and gas sector is, you know, where I spend a lot of my time. And many of them had not been there, so they hadn't seen the oil field, they hadn't seen the airport. And I remember telling the guys in the sector that look, that airport should be functional, not just for the oil sector, but it should be ready because, you know, it oversees the Congo there. You've got traders, you know, around in the nearby communities, nearby towns, you need a functional airport. You already have a runway. And I heard back that there was some budget issues over how to pay for the control tower. You know, it was just the usual asymmetry. But they're going to do it. Remember, Sunny, that once you have clarity of purpose, you know, actually getting the work done is not that difficult. As far as the five-star hotels and other things are concerned, we are going to get we all have to get very creative about what to do. With regard to African Pamogia is that I know CAF sets all these standards, but my own sense of what needs to happen is that people need a clean, safe, accessible accommodation. Okay. And those are all regulations that you can enforce. Secondly, that the so-called standards that uh are required to do a successful game, we can negotiate it with CAF. I saw it with Chan, that we're able to come to an understanding of what is feasible and what is practical. But at the bottom end of this is what is the service to the fans, you know, to get people to retain the interest and the passion for the games. I think that's the fundamental, that should be the fundamental goal of the LOC. To make sure that there's another generation of uh football lovers who just see beyond uh AFCON that you know this is a sport, that's an African sport, that's it's lovely to watch. That excitement that we saw during um when our teams were playing, that's something that I would want to keep much closer, even as we deal with all these practical things.

SPEAKER_05 1:52:55

On the last note on that very topic, you talk about and I and I I I feel slightly uncom uncomfortable taking it to this this space, but that's I like excellence. I do too. I think one of the things that I always see here when I try when I go to people's homes, excellent. When I eat Ugandan food, excellent. Every there's a certain certain standards of excellence that you that Ugandans can tap into even when they choose to. And it seems as if with this opportunity to be to have the eye of the world, the eyes of the world, uh, the football world, if you see what happened in Morocco and and the kind of despite, you know, let's not talk about the the final and everything that has happened around that. But then for months, and during the the games themselves, there was an energy there. Morocco put its best foot forward. Do you think that people will leave, will watch the finals? Because a lot of fans will not come, let's be honest. Most of us will not be able to. But when they they see the facilities, when they see the reporting, when they see the the pitches, when they see the accommodation, when they see the transport. Because when you think about Morocco and how they were really able to showcase, you know, the fan zones and the transport and the trains and and the hotels, and you know, there was a there was so much amazing content that was created, not by the organizing committees or this, it was rather by the people who actually came there, that people will feel will leave the fans, will leave, the fans from around the continent will leave Uganda thinking these were this was excellent. And those who are at home who are you know watching the TikToks and all of this will also think, oh, this is excellent, or will it be uh African games, eh? Ah, you know, the football was great, you know, the food, you know, that's what they always say. When you think about like how they how they how we Sunny, yeah. You're confident.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:49

I am what I'll tell you what I'm confident about. One is while it is good to try and rise up to the whatever places like Morocco or even next door in Rwanda.

SPEAKER_05 1:56:07

No, no, please do not get Rwanda involved in this.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:11

We talked about excellence, but anyway, while it is okay to try and you know, if you've been to business class lounges, okay, and you travel, I'm sure you do.

SPEAKER_05 1:56:25

Not business, okay, not yet.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:27

One day, yeah, well then but anyway, if you go to these airport lounges, okay, around the world, there's a certain level of uh there's a certain standard that permeates across them. And so you could be in Hong Kong or in in Dubai or Abu Dhabi or here and in Teve or in Chigali, you know, the new airport, maybe, and you see what are called so-called global standards. Okay, all of that stuff is okay. I don't want Ughans to try and uh compete with a country where you could travel by rail anywhere, like Morocco, okay? Or you know, fly from even the Kenyans, yeah. You know, you can fly from Elder to Nairobi in Arabic. So what Ughanans need to do, and this is my this is and now I'll be honest with you, what I had problems with during China, okay, was that we didn't get the fans involved early enough because Ugandans have things to say about their country. Remember, it's a beautiful country, okay? Absolutely. Yeah, it's a beautiful country. I have an interest in film. I don't know if you do, uh, but I have you know this interest in art and and film. You know, I I want to tell you my experience trying to promote international films here, starting with uh Queen of Katoi, the Disney film that was here. But you could wake up any day, and if you wanted a picture perfect country in the world, okay, you have smoke capped mountains, pristine mountain ranges, because you've got the gorilla is there, you've got large bodies of water you could shoot an ocean scene if you want. Okay. You've got roaring prairie, what you call prairies, basically, grasslands. You've got semi-air arid areas. So you've got these sort of table mountains, you've got the Nile at the at the bottom of it. So, you know, it is a form of paradise of sorts. The Garden of Eden, to quote John Garang, you know, about that whole stretch. Uh you know, the Nile to Sudan. This Garden of Eden does not need any more than just, you know, making it uh accessible to visitors. And within this Garden of Eden, you've got some of the most like welcoming, polite people. For your footballing experience to really be good because football really basically is arriving at a stadium, finding a seat, and being able to watch, you know, young, you know, young men compete. That is it, that's what happens in the stadium itself. Okay, but the rest is a story about the country that would I would like to tell you know, visitors, it's a very beautiful country. It is accessible, it is a place where you find polite people. If you take time and pay attention to this Garden of Eden, that is what we are going to compete on. Now, I'm of course a patriot, okay? And I always like to think, not only like to think, but I always see the the best out of uh out of out of this country. And I think that we have more than enough to share uh with the world, okay, to make this a positive event.

SPEAKER_05 2:00:29

You know, one of the things that when because you were talking about the airport in Hoima, the international airport, right? And and you you said you you took people out into the oil fields. Let's let's talk about oil. Finally, after years and years and years and years, oil is being pumped out of the ground. And from Western Uganda, the oil will move to the Indian Ocean through, if I'm not mistaken, a pipeline.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:04

One of the world's longest heated pipelines.

SPEAKER_05 2:01:08

I know the the the wording. The long one of the the longest heated pipeline to the coast of Tanzania. Now, first of all, that's good news. That's very positive. But looking at what is happening in the world today, and when I talk about the world today, I talk I'm talking about the straight over moves, I'm talking about the fact that 20% of crude is being literally being strangled because of the choices that Trump and Bibi Netanyahu and the Mulas in Iran, their disagreements are causing. Do you think that President Yoir Museveni now really regrets the fact that Uganda does not have its own oil refinery? Because one of the things that we're now seeing already, I mean, in Rwanda the other day, our prices of both diesel and petrol went up almost 20% in one night.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:24

I saw the last night, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:02:26

And that's in Rwanda where we actually can kind of control as much as I as we can through subsidies. We we try to keep the government tries to keep the prices low as possible. Where it's already happening, and and and immediately what I then saw was increases in transport costs, increase in bus fare, increase in gas price. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:56

Do you think actually the picture gets much more crazy when you think about you know gas for cooking and fertilizer?

SPEAKER_05 2:03:04

Yeah, no, do you think that um Museveni looking at the price of a barrel of crude oil, do you think he regrets not insisting on having local refining capacity here in Uganda?

SPEAKER_02 2:03:26

To the contrary, I think he would argue that he was right all along. Because, you know.

SPEAKER_05 2:03:35

Right all along in what sense?

SPEAKER_02 2:03:38

The reason why we had so such massive delays in the oil projects was because he was trying to get a refinery to be part and parcel of the package. So it's the one thing that he fought for uh like hell, you know. When oil was discovered, you know, the initial plans, like I this is the area where you know I'm writing a book. The initial plans by the Anglo-Irish company, because I saw them, uh, was simply to track the oil to the coast. Like crude oil. Crude oil, yeah. It was always a crude first policy by the international oil companies. Uganda insisted on a refinery and then it took nearly the you know.

SPEAKER_05 2:04:31

Uganda or is it Museveni?

SPEAKER_02 2:04:33

Well, the way the oil sector was structured is that during the expiration period, government geologists, okay, were working in a silo. And one of those silos was protected by the presidency. So oil was effectively, you know, run through State House. Him personally, and I met oil executives in the in the course of all these years, who said in the negotiations, you know, for the farm down and things like taxes, you know, he insisted on you know capital gains tax and took the oil companies to court and then won in London, remember? Setting an Africa trend, actually, because oil companies have always been concerned about gains taxes being, you know, a sore point. You know, gain again capital gains taxes when you transfer assets such as oil fields from one ownership to the other. There's a 30% gains tax, which is the law here. And one of the companies did not want and well went to court. You know? Remember that big handshake story where he was rewarding, you know, civil government civil servants for doing such a good job? It was stating in principle that Uganda had triumphed by insisting that you pay your fair tax. But they but the refinery was the one area where he battled the most. Where deals, you know, and I'm telling you this because I used to be consulted occasionally by the IOCs or their representatives. What are IOCs? International oil companies. And, you know, I'll tell them: look, the important thing to understand the mindset of the president, okay, is that he sees that resource as giving you leverage and leverage over him from the capitals where you come, okay? So he sees oil, he sees what oil has done, you know, to other African countries. He doesn't want that instability. Given a choice, okay, as to whether to explain this oil now and risk instability or leave it in the ground and just continue as normal, he will leave the oil in the ground. Uganda has one of the longest oil-through market histories in the world. Oil was discovered in 2005, commercial quantities announced in 2006. 20 years later, we are now 11 weeks away at the recording of this program to fast oil. That's the official government uh timeline. Okay? It took this long because oil has always been part and parcel of the political project for stability first. The refinery is a huge part of that. Obviously. Yeah. And I'll tell you, it's one of those uh principal parts. Of course, now it's part of the law, you know. Unlike other countries, we have got, you know, a law for exploration, a midstream law, which is about refinery, and then an upstream law. So in the upstream, you've got uh exploration, in the midstream you've got processing and whatever, and then downstream you have, you know, finance and uh things. So I feel that he may express certain frustration. I'm sure he's gonna say it soon enough. That, and I'm predicting for you know what he's gonna say. He's gonna say, look, I've been right all along. We insisted on the refinery, okay. Oil companies did not want it. We fought for it, it caused delays, okay. We tried to build one, that's what he did. For he gave a concession to one company. It took seven years, nothing came out of it apart from a study. Okay. Now he has another group, even changed the model of how to finance it, put in his government, we've gonna put his own money. So we have got a deal with uh a UAE-based company to build a refinery alongside the uh the the crew project. So he will say he was right all along. I would say he should feel some regret because I remember I was just a journalist at the time. But when the debate about a refinery came along, I had a good friend in the Ministry of Finance who's director for uh economic planning, and he was in charge of convening all the oil people together. He's called uh Lawrence Giza. Brilliant, brilliant public servant, excellent public servant. And he was the guy in charge of, you know, hiding the cuts. And remember talking to Lawrence about the refinery. I said, you know, the government of Uganda is thinking about a commercial refinery, one that is viable, can pay for itself. I think that's the wrong direction. Give us a loss making refinery that in a year's time, if you do it right, okay, you can get kerosene out of the ground, you can get certain fuels, including diesel. As you know, diesel is the biggest component of oil imports into East Africa, and then maybe get some petrol oil aviation fuel later. But my calculation at the time was if you give us a loss-making refinery now, and I remember connecting it, this is before the whole climate change thing, connecting it to building electricity capacity in the whole western rim of Uganda and making the economic argument that your losses in subsidizing the refinery will be picked up in economic activity down the road.

SPEAKER_05 2:10:52

I mean, that's that's the entire that that that thinking, that that ecosystem thinking is 100% the reason why, for example, the government of Ronda has spent so much money on Ronda Air. It's a loss-making entity, and why they built that huge Kigali conversion center, as well as the Amarho Stadium. It's not because they will individually.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:19

They're not profit centers by themselves, but they're the engines of growth.

SPEAKER_05 2:11:24

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:24

And from growth we can get tax and I think and and people get jobs. We lost that argument. I and I think we lost it. Why? Partly because the the what the president was trying to do was balance the forces that come with large scale international investment. I I mean, I could tell you this because me, I was in the in the kitchen. Yeah, I could hear when Talo, which is this Anglo Irish company. Was ready to sell its share of the that's large, it was a $10 billion deal. Another Italian company made the government of Uganda a good offer. It was called ENI, the large Italian company. And Heritage, which is Tallon's partner, was willing to deal with the Italians. And then it became all a bit of a melee because Talo officials thought the government, because Heritage is the one that initially sold part of the estate Talo, they thought that the government of Uganda would take the better deal from the Italians. And that Talo had what you call rights of preemption. A right of preemption is like we are partners, but if you decide to sell, I have the right to buy first. To buy first. And I met a guy called Tim Tim O'Hallum, who was the Africa manager for Talo. I won't tell you how it works, but friends of mine told them, you know, you go and speak to Angelo before you go to State House. And I met them at Amin Pasha Hotel. And they're like, Do you think, what do you think? If we are we are going to State House, do you think our right of preemption will be preserved or will somebody take it away? I said, no, no, no. First, you get this wrong. He's listening to technocrats. And at this stage of our oil journey, okay, no nonsense, no risks like that will be taken. Okay? It's important for you to understand that he's trying to run a tight ship. So you're right for preemption. That is not a problem at all. You can go on, be assured that you can, you know, all of this stuff would happen. He will protect the technical people who are giving him the right advice. However, this is the the the caveat bullying and you know how oil companies come with you know the power from their government. I said, however, attempts to bully him, the oil remain on the ground. Like he is not going to be, he will not respond positively to pressure. Because pressure is exactly what he's trying to avoid. You see? And you know, it went, it went like they went, you know, as you know the story now, you know, they they preempted the sale, okay? Eventually acquired heritage's rights. The actual story was very painful because you know Uganda had a relationship with heritage, uh, which was older. But that happened then when it came now to Talos bringing in new partners. You know, the French and the Chinese came in as a counterbalance. Because, you know, that is really the the the the politics of the thing. Anyway, in between all of that that's going on, Durham 70 is fighting in principle, okay?

SPEAKER_05 2:15:15

To have a local refining capacity.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:17

And it's in and then he takes that principle eventually to the mineral sector. Remember, he then put a ban.

SPEAKER_05 2:15:23

An expert of raw minerals.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:25

Any any raw raw minerals. It's the same principle. He just wanted to domesticate it, but maybe because he's a politician who has he sees range, you know, time is not a factor for him, not in the way that you and I see it, okay. He was able to say, okay.

SPEAKER_05 2:15:47

You know, the the land that's I'll lose this war. I'll yeah, I'll lose this battle to win the war.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:53

But win the war.

unknown 2:15:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:54

That's the story of the refinery. I think the refinery eventually will arrive. I have just written that, you know, in 2011-2012, government actually commissioned a report called the Foster Wheeler Report. And the Forster Wheeler Report is the one that says a refinery situated where the product is, okay, is a much better option than the pipeline, even.

SPEAKER_05 2:16:18

I guess here's the the what you say makes a hundred percent makes sense a hundred percent. A hundred percent we need, you know, we can't eat crude oil. We we we need to be able to have gas, uh, gasoline in our cars, we need stuff in our tractors. I guess it goes back to the question of you can have wishes all day long. Your ability to implement and implement them at speed and necess and and at cost is the fundamental, it's it's the real challenge. Yeah, and was it so the question then becomes do you not worry that then that by the time everything comes together, a perfect scenario, you know, a perfect storm, money's found, contractors built, roads, electricity, da-da-da. By that time all of this happens, what we assume the world is going to remain the way it is.

SPEAKER_02 2:17:34

That it changes every day.

SPEAKER_05 2:17:39

The calculations we have at this moment are not the same that will exist 20 years from now. The way we use electricity and where we get our power from will might might fundamentally change. Do you not worry that you might have already missed, you gotta might have already missed that refining train, the refinery train, that by the time everything comes together 10, 15 years from now.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:08

I'm not worried about that.

SPEAKER_05 2:18:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:09

Yeah. Even if I'm not part of the planning process, I did try to join the board of the National Oil Company at some point. Uh, because this is an area I'm passionate about. Uh, but if I was part of the planning process uh in a formal role, yes, I would build that refinery in 18 months. And I'll build a refinery that because you know, at 18 months? Yeah. Can it be done? Of course. Okay. It's just an engineering problem.

unknown 2:18:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:46

It's a material problem. Yeah, it's an engineering problem. You can build it in less time. Yeah. You know, if you put your mind to it, it can be done. But why I'm not worried is that the problem that the Ugandan refinery is going to solve is now even bigger than when we first designed it. Okay. You want a refinery essentially, not to make money, but to solve problems. And the problems are here. Affordable transport, cheaper cooking gas, which solves our problem, you know, cutting down trees. Okay. Kerosene, which has got multiple uses at the at the local level, okay. And diesel, okay, which is uh the the oil that we need the most, which powers the economy. Now, by all estimations, even if you had a whether you have a refinery today, in 18 months, 48 months, or in 52 months, okay, that refinery is still needed. And across Africa, we have far less refineries than we need. And by the way, at the core of it, the principle, which is the domestication of that capacity, okay, it grants us the kind of autonomy that we need. Of course, you've seen the situation forced by the situation in the Middle East, okay? Where you've got shortages you didn't anticipate. But that disruption, you know, most countries are going to move away from it. They're going to try to be self-sufficient. So a refinery is always going to be something that we need. And that that is why I'm not too worried about it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:20:32

Talking about transport and the price of energy and the price of goods and services. I think the last time there was a major shock, an oil shock, was about 2011. And if I'm not mistaken, we saw in Uganda food pricing for the prices going up by close to 40%. Yeah. Now in your writings, you've connected the the sh oil shocks, food inflation, the walk to work protests by Kizabesija, and and you've you made an argument that these protests would have never actually because there was always maybe the anger, but there was no the the spark just wasn't there. And the increased prices of petroleum products were was the spark. Yes. Now if this continues, because we we we make assumptions that you know what it will never get as bad as it will be, it will today. What maybe you know this better than I do. What's the price of a liter of petrol now here in in Kampala average? 5,400 in the cheapest place. And what was it? What did it used to be?

SPEAKER_02 2:22:13

Maybe there's been a slight increase in uh pump prices by about 150 to 250. Okay. Depending on where you go. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 2:22:23

And do you think that it will continue to go up?

SPEAKER_02 2:22:26

No. I mean, there may be a slight increase. What has changed is that Uganda abandoned the open market system. So now all petroleum products are imported by the National Oil Company, which gives the Minister of Energy some oversight over that ecosystem.

SPEAKER_05 2:22:50

Ah, fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 2:22:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:22:51

It's something that I think Rwanda has been able to do for the last time.

SPEAKER_02 2:22:55

Yeah. So they are not setting prices. It is still a market-based system. But there's a But they can see that we have product, so why are you pricing yours higher? And there are other tools in which you can pressure, you know, OMCs, which is oil marketing companies, to behave. That's a difference. You know, when I first got involved with uh funny oil cartels as a journalist, because they are there. The oil marketing companies were very organized in exploiting crisis, I'll tell you that. What was different was that the cartels didn't have the regulator. They relied on Uganda's open system, okay? And they were they would exploit an international crisis to increase the price, and there was no one like to rein them in. Yeah. This is that, but that's this that's the situation that has now changed fundamentally. It could be, in a best case scenario, where if you have refining capacity in place and you're able to get the crude, not from imported crude, but from here, that these oil mining companies will have even less reason to price their products so highly. So you don't see you're not you're not right now seeing any major spikes in cost of the my my worry is the worry that all landlocked governments have, which is that unless you're able to resupply yourself, because right now we have some fuel cover until the first or second week of May, and then we need to resupply. If the people who are in charge are working as hard as possible, then they will have fund second resources of oil, which are not reliant on the situation in the Middle East. But the the source of inflation uh that can be imported from sourcing expensively is that you have to price up to pass on the price, you know. If you're getting your oil, say from uh Russia, okay, instead of you know Bahrain, you know, and insurance costs have gone up, which is the for all maritime insurance has gone up because of this crisis. Those costs now have to be factored in. Number of days it would take a ship, okay, to come round and dock in Mombasa and then fill your stores. That is also a cost for the longer transportation route that has to be factored in. Um, so you've got the insurance premiums going up, you've got the actual cost of transportation going up, and then you've got the price of the product, as you've seen, you know, it's only today that the price has dropped by 14 points, you know, the price of crude rent. But, you know, it could still be high next week. So the cost of the product is high, cost of transporting is high, cost of insuring it is high. Even if you found other sources that are not impacted by this war, there are still cost elements. And what other governments are doing is they're giving up their taxes on the fuel to cause some relief. And I'm perfect, I'm I'm not gonna be as confident because I'm not in charge, but I'm gonna be as confident as possible, seeing what I know about the sector, that they will try and do what it takes to keep fast the supply consistent, and secondly, that the price should not go too high.

SPEAKER_05 2:26:58

I guess it goes back to the what you're talking about, which is about political stability and how the leadership sees it. And so he he's probably thinking, I saw what happened last time.

SPEAKER_02 2:27:11

Of course.

SPEAKER_05 2:27:12

I will not be having people destroying my compala.

SPEAKER_02 2:27:17

You know, me and my buddies used to calculate crime based on inflation.

SPEAKER_05 2:27:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:27:22

Because anytime you've got inflation growing by a factor of two, we saw a spike in crime. And and then we realized it's quite simple. When it's difficult for you to go, you know, you used to go from Charlie Wajala to to town at a cost of say 500, the cost doubles. Okay? So you're like, okay, now I may have to walk, okay? Or I go less times. But because it's a fixed cost, you have to give up expenditure elsewhere to maintain that cost. Now, when those fixed costs combine, such as you've got rent and school fees, the people are really desperate. And I remember doing the analysis of the crime reports, and I realized that a lot of the so-called spike in crime in 2011-12 were just home invasions, people stealing disposable goods. So phones, laptops, the crime crazy is a market of its own, but it was a response, especially in the inner cities, that urban fragility to inflation. What relieved us, as I have written before, is that, you know, during 2011 we had a double crisis. You had got the effect of the global economic crisis that hit us here with, you know, cost of petroleum and other products going high. So but alongside that inflation came a poor harvest that year.

SPEAKER_05 2:29:01

So double whammy.

SPEAKER_02 2:29:02

Double whammy, yeah. But when the harvest came in and food became cheaper, some of the tension subsided, you know. So these days, when you're looking at what could potentially be a crisis, you look at food, the cost of food, the availability of food, okay, and the and the cost of that food. You remember during COVID, one of the things that was exempt was food markets and the tracks that brought food to the city. So at a very rudimentary level, stability is again, you can track it on inflation, but track it on food inflation first. And these are the inflation that is imported, which again in our case is really diesel inflation, okay, comes in as something that you could potentially manage.

SPEAKER_05 2:30:01

You know, you you've spoken quite a bit about the way Museveni thinks about energy, the way Museveni thinks about inflation and power and how he wields it. Have you ever met him? Have you ever met the man?

SPEAKER_02 2:30:22

Yeah, we've, you know, until I gave up going to Statehouse press conferences, because he never keeps time. And I actually told my editors I didn't want to go. Because you know, you could go there and you're trapped for hours. At the last time we met, uh, I think he had been visited by Robert Zorick, used to be Secretary for Agriculture, then became head of the World Bank. A very, very, very aggressive American patriot and politician, who when he became head of the World Bank, first of all, I remember when he was head of uh the Secretary for Agriculture, if I'm not mistaken, the president can give his own account of this, but he tried to force Uganda's hand over GMOs. Because Europe and America were fighting a battle over these technologies, food technologies. Europeans wanted to remain organic, the Americans were making a lot of their money from you know soybean, corn, and canola, which are all grown as you know, with genetically modified technologies. It is a huge part of the uh Republican constituency. We are farmers, you know. And so, you know, I think Zolik and others wanted to make the argument that if the Europeans opposed food technologies, it would threaten Africa's uh food security. Yeah. But it was just he's a bully. Yeah, and I can tell you he's a bully. Anyway, I remember because I was around listening to these things, and then Zolik came to uh Uganda and I was at a press conference at which Musa Wuni called me out by name because I was there with all these you know sheepish ministers and others in the audience. And because I knew about Zolik and his very abrasive style, and I knew also that the president has been had been going away. Because I was, you know, I was like, as I told you earlier, I was always opposed to aid, you know, and he had been moving away from that argument, and he has always been about strategic autonomy and stuff. You know, and here he is with Zolik, and I was kind of taken aback. So I put up my hand and I told him, you know, Mr. President, you have always talked about reducing dependency on donors and aid. And yet, here you are with the World Bank president about to announce, you know, something along, you know, going along this path which you oppose. And he said, you, Mr. Izama, the problem, you know, we have is your people don't pay taxes. And you know, from that time I was I I figured out that you know the the proportion of aid, foreign aid to GDP will go down in relationship to our ability to raise money through taxes here. And I think he, if I'm not mistaken, I think in his mind, total independence is also about you know economic autonomy, at least a balance of it.

unknown 2:33:59

And that's

SPEAKER_02 2:34:00

That's his wild. He talks a lot about middle income, you know. I think these are the tributaries of that thought. I disagree with him with middle income, but as far as the term is concerned, you know, I know we're about to conclude this, but you know, whenever I see countries talking about middle income status, it's okay. As a planning tool, it makes sense. But it shouldn't be the holy grail of achievement for a country for the simple reason that, you know, income doesn't tell the story of the people. It's just numbers, you know. You have to look beneath the hood and ask yourself what is the social condition under which people are. You're gonna have and we will attain middle income with oil easily. But the problems you and I have been discussing here throughout this program will remain.

SPEAKER_04 2:34:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:34:59

So I cannot resist it for a long while. Every time I had middle income, I was like, guys, you know, let's not talk about GDP, let's talk about let's not talk about middle income, connect that uh to the live experiences of people, connect that to how you solve major public problems, such as you know, mass transportation or you know cheap electricity, cheap cooking fuels, a better education system. You know what I'm saying, yeah? Yeah. So that middle income cannot just be, you know, something that we elevate to a national goal, you know. I'd rather not reach middle income but be but be able to see these problems being solved.

SPEAKER_05 2:35:46

So it kind of this is going to be the last question. And this is a question that I'll I I'll ask every single Ugandan that I speak to. Every so far, when I ask Ugandan journalists this question, I get different answers, which is Oh, you said when's the last time I met the way but I wanted to correct it.

SPEAKER_02 2:36:09

So I I saw him when I was a journalist asking that question.

SPEAKER_05 2:36:12

Did you get a chance to meet him mano a mano officially?

SPEAKER_02 2:36:16

No, no, no, no. But I was he was solving a disagreement in that affected my our board of the uh investment authority. You know, I was after I left journalism, he appointed me as a member of the board uh of the Uganda Investment Authority at the recommendation of the minister. And so I was a public servant for three and something years. And at one of those things, you know, we went to State House at his invitation, but we did not talk about it.

SPEAKER_05 2:36:46

Was he on time this time?

SPEAKER_02 2:36:47

Yes, he was.

SPEAKER_05 2:36:49

So it was just for journalists, but please continue.

SPEAKER_02 2:36:51

Yeah, he he he was on time, but you know, he's he'll be the first to admit that uh you know timekeeping is not his strong point.

SPEAKER_05 2:36:57

African time. So, last question. Ask this question to Raymond Mujuni, and you know, he gave one answer, asked the same question to Charles Onyangobo, he gave another answer, and the question was what does a post Museveni Uganda look like? Raymond Mujuni thinks that we're already trying to see what a post-Uganda uh post-Museveni Uganda looks like with the different moves. And I'm thinking that's probably around the first sun and what we're seeing there. Now, when I asked that question to Charles Onyangobo, his was a bit darker. His prediction was that Uganda would fall into little fiefdoms at war with themselves. I guess pretty much almost like a tropical uh Somalia, with little clans at war with each other. What do you think a postemony Uganda looks like? Does it look more like Raymond's, which is a bit hopeful and and and bright, or a bit darker, like Charles's, where you know everything falls apart?

SPEAKER_02 2:38:37

Well, let me start with my relationship with those two. Uh first, you know, Charles, as you know, uh, is a pioneer journalist and was one of my editors at the monitor before he left for Kenya. He was one of our editors uh when I joined the uh uh the group. And uh Raymond is a fellow of the Leo Africa Institute, which is the leadership training institute, which I where I was involved, still am. Uh he was a first class, I think class of 2017. But I'd known him before. He had gone to the Nation Media Lab and then he did the things, you know, the journalist with URN, all this promising, all this progressive. Uh but as a Leo Africa young and emerging leaders fellow, I've had more time to spend with him. And you're right, part of this is a generational thing, but they're both journalists, you know. And Charles has got pretty good sources. But my sense is also that, you know, with the you know, burden of history, you know, being exiled, coming back, looking at all of these things, he's an Afro, he's an as a Afro-optimist. But he also experienced some of the dark days when Uganda was not viable, it was broken. And it's easy to think that those days can come back. And myself, I've said Uganda is not too big to fail, no country is. Okay. Then with regard to Mr. Mujuni's viewpoints, yeah, I would pay attention to them because first he talks to other young people, he lives that reality. Earlier, we are talking about pockets of elites. He definitely is uh either one of the elites or one is he might be the pocket. He might be the pocket of the elite. I respect both viewpoints. That as a journalist and as an analyst, I have to build into that question what do you call first principles. And I'll pay you the optimistic scenario. Should I start? Who should I start with? Pessimistic or optimistic? How do you like your poison?

SPEAKER_05 2:41:10

Give me the good news first.

SPEAKER_02 2:41:12

Ah, okay. The good news is that social momentum we're talking about in its disorganized, distended, fluid movement, okay, is capable of sustaining itself. So you look at the political realm, for example, you know, I voted against the returnal parties for the reasons that the parties have now demonstrated why we should never have, you know, allowed the experiment to come back. But organizationally, if you look at the last election, for example, set peace campaigns and all of that, you know, the sheer number of that enterprise is one of those things that will carry on. So the NRM, for example, the ruling party, is a huge mass movement. It's just a vote-getting machine. Did you know? It's probably more now, but I remember speaking to Sam Rakoj, who was the secretary of the Electoral Commission. The total number, and I keep coming back to this, the total number of electable positions on the electoral roll, you know, from down LC1 to the top and all special groups, is nearly 1.7 million people.

SPEAKER_05 2:42:43

Jesus. Now that's a lot of leaders.

SPEAKER_02 2:42:47

Yes. But it's not a system that sustains itself, you know. So when you look at the top heavy public spending and all of what we talked about waste, a lot of that waste is the cost of the peace. It keeps a lot of people engaged in the political enterprise. Take that away, they're in a crisis. So what do you think they're gonna do? They're gonna sustain it. 1.7 people, that is three or four times the size of the civil service, including the military, every other uh that's literally that's literally more than 10% of Rwanda's population. Now you can imagine. So these election cycles, as dirty and inefficient as they are, are the cost of the peace. Now, if you look at a situation where UM7 is no longer there, okay, so my point is I don't see him as a reason for this enterprise continuing. I think the the there may be issues with leadership of the party, whatever, but the political culture is settling down to this inflationary election mod. Okay, so there we are. So that is, if you'd like some positive news, it's not the best news, okay? Then at the core of Uganda's problems has always been a clash between the civilian elite and the military elite. And over the last 40 years, there's been a middle ground where the head of the army, who's the founder of the army, is also an elected civilian leader. So 70 wears both hats. So the center of gravity operates in such a way that Europe protects civilians from soldiers.

SPEAKER_05 2:44:44

But also protects the soldiers from the civilians.

SPEAKER_02 2:44:47

That's the way. That's the center of gravity. Now, assuming that there is some kind of confusion as to who is going to take over, if you sustain a personality at that core, who is willing to be elected, or someone who is elected but has the confidence of the military, okay, you can still maintain that center of gravity within the state. I don't think it's too difficult to do if you don't have too much meddlesomeness, okay? It's a system that is capable of inherently of stability. Now, the worst case scenario is I told you I'm writing a book. The book has changed titles only twice. The initial title of that book, which is a book about oil, was The Road to Mexico. That's Charles Hobo's view. New Mexico has got the hard state. Elections every five years, then civil war level violence on the peripheries of that state, run by armed gangs, family, fifth domes, all of them armed drug groups, you know. But their system is a chaotic stability, okay, that is based upon the understanding that at the core of it the political elite will sustain a state at the center. Now we could go in a direction where there is more violence at the edges, political violence particularly. A lot of the problems we are seeing, massive displacements from land grabbing, EDCTC creating. And already you see some fifths emerging, right? In the NRM family, you've got regional leaders now that are emerging as kingpins in there. Really? Yeah, yeah. Like who? Well, you've got uh the speaker of the house is seen as a big leader in the East, you know. Actually, you just follow the Thanksgiving calendar. Every time someone says we have a Thanksgiving, you know, big political event, there's some, you know, regional leader that is consolidated, you know.

SPEAKER_05 2:47:02

So who are the leaders? I mean, you've opened this up, so you have the speaker of the in the in the east, I can see there are a couple of people.

SPEAKER_02 2:47:13

You've got the right honorable Rebecca Kadaga in Busaloka. She's always run sort of a political family there where she has farm control. Then you've got in Bukadia and parts of the East, you've got the Right Honorable Anita Mong. Father on, you've got the current vice president, who's in the also in the East. And until recently, you had Honorable Mike Mukula and others. So you there's there's a cluster. Uh, in the north, you've got some military families who are there. Now you've got, imagine is our friend Honorable Mao, who you've had mentioned close to the speakership race, but you've got Jesse Sawin Dolo now, retired, and others, but you know, they see themselves also as a political family with you know roots all down to the electoral machine, you know. So they deliver votes. Uh in uh Bunoro, something similar, there was the issue of the king in the Renzuru area, which you know was sorted out and it's a very violent episode in Kasese. Uh and then you've got in Uganda here, you know, where you've got, you know, uh well you have the king. You've got the king, but the king kind of overseas, if you'd like, is the center here. But you know, there's an enterprise of uh of organized power around him. Now, what is different between us and Mexicans is armed violence. A lot of the physical violence involving arms is criminal right now in Asia, okay, after the end of the wars. If that were to become more generalized political violence and some of these networks have access to arms, then we can go towards Charles Abose's vision, okay? But I don't see that happening. I see the the civilian military architecture, essentially, especially 40 years of 70, has been that violence is the province of the state. And it's guards it very jealously, you know. And to the extent that that remains in the service of a political agenda, I think you can guarantee stability. Now, there are other unpredictable scenarios which will not come from the way this thing is organized, but could come from one, you know, the externalities we saw in 2011, where you've got, you know, important crises, okay, that just finds the system is not strong enough and causes, you know, problems. You know what happened? You know my story with the Arab Spring, right? Towards the 2011 election, I was asked by my editors, Charles, not Charles Abow is not there, but Wafalo Ugutu and uh David Omar Balikowa, who came to me and said, they've met me at the airport. Like, Angela, have you seen, you know, business Muchaka Mchaga groups being trained, election guard forces and things like that. Now, like, you know, the situation's not looking very good. Okay? You just look at the sheer number of, you know, passouts of young people who are given military training and told they're going to be an election protection force. Their concern was the level playing ground for political activity. But, you know, I was thrown a challenge, so I went back home, I thought about it, you know, and I'd come to the conclusion that where you've got entrenched political systems, like you can't undo them. Take the situation in Venezuela, for example, okay? Where the system is entrenched, then the only times when you have a change is via like massive crisis. And where it's an electoral system, then you have got people of power movements. And it just led me down this road where I was like, oh, by the way, there's an interesting timeline because in 1986, just months before the NRM took power here, a government in the Philippines fell. Ferdinand Marcos had been president a long time and it entrenched the system there. But a series of political mistakes and bad economics and bad geopolitics caused a strict movement called the people power movement, okay, to approve that government. So Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, you know, lost power and they were in exile where he died. Now his son is in charge, though.

SPEAKER_05 2:52:20

This is interesting.

SPEAKER_02 2:52:21

Yeah, however, so I used the word people power in the headline and promptly got arrested for it. The story actually is much more complicated. But anyway, so you can imagine I did the analysis, I explained to my editors where it was coming from. Okay. But the choice of headline was not mine. And you accept what your editors do. I saw the headline, I knew I was in trouble actually the night before. But then, of course, brought forward and you know, interrogated, and you know, the guy who interrogated me, I was in school with him, Charles Katara Tambi, who's now deceased. But I tried to explain that this is just analysis. So, but anyway, months later, because I was given bail and I went to Stanford, but months later, the same scenario about entrenched governments being uprooted by the street happened in first in Tunisia, then in Egypt. Anyway, the case was eventually dismissed. Because I, you know, I remember.

SPEAKER_05 2:53:28

Are you still friends with him? Who? Oh, he passed away, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02 2:53:32

Charles, yeah, Charles died. Yeah. Charles was a sport, you know, would come. Yeah. He was, you know, he was doing his job as a police officer. Um, but you know, he explained clearly what the red lines were and what the trouble, the kind of trouble we're in. It was a prosecutable offense, you know, you you go to uh you go to court. But that is my story with people power. Um I put it in a headline, you know, my editors put it in a headline, I put it in an analysis, but because what I was analyzing here eventually just sort of took a political life of its own, the case was, you know, like so I don't have a case to answer.

SPEAKER_05 2:54:14

Amen to that. Now, you've showed two scenarios. Look into your crystal ball, which one is more likely?

SPEAKER_02 2:54:28

I think uh I am leaning on leaning on the side of uh Raymond's uh scenario. Yeah, and um I'll I'll tell you why, you know. So I gave you this situation with the electoral machine sort of just needing to continue. However, even if you have a situation involving disagreements at the top, okay, stability will have to be on the legal architecture upon which the state stands. But generationally, you know, who are the largest number of people? They are a generation that has no war, you know. They have been dealing with the challenges of life with soldiers in the barracks. They form the majority, okay? When I go out on the street, I see sometimes a lot of anger about economic conditions, the hassle that we are in, okay? But I do not see embedded in there, of course, there's ethnic and racial issues you see, social issues, okay? I don't see their embedded and organized appetite for chaos. Yes. And I may be wrong, you know, and I have been wrong before, but this is the optimistic side of me saying that I see these. This to use the NRM terminology, it's bus, okay? Kind of just keeping momentum, okay? And you know, the real challenge for the next generation of leaders is how to retrofit this system such that it is much more kind, uh, much more I would say much more compassionate. So we can eliminate some of those things we've talked about, the cynicism, the cruelty, the waste, lack of organization, all those things.

SPEAKER_05 2:56:36

You know, I always like to end my interviews with something positive, and the one with Charles I wasn't able to, but at least here you've you've left me feeling a bit more hopeful. Although it does seem like it's not hope for its uh it's not hope on its own sake. There's there's still a political calculation. It's not that uh all of a sudden 15 years from now, uh it's gonna be full of angels.

SPEAKER_02 2:57:07

No, it's I mean you and I are journalists, so I can only provide analysis and uh be honest about it.

SPEAKER_05 2:57:15

No, no, what I was saying was that I like to end things on a positive note to kind of make people feel that you know what we shouldn't just jump off the building. There is something to fight for, there's a nation to fight for. And there's a Uganda to, for us who are on the sidelines, there's a Uganda to cheer, to cheer for and say, hey, keep moving forward. We we we need you to do well. And I think you've given us a good sense of what the challenges are, and what I think is more interesting for me is that a lot of these challenges are universal. You'll find those same, very same challenges, whether they're generationally in Kenya, Rwanda as well. I'll not talk about Burundi, but Tanzania. And I think your analysis allows for people who think within these silos, so a Ronda, who's just thinking this is only a Randan issue, to understand that the those challenges around what it means to be a young person, what it means to be successful, what it means to be human, what it means to be a good leader and what leadership looks like. That some of those questions and some of those answers can be found not just where you live, but in neighboring countries. And Angela, I just want to thank you so much for your time. It's been a long conversation, but I never promised you a short one. It's in the name, literally in the name.

SPEAKER_02 2:58:58

I see.

SPEAKER_05 2:58:59

You know, you got me there.

SPEAKER_02 2:59:01

Ah, it's the long. The long form. Got it. You know, I assumed, as primarily someone who writes, that when you said long form, it's just like the number of words increased. But you know, long form for us is like 1800 words to 2500 words.

SPEAKER_05 2:59:21

But of course, this is you know it's a long form kind of conversation, and and I thank you so much for your time. I understand that you're super busy, and I don't take this for granted. And I'm sure the viewers and listeners don't take your time for granted either. It's been a pleasure and an honor.

SPEAKER_02 2:59:41

Pleasure is all mine, and thank you for keeping these conversations going. As I said, I have just one request it is that, you know.

SPEAKER_05 2:59:49

Let's hear it.

SPEAKER_02 2:59:50

Yeah, yeah. I really I feel I mean, we we talk these days about integrating the continent, integrating the region. During your during our time together, we talked about leading with social analysis. So Africa doesn't speak to itself enough. So we need much longer conversations, but between Africans. And I like the fact that you, you know, podcast is based in Rwanda, you're now here. Hopefully that means that you're continuing this journey to other African countries. And through your podcast, maybe we can get reintroduced to each other now more.

SPEAKER_05 3:00:34

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I listen, I'm I'm I'm I'm here in Kampala, I'll be here shooting a series over 10 days. And and I if everything goes as planned, I'll be coming here almost quarterly. Because I do think that, you know, before I I go to other countries, I it makes sense that we first speak to each other. We are we've been brothers in blood, literally in blood, and and we've intermarried. But sometimes I still feel that we we don't see each other the way that we should. And anything that I can do to share, to play that role in sharing, I will play. And then from here, then God knows where I'll end up.

SPEAKER_02 3:01:27

Oh, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_05 3:01:30

Thank you. And that's a wrap for today's conversation. Thanks for staying with us till the very end. It really means a lot. I'd love to know what was the one moment that really stood out to you. Drop it in the comments so that we can keep the discussion going. If you want to connect with us beyond YouTube or streaming platforms, you can find us on the social media platform of your choice. And if this has a podcast, something for you, share it with a friend who'd love it too. Until next time, have a great week.

SPEAKER_00 3:02:04

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