Dear Ugandans at heart,
What I see as a problem is a tendency for some of us to intentionally derail a useful discussion. Take for example how we lost the good chance to discuss what Professor Grace has written in his book; we just refused to point out what was wrong with it simply because it is written by a Ugandan or Rwandese as some people allege. What do we want in a book? Look at the books our students use in Uganda; in A-level we have books like Advanced Level Physics by Nelkon and Parker that give examples of relative velocity of trains moving from Manchester to Birmingham with one running at 150 M/Hr and the other 200 M/Hr going to the opposite direction; Backhouse I & II for maths with examples in permutations and combinations of say lawyers and accountants from different law firms in London who are asked to sit in a round table, where the students are required to calculate number of ways they can arrange themselves. Though it wouldn't be a big deal, however, a mere mention of Manchester, Birmingham or London takes the student from Moroto to Wonderland and fails to apply the principle he learnt. But if Peter Nkurinziza writes an Agriculture book for use in our schools, giving examples drawn from Luwero, Kapelebyong, Kabale, Gulu or Arua, then we flare up cursing Nkurinziza but we praise the Nelkons, Backhose or Abbott simply because they are Whites, the same applies to politics; we despise our own but praise some Whites in the countries we comfortably live in, sometimes we intentionally "forget" to criticize their clear failures, it is deplorable.
We shall be ruled by people least expected to do so because we allow ourselves to be derailed, we even don't bother to dig deeper to find out if some people are not sponsored to disorganize discussions in order to benefit the powers that be, these are people we can "Agents in Charge" or (AICs). A nation with lowly or uneducated population is a dead one. Research, innovation and inventions require certain skills training which many at low levels are more likely to lack, and yet with research and development planning, there is no much a nation can do.
We experience poor NAADS performance at sub-counties yet huge funds are annually sent partly because the people placed to manage these funds do not have high managerial skills necessary to oversee such technical projects, without underrating their intelligence, you don't expect a P.7 leaver who is now an LC111 Chairman to chair budgeting for Sh.100,000,000 and produce good proposals. In my view, there is no reason why we have people with low skills handling responsibilities that need high skills, yet we have thousands of highly educated people unemployed; such graduates could be retrained to undertake any jobs in the identified skill areas, the man-power is there, and it is I think lack of planning which is a problem.
Higher education is necessary for national development; therefore degrees are not bad as some people want us to believe. Even individually, people have different priorities and ambitions, it would be wrong to discredit people who need for achievements and somebody has a low ambition, there is no reason for such a person to hate those who aim higher, it is a matter of choice and guidance.
Peter Simon
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