BizCLIR

For more than 20 years, Uganda has worked to overcome its nineteenth- and twentieth-century legacies of colonialism and repressive government. The country has improved education at all levels, strengthened its infrastructure, invited investment through incentives and streamlined access to business opportunities, and increased domestic connections to key technologies such as mobile telephones and the Internet. Uganda has also recognized the importance of regional trade and international markets, serving as a charter member of the East African Community (EAC), which includes the implementation of a Customs Union and other critical regional reforms. The results of Uganda’s efforts amount, at least in part, to an African success story: Uganda’s annual growth between 1994 and 2004 averaged around 6.7%, the fourteenth highest rate for that period in the world.[1]

 

Yet Uganda remains deeply impoverished, with low per capita income ($260 “per head”), high illiteracy (about 76% for men and 58% in women), and low life expectancy (less than 55 years for both men and women). The country recently recorded the fastest population growth in the world – its estimated population growth rate from 2004–2050 is 375.7% – and the lowest median age in the world – 14.8 years. Uganda also must cope with a recent history of violence in its northern regions that, as of late summer 2008, was threatening to reemerge.[2]

 

Notwithstanding its orientation over the past generation toward economic growth, Uganda harbors severe structural impediments against turning around the economic fortunes of its citizenry. This is reflected in the most recent Doing Business report, issued in September 2008, where Uganda ranked 111th – a decrease of six places from the year before. The fact that, as noted throughout this report, official corruption persists within nearly all aspects of doing business – particularly where micro-enterprises and smaller businesses are concerned – means that the country’s entrepreneurs are perennially burdened by unpredictable conditions and institutionalized cynicism that often overwhelm their prospects for success. The similarly unyielding atmosphere of outdated laws, poor access to markets, and tortured conditions for land ownership that severely hamper the economic potential of that resource means that Uganda remains ill-equipped to face the global financial turmoil that has rocked international markets in 2008.  

 

---