By Edward Magumba Uncategorised 2 Comments

The 30 day Money giving challenge. By Edward

The 30 day Money giving challenge. By Edward
Recently at leadership training, we were given an assignment to be giving out money to people on a daily basis, the amount was not specified, but we were told to give and give a report on our giving. They probably want to instill in us the spirit and mindset of giving. And probably give in big ways if possible, as kings do. What they call the generosity of Kings.

As leaders, we need to learn to give on a continuous basis irrespective of the response of the receivers.The Buwenda community i live in is rural, and as is the case with many other rural communities and urban communities too, many people here habour a mindset of only receiving, they expect local politicians, government, Muzungus, rich relatives, evil spirits, NGOs, etc to give them free goodies, which may not be bad per say, but as we receive, we should also give to others. The bible is very clear on this. God does not prosper us for the purpose of raising our standard of living. He prospers us so that we can raise our standard of giving. Giving always results in receiving.

The biggest deterrent to giving is fear, the fear that if I give away too much, I won’t have enough for this or that-What some call the scarcity mindset, yet we are always encouraged to harbor the abundance mindset.

Some years ago, I used to be a big giver to ministries and individuals; I still do give but now with a lot of caution. The more I gave, the more good and hard lessons I learnt. The more I gave, the more ‘needy people’ showed up and the more abuse I faced, so I realized I couldn’t solve everyone’s problem and slowed down. I remember one man who called himself a pastor who came to me with his so-called urgent problem of rent, apparent the landlord was about to throw him out, so he pleaded with me to help him with rent, I didn’t have the money on me, but I reasoned inside that it’s important to borrow and help this pastor, so I quickly borrowed the money from a friend and gave him, little did I know that the rent was inflated. There have been many similar cases of abuse of my generosity, but at least I can now slow down, reflect and act on lessons learnt.

Some Ugandans are also not good at saying thank you, someone calls you ten times asking for money, you finally send them money via Mobile Money, but they cannot even say thank you, you call to inquire if money was received, they say yes but pretend as if they were about to call and say the thank you. Anyways the abuse by some whom we reach out to, shouldn’t deter anyone from continuing to give, but may be just do so with some caution. So I still give to good causes but after careful mental scrutiny and other budgetary considerations. Now that we were given the 30 day money giving assignment and I had to abide by it, I have been giving out money on a daily basis, which has been very easy as I receive several requests for money almost on a daily basis.

Giving to churches, para-church ministries, individuals and others has lots of advantages and teaches us many things. I should however, say that misusing/abusing the Biblical teachings on giving to extract money from followers especially by some unserious pastors shouldn’t be encouraged by anyone.
Luke 6:38 says: “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal [measure]it shall be measured to you again.” When we become givers, we move ourselves into the realm of receivers. It is an opportunity to put God’s biblical principles into action!

If the entire Body of Christ began to operate in accordance with this biblical principle, we would witness the abundance Moses experienced in the Book of Exodus. His people were so willing to give to build the sanctuary that Moses finally had to stop the giving. Exodus 36:6-7 says: “Let neither man nor woman make any more work for the offering of the sanctuary. So the people were restrained from bringing.” “For the stuff they had was sufficient for all the work to make it, and too much.”

We should also note that giving does not necessary result in instantly receiving, when we give, its important to take on an agricultural mentality. The Bible says whatever you have planted will come up.
You see, giving to God is like a farmer planting seed. The day after he plants, the farmer does not run out to his garden and say, “It didn’t work! It didn’t work! My bean seed didn’t come up.”

Today, many people function in a technological mentality. Everything is instant. We have instant downloads, instant coffee, instant banking, etc
But, the principles of biblical economics are based on farming, not technological principles. God is not the great spiritual slot machine in the sky.
You do not put in a hundred shillings and instantly get back a thousand. No, you plant a hundred shillings into God’s work. You let that seed grow, mature, and develop so that “in due season” God will return to you many times what you have planted.
It takes faith and patience to bring these God-given principles to their fullest potential. We must regularly plant our seed. At first our sowing may look futile, but it will later yield fruits.

Our giving is a reflexive response to the grace of God in our lives.It comes out of the transforming work of Christ in us. This grace is the action; our giving is the reaction. We give because He first gave to us.
Blessings- Edward

By Edward Magumba Uncategorised 1 Comment

My trip to Kampala city and what we can learn from the Founders of Mount Saint Mary’s College Namagunga – by Edward M

My trip to Kampala city and what we can learn from the Founders of Mount Saint Mary’s College Namagunga – by Edward M

Yesterday I drove to Kampala to buy some stuff, on the way and while there, I observed a few things that I would like to share with you.

First I drove past the new Jinja Bridge. It still looks very nice though there are some rumours that it has again developed cracks barely a few months after it was repaired. Hopefully it can be fixed with no extra drama.
Anyone who knows a thing about Uganda, knows that any public works that goes beyond one Billion shillings would not easy for many Ugandans or Chinese based in Uganda to manage. There will be stories of corruption, accusations, counter accusations, requests for time extensions, requests for extra money, petitions to IGG, CID, Parliament, Courts of law, State house, etc. That’s the direction the Jinja main street road took.

The Central Business district of Kampala is the most challenging place  for me to drive in, no sense of order at all by motorists, traffic hold up lasts for hours. Since many Ugandans including top policy makers have little appreciation for time keeping, nobody seems to be in a hurry to solve the Uganda traffic problem, so we may be in for a long wait until someone one day wakes up from sleep, put politics aside then get a solution. Dar es Salaam city in Tanzania has somehow found a solution to their traffic Jams, last year I was there and found them abit organized. If we were serous, all it would take would be a visit to Dar es Salaam ,interact with their city policy makers and technical people, learn lessons then come back to Kampala and apply/implement them.

Almost every shop you enter in, in Kampala, just like it is in Jinja and much of Uganda is stocked with foreign/imported products. Even the stuff I bought yesterday was imported; I actually found when the lady had just received the shipment, that means I just exported a portion of my earnings to a foreign country. Much of the stuff (fuel,shoes,pens,car,computer,phone,clothes,etc) I use on a daily basis is imported. So assuming I earn 200,000/- a month, about three quarters (150,000/-) of my salary would be going into buying foreign/imported products. This in my opinion would mean that am indirectly supporting the creation of Jobs not in Uganda but in another country. The more we buy imported stuff, the more we are exporting our earnings and the poorer we are becoming, although we may not see that. I don’t know why are we are so much fascinated by foreign stuff.

At the leadership institute, one of the requirements for gradation is writing a book. These people are encouraging us to re-claim our pens and author the story of our lives, which I like so much. Why should we all the time be buying foreign books to learn what to do? We need as many Ugandan authors as possible to write our own stories, if we don’t, other people will. Otherwise what will happen if we eat foreign/imported food, read foreign books, use foreign clothes, use foreign cars,use foreign languages,use foreign aid money, use foreign pens, shoes, or even may be have a foreign imposed leader who claim to have people power, yet at a closer look, it’s actually foreign powers propelling him,etc ? Then we take on thought patterns of those people? No wonder unnecessary foreign cultures are gaining root in Uganda. And pastors are very busy continuously “fighting” the devil.

The solution according to me would be to engage in some sort of production, say large scale agriculture and agro processing. So farmers in Busoga who are engaged in large scale sugar cane growing shouldn’t be blamed by anyone, at least they are engaging in some form of production which is contributing to national development/GDP. Anyone who is utilizing their land for commercial purposes and local productions should be applauded. I hear some fellas whom I suspect to be ignorant claiming that sugar cane growing in Busoga is causing poverty, I wonder how? Many districts in Acholi sub-region have huge chunks of idle fertile land, I don’t hear of food abundance there, I only hear of WFP feeding them, while at the same time vast chunks of fertile land lay idle next to their dwelling hats.

At our leadership Institute, we were asked to write a 2029 letter to our assessors,probably to help us develop a vision/clear mental picture of what we plan and expect to accomplish in ten years time. Good exercise. It’s always good to plan long-term.

Now as I travel to Kampala, I pass by Mount Saint Mary’s College Namagunga which is located on the Jinja –Kampala highway, its is approximately 44 kilometres east of Kampala and about 5 kilometres west of Lugazi town. The college was founded in February 1942 by Mother Mary Kevin of the Franciscan Sisters for Africa.
It seems this idea of seeing far away in the future is what the founders of this school had in mind when they decided to build this wonderful school far away from the city. Remember during the time when this school was built, colonialists where still in charge of Uganda, there was plenty of land in down town Kampala, but because of probably the foresighted of these guys,foreseeing that in the future the city would expand, these guys built as far away from the capital city as possible. Lesson learnt:-It’s always good to plan long term, today land may be cheaper in your village but ten years from now, it could cost triple than what its costing today.

Blessings- Edward

By Edward Magumba Uncategorised 0 Comments

Uganda is far much better than many European countries.

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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

By Edward Magumba Uncategorised 0 Comments

The Agricultural show in the middle of the City-by Edward Magumba

KLA SHOW

The Agricultural show in the middle of the City-by Edward Magumba

On Saturday last week after our lessons at the harvest Leadership institute in Nalya Kampala, I passed by Namboole stadium for the Harvest Money Expo. 2019, its some sort of agriculture show, somehow similar to the one we normally have at the agricultural show in Jinja. I saw lots of people checking out exhibitions,lots of machinery good for mechanized agriculture. There was a Dutch village with lots to learn, the show seems to be sponsored by among others the Dutch Embassy in Kampala.

I was glad to see that many Ugandans including those based in urban areas,  are now waking up from sleeping and getting serous with agriculture.A whole continent called Africa with 54 countries cannot be running to a single Asian country called China begging for loans,grants,donations,etc when we have huge wealth laying idle below our incredibly fertile soils.

European countries like Netherlands, Denmark and others are thriving because of taking agriculture seriously inspite of the fact that some have one planting season, little arable land, soil not as fertile as that of Uganda.

In the year 2011 I went on mission trip to the nation of Israel, while there, I was shown land where Ugandan soil was reportedly dumped and mixed with infertile Israel soil.

Israelis are the people who constructed places like Bombo Barracks, Bugolobi flats and Entebbe Airport (old one), etc. As they worked here, they realized that our soils are very fertile. So, they packed the soils that they were excavating into sacks, loaded it on the planes and brought it to Israel. The place now looks fertile with alots of bananas grown on it. It’s reported that on addition to soil, Israelis also took  back banana suckers with them.
Israel and much of the Middle East are deserts, but amidst these deserts, these countries grow so much food to the extent that Israel is now the biggest banana producing country in the Middle East and the leading exporter to Europe.

Now in our life’s journey, if we are to make it well, we have to identify who we are; our strengths and weakness as individuals and also as a nation. Then capitalize on our strengths to move forward,John Maxwell talks about this in his 15 invaluable laws of growth, under the law of Awareness.One of our strength as Uganda is fertile soils, if we take advantage of this and engaged in commercial farming, it would probably reduce on our imports and boost our economy and bring smiles on our faces.

If I had any say in national politics or policy influence, I would probably recommend that schools put a lot of emphasis on teaching agricultural topics such as agro-produce, value addition, agro-processing, commercial farming,etc.

Blessings to all – Edward

By Edward Magumba Uncategorised 0 Comments

Face to face encounter with a ‘creative’/smart beggar and the problem of traffic jams.

Face to face encounter with a ‘creative’/smart beggar and the problem of traffic jams.By Edward Magumba

On Thursday last week, I drove through Kampala, during a traffic hold, one shabbily dressed beggar with youthful looks approached me with a begging bowl. I ignored her but she persisted, so I put on a mean face and looked away. She gave up and went her ways.

But before the lights could let us go, another one appeared from nowhere, she rubs her hands on my windows perhaps to get my attention, I give her one glance and look away, she also persists and unlike the other one, this one even starts cleaning my windscreen. Somehow my heart softens, because she has done some work for me (even though I didn’t ask her to do it) I give her some money. I was amazed and impressed by her creative mind and her desire to do some work for the money she was asking for. When we work for money, we tend to attach a lot of value on it, but if we receive it freely,some of us tend not to use it wisely.

Both were not disabled, neither did any show any visible signs of illness or mental retardation,so my guess was,this is probably a mindset problem/disease that’s disturbing many of us Ugandans.They probably have the physical and mental strength to do work if they chose to, other than being on the streets.
Their physical appearance resembles that of people from Karomoja, so I assume they are from Karamoja or their parents/descendants came from there. I don’t know if coming from Karamoja is a good justification for some of these people to be on the streets but am one person who is opposed to the habit of begging as it takes away our pride and dignity. So this ‘spirit’ of begging by people on the streets and the likes should be strongly discouraged,we should instead encourage our people to embrace a positive attitude that cherishes the importance of working for money.

Re-claiming our pens (authoring the direction of our lives), taking responsibility of our lives and engaging in sustainable and productive activities is what will help us Ugandans and Africans at large.The idea of looking at others or people from far away to solve our problems should be despised.

Another encounter I had was with traffic Jams,every time I drive through Kampala, one thought that always comes to my mind is that hopefully one day, someone will receive the wisdom to solves Kampala’s traffic Jam problems. Imagine it took me over two hours to drive from down town Kampala to Mukono;lot of traffic hold up, boda-bodas riding in crazy ways, a lot of human traffic, etc. Now,who is to blame? Politics? People’s Pride? political arrogance? or What?

I don’t know if this a sign of development or what, but if our country is to reach its so-called vision of 20-40, then our city leaders would need to find a solution to the traffic jam problem. A lot of valuable time is lost in jams, time that can never be regained.
Assuming only 1000 people were delayed by two hours in the jam of last Thursday, if that time was directed towards a productive activity; see how much would have been accomplished.
I doubt if there can be much personal and national growth if we keep on wasting valuable time.

In the book of John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, under law of the Lid number 1, he says “leadership ability is the lid that determines a person’s level of effectiveness”. I wonder if our failure to solve some of our problems-like the huge traffic jams and feeding our people has something to do with the leadership abilities/limitations/low lid of our policy makers ?

Wish you all a Blessed Week.

Blessings- Edward Magumba