Dear Ugandans,
If you follow the speech made by Sir Andrew Cohen, the former Governor of Uganda at a joint meeting of the Royal African Society and the Royal Empire Society in 1957 before he handed the tools of leadership to Sir Frederick Crawford, then you will realise that Obote 1 inherited a good future plan from the British after our independence. Whether he implemented it well or not, that is another issue.
Uganda under Governor Cohen had a five-year development programme, from 1955 to 1960, involving capital expenditure of some £30m by the Government and another £8m to £10m for the Uganda Electricity Board. Frederick extended this programme though the independence in 1962 caught up with him. So Obote took over and continued with the program implementation.
Under Cohen, agricultural organisations and farm institutes were introduced under the aegis of Agricultural Enterprises Ltd.,a subsidiary of the State-owned Uganda Development Corporation.These things did not start with Obote as they were already being implemented. The mining industry was already functional when Obote took over .The textile factory and Kilembe copper and cobalt mine were in production. Other projects are going forward.
The Uganda Development (UDC) was set up with the aim of bringing private enterprise into partnership in these important projects. Things like electricity, road and railway construction and rural and urban water supplies were already in place when Obote took over.
Cooperatives which Museveni killed were introduced during the British time and Obote just strengthened the implementation process. This was a process intended to help Africans to play a larger part in trade and commerce. So long as commerce was mainly confined to Asians and Europeans there was a state of unbalance which held back the country. There were already 1,300 co-operative societies in Uganda before Cohen handed the administration to another governor. Their total turnover was £4 m a year. There were ten co-operative-owned ginneries. The Bugisu co-operative union, the biggest in the country, was playing a large part in the marketing of the arabika coffee. Also there were technical institutes put in place for the advancement of Africans in trade. The Public Service Commission was set up with the task of promoting the appointment of local people and the maintenance of standards in the civil service. Scholarships were set up and educational colleges built to get qualified people for the jobs.
I’m not asking people to move on in bad faith. The Colonialists designed the development program Obote 1 partly implemented. These programs came out of 5 reports made by various committees:
1. Wallis Report on local government,
2. Bunsen Committee on African education,
3. Watson Committee on agricultural productivity,
4. Maybury Committee on the advancement of Africans in trade,
5. Frazer Committee came up with a report on medical and health services.In this report, you will find that there was a program to buiild modern hospitals in different parts of the country, more like British-style.
Yes, we should applaud late Obote for atleast implemeting some of these programs but we should not forget his bad side too( Kasavu-Kanyama theory).
Regardless of the above, I think Uganda benefitted a lot from Obote’s first presidency economically though he made political blunders along the way which are haunting UPC up to now particularly attacking the Lubili in Mengo. We should find a way of moving on because Obote is dead and we have got bigger problems now. I dont why Obote tends to generate more debates on this forum than any other Uganda yet we have covered all these issues.
There is a development plan designed by the Museveni government last year. We should be discussing that one and leave that of colonialista and Obote 1 alone.
Abbey Kibirige Semuwemba
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