The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative has defined Africa’s relationship with China for over a decade. Within this time the average Ugandan’s interaction with China was largely limited to the importation of “cheap” Chinese goods and the Entebbe Expressway. The latter has always been an infamous scapegoat in conversations of the fictitious “Debt trap diplomacy” […]
The BRICS summit in Rio was the death knell to the old world order. In a seismic shift of global power diplomacy, 11 countries; with Uganda being the sole representative from East Africa, were formally admitted into the alliance. This bold move is an undeniable vote of confidence into the promise of the alliance to […]
“If you can drive in Kampala you can drive anywhere in the world”. This phrase, often uttered in good humor betrays a perhaps poorly kept national secret that Kampala is fast approaching the carrying capacity of its own public roads. Behind the social media sensation that abound the 2023 #PotholeExhibition was also a daunting revelation […]
Recently, at my weekly book club meeting at FEMRITE Bukoto, I met a white foreign policy enthusiast, Tobias. Introducing myself as a fellow of Ugandan and Regional think tank Development Watch Center, he excitedly invited me to share coffee with him at a popular restaurant along Acacia Avenue popular with foreign tourists and Ugandan elites. […]
I have recently learned that when a United States of America agency funding an organisation tells it to stop working, it means exactly that. If the funding goes towards electricity or travel expenses, you are expected to turn off the lights and ground all the vehicles. I have a close friend in Kampala working at […]
The legendary Austrian aristocrat Prïñcë Metternich is credited for coining the phrase “when France sneezes, Europe catches a cold”. In the peripherals of the Napoleonic era, his belief was that anything that happened in France had an immediate impact on the whole Europe. At the moment, when America sneezes, the world starts drafting Covid advisories. […]
It is said that when you owe the bank one million shillings, you have got a problem, and when you owe the bank 1 billion shillings, the bank has a problem. The narrative of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a “debt trap” for developing nations has gained significant traction. However looking specifically at Uganda’s […]
The recent “China and Africa: A Fine Traditional Culture and Modernisation” lecture organised by the Development Watch Centre and China-Africa Institute sparked a fascinating conversation about the opportunities for collaboration between these two vibrant continents. Our collaborations have typically been defined by economics and infrastructure partnerships but beyond these, a particularly intriguing prospect lies in the […]
For the past three years the European Union has been drafting and polishing a set of legislations that will potentially have great impact on the lives of many Ugandan coffee farmers once they come into effect at the end of this year. As a country, we have relied on Coffee as our major export cash […]
In a poster that was circulating online and in Kampala malls and arcades for the past couple of days, a section of Kampala City traders, under a relatively unknown umbrella body the “Federation of Uganda Traders Association” was making a clarion call for all traders within the business district to close their shops on the […]
