Uganda is far much better than many European countries.

Uganda is far much better than many European countries- By Edward Magumba
(Please read all the way through to understand)

Of recent the mass media has been awash with stories of a senior government leader who wanted to use curvy women as some sort of tourists’ attraction. His ideas attracted a lot of public attention/scrutiny with some activists calling on his superiors to reprimand him.

I don’t know exactly the reasons that informed his decision to come up with this idea of curvy women,may be he is right, maybe he is wrong, I don’t know. But one thing I know for sure is that besides curvy women, Uganda is so, so much rich in tourist attractions, very few countries beat it via that. Yet there is little evidence that the country is gaining much from tourism.

So if Uganda is endowed with natural beauty, how come it’s has not translated into good tourism money? Could it be because of ignorance, could it be because of having incompetent people in the tourism sector? Or what?

In my opinion, I think two things will help Uganda grow economically. FIRST is to increase our exports; from these exports we earn dollars. The more dollars we have in Uganda, the fewer shillings we need to buy dollars. The exchange rate drops from 3,700/= to 3,000/=, then 2,000/=, then 800/=. That’s why the exchange rate of the dollar is vital in measuring how we are really doing economically.

According to recent figures from the Uganda bureau of statistics, Uganda exports or receives $2.5 billion and Imports $4.5 billion. Our shortfall is $2 billion. If we were a business, we would be a loss-making one. That’s why the shilling keeps steadily falling in value. Unknown to many Ugandans, the more we import cars, TVs, phones, furniture, shoes ,clothes,etc, the more we are exporting our earnings and therefore the poorer we are becoming although we can’t see that. The evidence is in the falling value of the shilling. If we produced little and lived a simple life that would be okay. But we don’t produce enough and yet want to live a comfortable life based on imported cars, TVs, Phones, clothes and electronics. So the shilling keeps losing value. Engaging in large scale commercial farming and aggro-processing will help spur our productivity.

The SECOND way we can help our economy grow is through tourism, as a country, we need a very aggressive and sustained marketing campaign to attract tourists to Uganda. Hotels must go from 25% room occupancy to 80%. The tourism dollars would then close the gap and we see the shilling go from 3,800/= to say 1,500/= .

A few years ago I went on a mission trip to Western Europe, though I visited several countries, I will briefly talk about Italy and France. Now in a country like Italy, they don’t have so much in terms of tourist attractions, Jinja district alone could even beat them via tourist’s attractions, but one thing they are so good at is aggressively marketing what they have including old buildings and telling stories.
They don’t have many national parks with wild animals or great rivers like our river Nile, but they have capitalized on the stuff they have to make big money out of the tourism industry.

There is an area in Rome with so many ancient historical buildings which have been preserved for tourism purposes. All they do is have someone tell their stories and then sell it to the Public.
One such place is called The Colosseum located in down town Rome; it’s just a huge ancient building with stories of kings and rulers attached to it and that’s it.
Tourists flock this place every day from all over the world, entrance to this building is about 12 Euros.(52,800/=). It’s probably one of the most visited historical sites in Italy.
Visiting this place made me appreciate the fact that Uganda is indeed gifted by nature, see all the beauty here in Jinja and the rest of Uganda. The natural soils, rivers, Kyabazinga palace,etc.
The Colosseum reminded me of our Kyabazinga palace on Bugembe hill; Jinja district which has a lot of historical stories attached to it and the other potential tourist sites. Imagine Jinja district has the longest river in the world; this alone could push our tourism revenues far if we had serous people with tourism marketing skills, customer care skills, time keeping skills and ability to be honest.

In Paris, France are several museums, one of the most popular ones is the Louvre Museum, which is among the world’s largest museums with many of the world’s most famous art pieces. Hundreds of tourist flock this place every day.
Another huge tourist attraction in Paris is the Eiffel tower; It was named after Engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built it from 1887–89.

These guys make millions and millions of Euros from this huge tourist’s attraction which is just simply a tower, you climb on it and see Paris city, that’s all. I paid 17 Euros (74,800) to reach its top level and it took me over an hour of lining up to be able to start the climb on lifts. During the wait, it would drizzle, but that didn’t deter any one from waiting. It’s one of Paris’s most visited attractions, welcoming almost seven million visitors per year.

Now note this; a mere tower, which you climb and just see the city fetches millions of dollars for the French economy per year while an old building for the Italians also does likewise. Why is that? Probably because of their excellent tourism marketing skills. Compare that with our Uganda whose tourist attractions (national parks, the Gorrillas, Source of the Nile, etc.) are far much higher than that of France and Italy. What does this unmatched beauty of ours fetch for us per year? Possibly Peanuts!! why? The answers could lay in the attitude and marketing skills of the state and non-state actors in the Uganda tourism industry. See what they are fronting (curvy women) now as the main tourist attraction for Uganda? Yet the parks, Gorrillas, River Nile,etc are still there!!

So in terms of tourists’ attractions, Uganda may be far much better than many European countries, unfortunately, we are still sleeping and many of us can’t see this. Jinja alone is endowed with lot s of tourist attractions which ideally should have translated into Billion of shillings every year, which would have been good revenues for our country.

Even today as I write this piece, if a few Ugandans woke up from sleeping and took tourism seriously ( I don’t know if curvy women would be considered a wise tourism project for international tourists), our economic situation would greatly improve.After waking up from sleeping and change of our mindset,we would also have to learn and put into practice  skills in marketing, customer care, time keeping, and ability to be honest,ability to say thank you,ability to say am sorry,ability to do what we say we would do,etc.

This country will take long to develop unless if we get serous with production (get goods to trade with other countries) and get serous with tourism Marketing. This will, 1) increase our GDP per capita, 2) balance our payments as a country. When a country exports more than it imports, that’s an economy with balance of payments surplus. It’s doing well. Uganda last had a balance of payment surplus in 1978.

This is why I feel Pastors and other Christians in Uganda and much of Africa should go beyond just praying for financial and material blessings and pray too for the blessing of perception/wisdom.

Blessings- Edward