It’s time Uganda NSSF evaluated its investments ...

IRRESPECTIVE of the outcome of the current National Social Security Fund probe, it is high time we took a total paradigm shift regarding investment of our savings at the fund.

Granted, NSSF has invested in almost every available venture, but with little tangible multiplier links and ripple effect both on the economy and the workers.

For simple comparative analysis, let’s pit the ultra-modern Pension Towers, at Ush120 billion against a few alternative ventures:

-The Kikagati Hydropower dam on River Kagera required Ush7 billion to build and add 10 megawats of clean hydropower to the national grid. With Ush120 billion, we could add 100MW by building small dams on rivers across the country. Compare its multiplier effect against the Pension Towers

-Over 90 per cent of Ugandan cotton is exported as raw lint, fetching us peanuts. If we were to go full length into fabric manufacture and consumption, what would Ush120 billion do?
-We are now crying foul over Kenya monopolising RVR. What if we injected a third of the 120 billion into it?

But this will need a total radical change both in policy on the part of government and the leadership at NSSF.

This is now a challenge to our MPs. The gusto that mobilised the “Buganda Trio” signatures; and the energy in the police-brutality probe needs to be similarly deployed to save our savings and our country.

Amon B Mbekiza
Kampala

 .. or have we had the best of them?

AGAINST this background, why don’t we hear often from academics from Makerere University, especially from the Economics Department? Or are the Mutebiles and the Surumas and Kagonyeras now represented the best minds — in terms of knowledge and skill — that we have got?

And what, pray are the Norwegians going to do to the meat industry in order to add value? How has
Botswana, which has beef as a main export, done? Can Uganda send a team of experts to learn from them? Or are we trying to export meat to Norway?

Talking about RVR, what can the countries of East Africa (including Rwanda and Burundi) better do together than singularly?

Is Kikagati Hydropower plant one of those white elephant development projects we read about that were planted in Africa in the 1970s and 1980s?

We need the press to educate us on these issues. After all, East Africa’s “teacher” presidents seem to have surrendered their former role of educating wananchi on this and that.

Rev Amos Kasibante
UK