From Tanzania Corespondent Lute Wa Lutengano…..

I am now in Kampala, the land of Kaguta the son of Museveni. I seem to have begun my life in this city of Bodabodas, as the thousands of motorcycle taxis are known here, from the wrong foot. On my arrival on the night of last Saturday, I checked into this favorite hotel of mine along Kampala road. I immediately rushed into the hotel pub cum restaurant to have a snack before I could hit my bed.

Inside the joint I was pleasantly surprised to meet a Tanzanian colleague of mine, actually a former Arusha resident, one Mfinanga, who was in Kampala to attend some regional conference. As he was leaving early in the morning for Brussels he informed me that I am lucky as my young brother from Arusha , Suk Chat, was also in town. I promised I would look for him the next day.

After my morning official duties I began looking for Suk Chat in all the other establishments in the city. The last I heard of his whereabouts was that he was the previous evening seen at Speke Hotel. Late in the afternoon I returned into my hotel only to be told by the hotel management that actually Suk Chat had all the time been staying in the same hotel I was in. To make matters worse he had now checked out sometimes around noon and left for Arusha.

I was demoralized and decided to proceed to the Grand Hotel Imperial where on Sunday afternoons there is some live band music on its Coffee Terrace bar. There I met more Tanzanians attending the several conferences taking place in this city of many hills.

It was here that I also met a long lost Kampala Cab Driver friend of mine. He is an elderly man who is a Baganda. I engaged him into some conversation, by first wondering why there were now fewer Bodabodas on the streets of Kampala than during my previous visit two or so years ago. There is a major crackdown on the errand Bodabodas in town, he explained.

For many years, I was told, the Bodabodas had violated all traffic rules known to mankind. Enough is enough, the Government decided to arrest the situation. Actually the Kampala Traffic Police do literally ambush the Bodaboda cyclists. This has sometimes led to some comical tragedies whereby the driver jumps off his motorbike and disappears leaving behind the hapless passenger to his or her own peril.

The name Bodaboda, I was told, was coined in line with the history of the origins of this mode of transport. It is said that some many years ago they were actually the major means of ferrying people across the no-man’s-land between the Kenya and Uganda border – that is Border to Border.

Now this mode of transport is catching up back home in Tanzania. Unfortunately it is taking a more tragic mode, as criminals of all types are now using it to rob and even kill their victims. This is all very strange to Ugandans.

My Ugandan friend, Steven, that is his name, was very shocked to learn about this turn of events in the Bodaboda business in Tanzania.

However he had one outstanding commendation to Tanzania’s unity. For example, he was a little surprised to learn that a bona-fide Tanzania was free to buy and own land or a farm in any part of the country.

In Uganda, he told me, it was almost impossible for him to move north or in some parts of Uganda and buy, own and build or farm there. He lamented, however, that others from other parts of Uganda were free to come down to Kampala and its surrounding areas to just do that. That is unfair, he told me.

I believe he was a blue blood Baganda.

Photograph by David Anthony Hohol

Since our launch in June of 2009, RELATIVITY OnLine has continually attempted to reveal the multiplicity of perspective; global viewpoints that make our multi-colored neon kaleidoscope world the wondrous embodiment of humanity’s spirit and soul. This week marks the first inclusion of our Photo of the Week, an image of a single moment from somewhere across our planet that will stay with us forever - an immortal moment in time.

This week’s photo was taken a few hours outside of Uganda’s capital city of Kampala. The haunting eyes of a banana farmer’s year old daughter reflect a thousand stories from the world’s cradle of civilization and the purity of innocence that was once within us all.

Being gay may soon be punishable by death in the African country of Uganda. Under proposed legislation, homosexual or lesbian Ugandans would face life in prison, people who ‘aid or abet’ them could serve up to 7 years, and those being convicted of same-sex rape or having HIV/AIDS would be executed.  Proposed Ugandan Bill No. 18 states: “A person who commits the offence of aggravated homosexuality shall be liable on conviction to suffer death.”

MSNBC‘s Rachael Maddow here interviews one Richard Cohen, an American Evangelical Christian who “cured” himself of his former homosexuality through the help of the Church. Ugandans have borrowed heavily from the American Christian right and their argument that gays can be reprogrammed through therapy to live straight lives. The United States, home to the most radical of Christians, have American congressman and religious leaders quietly inspiring and even backing the Ugandan “Kill the Gays” bill. Rachael Maddow, by the way, is the first openly gay news anchor on American Television. It makes for quite the interview.

Uganda‘s Arinaitwe Rugyendo gets straight to the point; whites and blacks have issues with one another. In terms of Africa and the West, whites have told and continue to tell blacks what is moral, right, and just; continue to import aid, while at the same time importing dependency and destruction. The Global Village is changing things and the voices of Africa, like those of RELATIVITY OnLine’s Arinaitwe Rugyendo, are standing up to be heard.

When David Anthony Hohol, dropped me an email two weeks ago, asking me to contribute to ‘Relativity Online,’ I was surprised.

Surprised because; ‘how could a white request a black for a contribution to his own idea?’

In our cultural context and also owing to our colonial history and its legacies, whites are viewed as omniscient species who regard anything from Africa as ‘trash.’

Their perspective is supposed to be the global trend of things. They are the ones who export, nurture and consolidate democracy.

They are the ones who have the right to divide the world into moral and immoral; poor and rich; dictatorial and free; terrorist and moderate, etc.

But David convinced me beyond these socially constructed biases.

He convinced me to buy into his idea with a flattering sweetener; ‘I bought a copy of Red Pepper (my newspaper) while I was there and enjoyed it.’

That tickled me a bit. He had traveled to my country and enjoyed every bit of it and appreciated what it has to offer for the rest of the world. I and four other young colleagues own Red Pepper (www.redpepper.ug ) and it has fast become Uganda’s leading daily tabloid.

In our exchange, David revealed he had visited Uganda and had particularly fell in love with the country’s rare Mountain Gorillas, found not anywhere in the world except in the densely impenetrable forest of Bwindi, in the South West.

It was this visit that prompted David to start a non-profit on-line magazine, where writers from around the global would ‘share their perspectives on life and living.’

“I am looking to tear down stereotypes and build bridges between cultures,” he pressed on.

“Tales and discussions of daily life in your country are part of what I am looking for, as it is often a misunderstood and mysterious part of the world. On a bigger scale, what perceptions do people have of your part of the world that is wrong? If you could stand in front of a group of people from the other side of the world, what would you want them to know about you and your country?  What might they be surprised by?” he asked me.

From this, I realized that the world has changed. It has become a small village where, for survival’s sake, every opinion matters. At last, here was a ‘foreigner’ with a strong passion to tell the ‘African story’ to the rest of the world.David’s concept enriches the relativism debate with fresh labels that rule the global village. These are the rules that take cognizance of the fact that even the most misunderstood have something to offer. And that most importantly, even a dead clock is always correct twice day. The world has changed. Technology has broken barriers. Quantity has become quality. Interpretation of what is democratic has been democratized and ‘relativised.’

It is difficult to own a view point and make it absolute for the rest of the world. Again, because of technology, the world has since become a dictatorship of relativism and universalism. Only when historic stereotypes are broken, will the world become a better place.

My country, Uganda, is located in the epicenter of the Great Lakes Region of Africa and is part of the wider East African Community of five countries of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi.

It has had its fare share of conflict, disease, poverty and genocide.

Through the media, most especially from the West, the rest of world is made to believe these problems are a reflection of a backward society, yet their manifestations have a root in the colonial construction of the African people as essentially backward and primitive. They also have a root in the global competition for African resources, which competition often gets ‘conflictual,’ because of a proliferation of weapons from the West that fuel disease, genocide and install dictators.

The thrill that Relativity Online brings into this debate is the fact that it will provide a rare platform where the true picture about issues and phenomena from around the globe will thrive.

Many of us in Africa have no access to the kind of medium where our continent’s story can be told.

We only do so through our own media which is of course neither believed nor acknowledged. Our media is the unfortunate beneficiary of the unprincipled divide between the ‘respected’ and ‘peripheral’ media. But this doesn’t mean Africa has no bad story. It should come out and attract criticism for that is what relativity is all about. In fact, the lobbyists and spin doctors who are paid to ‘paint’ a good picture of Africa rarely do it perfectly, surrendering a huge amount for space for the rest of the world to paint a picture they want their audiences to see.

But we cannot keep playing the blame game all the time. The Internet has turned our huge planet into a small expression on a computer screen, and will seek to break these barriers, democratize the space for expression, and acknowledge the Africans as some form of very significant species.

Africa feeds the world, most especially the West, through immigrant labor and raw materials. The West on the other hand, feeds Africa with aid and firearms. Yet the Western Media seeks to feed the world with what the West wants the rest of the world to hear; a continent of disease, corruption, dictators, famine and war.

But with technology and the invasion of cyberspace, where will these ideas and stereotypes be sold? Who will buy them?

“If you could stand in front of a group of people from the other side of the world, what would you want them to know about you and your country? What might they be surprised by?” David asked me.

This side of the world is hungry for a true picture. It wants a picture of hope, progress, opportunity and optimism about Africa. Is that too much to ask?

From Arinaitwe Rugyendo…

A country’s independence day is always a time for celebration and reflection. In 1962 Uganda became and independent nation, free from British colonization. The theme for Uganda’s birthday celebration this year was unity. RELATIVTY OnLine’s Ugandan correspondent Arinaitwe Rugyendo takes inside the reason’s why unity is badly needed in the country known as the Pearl of Africa and reveals that despite the tremendous gains made, a country ravaged and left for dead by extension still has a long way to go. Straight and to the point, Rugyendo once again takes inside the heart of his country.

On 9^th October, 1962, Uganda was officially declared an independent state form Britain and an irreversible course of self-determination was set into motion.

This means that the country, just like the rest of Africa that was going independent, would determine its destiny economically, socially and politically.

Politically, Uganda has had the largest collection of presidents in Africa, with no meaningful democratic elections until 1996, when the first ever and truly democratic elections were held in the country ushering in a president who earlier ruled unconstitutionally for ten years. President Yoweri Museveni has since been winning successive elections, putting his total years he has been in power at 23 years!

But before Museveni presented himself before an electorate in 1996, the previous 20 years had had 8 presidents six of whom either grabbed power militarily or were helped to the throne by the invisible hand of the former colonial masters. One of the presidents, Prof. Yusuf Lule, actually ruled only for 68 days before being deposed by the military.

The other one, President Idi Amin, largely known to the rest of the world as the mass murderer who butchered his own people to retain power, had to be driven out forcefully by a combined force of Ugandan exiles and the Tanzanian army in 1979. He died in his comfortable flat in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where the Saudi King had offered him protection and security.

For decades, Uganda’s economy suffered from devastating economic policies and instability, leaving Uganda as one of the world’s poorest countries. Yet at the time of independence, Uganda had the same Gross Domestic Product as that of South Korea or even surpassed it. Today, the two countries are miles apart.

It is only at 47 years that the country has commenced economic reforms and growth has been robust. In 2008, Uganda recorded 7% growth despite the global downturn and regional instability.

Uganda has substantial natural resources, including fertile soils, regular rainfall, and sizable mineral deposits of copper and cobalt. The country has largely untapped reserves of both crude oil and natural gas.

Agriculture is the most important sector of the economy, employing over 80% of the work force, with coffee accounting for the bulk of export revenues. In the 1950s the British Colonial regime encouraged some 500,000 subsistence farmers to join co-operatives.

Since 1986, the government (with the support of foreign countries and international agencies) has acted to rehabilitate an economy devastated during the regime of Idi Amin and the subsequent civil war.

Inflation ran at 240% in 1987 and 42% in June 1992, and was 5.1% in 2003. It is now project at about 14%.

Between 1990 and 2001, the economy grew because of continued investment in the rehabilitation of infrastructure, improved incentives for production and exports, reduced inflation, gradually improved domestic security, and the return of exiled Indian-Ugandan entrepreneurs between 1990 and 2001.

So, this month, 9^th October, it will be that day once again on Uganda’s political calendar when the country will be celebrating 47 years of self-rule.

At this age, people have achieved so much and are beginning to settle down. The problem with Uganda is that as it settles down, some of the ills, such as underlying ethnic tensions continue to bedevil the country’s attempt to fully unify and achieve big-time development.

By 1986, Uganda had only 30 districts. 23 years later, these have multiplied to over 80 and we are still counting. And as long as any ethnic grouping, however small, asks for a district status in exchange for votes for the incumbent president, it will get one. This has of course exerted more pressure on the government as small district units become administratively difficult to run and maintain by the central government whose budget is partly funded by western donors.

On September 11, these tensions raised to the surface as security forces battled young rioters on the streets of Kampala City over the government’s move to block the king of one of the dominant ancient kingdoms that made up a republic called Uganda at independence from visiting a township in his area of ‘jurisdiction.’

Over 20 people were killed during the riots that rocked the city and its suburbs. Soon thereafter, about 1000 rioters were arrested for torching shops, private cars, burning up police stations and vandalizing business infrastructure. They have all since been charged with terrorism.

The Buganda Kingdom has been ethnically clamoring for ‘independence’ from Uganda in a move many Ugandans say is an attempt to disintegrate Uganda on ethnic grounds and one which is seriously retarding the country’s progress towards unity and federation with the rest of Africa.

Such moves are seen not only to appear to be internally generated, but also engineered by foreign countries who do not want to see Africa progress from unified position.

That is the characteristic that cuts across many countries of Africa- the lack of real independence. Because they are poor, they still have to depend on their former masters for handouts. Not even trends like digitization, liberalization, globalization and technological concentration have helped redress this situation.

The West still dictates to our military. The British and U.S embassies in Kampala-Uganda plus the residences of their respective ambassadors are heavily fortified and the link roads thereto completely blocked from public usage except themselves, their staff and their dogs.

No wonder during the celebrations to mark 47 years, all speeches will be delivered in English, half our budget will still be funded by foreigners and from mobile phones, to cars, to clothes to the fanfare and the military parade, everything of our lives will still reflect total foreign dominance!

The future of Africa-though promising… is still distantly bleak!

Teeming with abundant natural resources, fertile land and open spaces, from certain perspectives, Africa is among the richest continents on the planet. All a region needs to thrive is at the fingertips of so many African nations, yet so many do not. From inside Uganda’s capital of Kampala, RELATIVTY’s OnLine’s African correspondent Arinaitwe Rugyendo blames not an impoverished populace but an impoverished sense of national leadership.

Africa has already hit the 1 billion mark population wise. For all intents and purposes, this is a huge population and a big market too. There is no reason therefore why Africa should not be stepping on the progress pedal.

But does it surprise anyone that it’s only in Africa where resources have become a curse? When I mention this, the middle-eastern forums on this platform must be holding their breath, for in their countries, oil has resulted in blessings.

In Nigeria, one of the top ten oil producing countries in Africa, a civil war is raging and tribes living in the oil rich delta are constantly facing-off with government security in pursuit of ‘black gold.’ Their argument is that since oil was discovered in their village, the rest of the country has no claim over it.

In Sudan, the civil war that broke out in the south but ended a few years ago in a power-sharing arrangement between the black animist south and the mainly Arab north, left well over 2 million people dead, all because of resources including oil. In the Western Region of Darfur, thousands of people are dying largely because the state and the separatists in the region want a big share of the oil prospects.

A more vivid case is in Angola where apart from the diamonds, oil was a constant factor in an all-out war between UNITA rebels and government forces that left well over two million people dead. The nonsense ended only when government special forces finally killed UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, nearly a decade ago.

Preliminary reports are continuing to show that much of Uganda could also be a potential oil well. Recent reports indicate that the discovery of oil, which was unveiled some three years ago, show we could be sitting on some 3 billion barrels of oil already.

But the African curse that has come to define our way of utilizing our resources has already caught up with us.

In the ancient Bunyoro Kingdom in western Uganda, where much of the oil has been discovered, the indigenous Banyoro have started pushing for the purification of Bunyoro, so that the non-Banyoro whom they refer to as immigrants vacate their ‘country.’

They have also demanded that the central government give them an equal share of the oil resources despite a constitutional provision that says all national resources are vested in the hands of the government for the equitable utilization on a national level.

The quarrelling has gone tribal and tensions are already high, with property and businesses belonging to non-Banyoro being torched at night by unknown people. Suddenly, a huge resource has already divided the country along ethnic lines and a genocide maybe the next step if the political leadership in Uganda fails to manage the tensions.

To cool tempers, President Yoweri Museveni moved in last month and crowned the Bunyoro anti-colonialism King Kabalega a national hero. Much as it was well-deserved, it did not appear to appease the Banyoro enough, so they continued agitating.

Early this month, the president moved in again and wrote a proposal to his cabinet to the effect that all local political offices up to what the municipal level should be exclusively held by Banyoro. The letter which he wrote for the cabinet to discuss first as a way of appeasing the Banyoro leaked to the press and enraged the whole country, with pundits accusing the president of encouraging tribalism.

Despite this, the Banyoro are determined to side with the president in making sure that non-Banyoro do not dominate them politically over their ‘resource.’ The Banyoro are historically a solid people, having almost successfully resisted colonialism in Uganda until other neighboring kingdoms secretly schemed with the British and finally betrayed King Kabalega who was captured while fleeing. With that said, he successfully repulsed a well-organized British contingent over a century earlier and not until the entire Bunyoro population was almost decimated did he surrender. The massacre is still a subject of a court battle for reparations between the British government and the Bunyoro Kingdom.

But with all this, ping-pong is going on instead of concentrating on drilling, refining and exporting the oil resource. That is Africa, however – always mired into problems, from which it is completely unable to extricate itself and move on with the rest of the world. The answer therefore is not whether Africa is poor – The bottom line is that Africa is poorly managed.

This is why the vast majority of African countries are clustered at or near the bottom of the United Nations Human Development Index – in other words they have a pretty appalling standard of living.

South Sudan for example could be the poorest region of the continent. It’s bigger than Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi combined. It has tremendous and very fertile land, enormous rainfall, tremendous agricultural resources, minerals and oil. But everywhere you go, a tribal war between the north and the south still looms, even after five years of a lull.

Because of tribalism, the discovery of oil in Uganda may soon make it volatile instead of a powerful oil-producing nation. And the beat goes on.

From Arinaitwe Rugyendo. . .

Today, we will traverse the world of African science. And without seeking to ruffle my atheist readers, I would like to submit that God is probably the greatest inventor of our times; having created the universe and all that inhabits it.

After him, virtually everything around us seems to have been invented by someone like us. From the story of creation, to that of Brin and Sergey who invented the world’s greatest search engine, Google; man has been using the world around him to invent something for the betterment of humanity.

But for centuries, the word ‘invention’ has been a one-sided story, almost churning out only inhabitants of the ‘North’ as the greatest inventors. The only recorded inventions have shown and sought to portray the majority white species as the greatest of inventors. And with the help of the biased Western media, not a single African invention has been recorded anywhere, either by African themselves – who pride in oral records – or by the whites, giving this impression that whites are the only inventors the world has ever seen.

Without, of course, forgetting how this dichotomous description of the world we live in today has impacted on the world trade – where white-only inventions dot all trade systems and give Africa an unfair competition on the world stage- the North will always be richer than the South. If you take a look around yourself, from what we wear, sleep on, eat and use for our means of transport and communication, you get that thread that leads you to one part of the world that is responsible for our lives and survival – the North!

Therefore, can there ever be an African inventor whose work can also be recognized on the world stage?

This is the question that a Ugandan ‘alternative medicine’ researcher named Vincent Twinomusinguzi, has answered, claiming he has invented organic bio-chemical compounds that can help treat human, plant and animal diseases. He says these compounds can also prevent such diseases as cassava mosaic, banana and coffee wilt, as well provide preservation for food for generations. His work is baffling many Ugandan scientists and soon, the World Health Organization.

“We hereby DECLARE that we have successfully manufactured the first ORGANIC BIO-CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS,” he declares on his company, Twinomusinguzi Uganda Limited,’ website.

He claims he chose to be silent for over 30 years, until he was convinced that his discoveries, which have the potential of turning the country and the continent of Africa into the world’s food basket, work.

The website, which I invite you to access and send him your own reactions, showcases some ten bio chemical compounds, which he claims he discovered and manufactured in significant quantities. The compounds are also indicated as internationally patented.

“Here (his website) you will read about our inventions. We also describe our purely Organic Bio-Chemical Compounds as well as give interesting facts about our bodies.”

His research, evidently in the mold of late Ugandan medical Prof. Charles Ssali’s failed (or sabotaged) Mariandina anti AIDS Pill, which rocked the scientific world in the 1990s, is surely ruffling some hard-nosed Ugandan and international scientists.

Prof. Ssali, a Ugandan scientist, claimed to have invented an Anti-AIDS pill, but his efforts were frustrated by a donor-dependent government of Uganda and international pharmaceuticals, calling his inventions ‘fake.’ His pleas to openly prove his inventions were repeatedly frustrated till he died a miserable man.

But for Twinomusinguzi, who first went silent about his discoveries, quietly patented them and is extremely cautious. He believes his ground-breaking research is purely nature-driven and is technically geared towards harnessing nature’s organic matter for the production of compounds that will enhance our immune system and sustain food security.

“Nature has been the source of health and wealth since the beginning of time. Our proven organic treatment not only revitalizes you, but ensures you will remain that way. Plants and animals are conditioned to heal themselves the most natural way, so we tap into nature to assist them attain this,” he says of his research, which he believes will boost the organic food revolution currently rocking modern science.

All these compounds, the details of which can be accessed on his website, have also anti-biotical elements that can solve complications associated with human diseases such as Asthma, Bronchomittis, Peptic Ulcer, Cancer of the uterus, Abdominal Convulsions, High Blood Pressure, Abdominal Ulcer, Typhoid, Prostate Cancer, Hormone Imbalance(Reproductive – males), Hormone Imbalance (Reproductive – females), General Body Imbalance, Body Resistance, All infectious Diseases, Diphtheria, Sickle Cells, Pyroganic Avetures (Gout), Anemia, etc.

These claims however, have not been independently verified. The World Health Organization, on the other hand, has yet to even talk to this company or test its claims.

But a confident Twinomusinguzi says he is not bothered.

“Science has to be backed up by experimental tests. We are not rushing to tell anybody about our work. Words don’t work. What makes us is what we do, not what we say or appear to say,” he adds.

And he claims that one day a Cuban pharmacist wanted to offer over 200 million dollars to buy his patents but he refused.

“The pharmaceutical companies are out there looking for this kind of knowledge. If I sold it, the next day you would see our pharmacies full of my products. This knowledge is supposed to make Africans rich. With it, we will become a hub for organic food for the rest of the world. To me this is the time for Africa to show its potential. Only time will tell,” he says.

The crave for organicity amongst agriculturalists, food vendors and scientists, is skyrocketing prices for organic products the world over, so much so that countries that boast of this technology in the future will reap in the same magnitude of benefits as the oil- producing countries are doing today.

The sky is the limit for Africa…

Once again Ugandan correspondent Arinaitwe Rugyendo takes RELATIVITY OnLine inside Africa and its complicated nuance and history. Rugyendo believes the past contributes to the current issues Africa faces, but also calls upon his people to take responsibility for themselves. He presents a realistic and hopeful vision of Africa’s future, one filled with potential and opportunity, if only the right steps are taken.         

If I were to stand in front of a group of people from the other side of the world, what would I want them to know about Uganda and Africa? What might they be surprised by?

When I was thinking about what answers might fit this question, I realized with the coming of the internet, our world is becoming a smaller place. With no borders to cross, anybody could get all the information they want about Uganda by a click of the mouse.

But not everything can be accessed on the internet. There is so much to write about Uganda. There are stories of success, of brilliant people making ground-breaking scientific discoveries never recognized on the world stage, the best weather patterns in the world – where you don’t hear words like summer or winter – which results in the best greenery on the planet and the natural organic foodstuffs that dot the countryside. And I haven’t even mentioned the very warm and welcoming people. This is my Uganda, christened ‘The Pear of Africa’ by British Britain’s World War II Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill.

Beneath the reportage about wars, destruction, disease, dictators, corruption and underdevelopment, is a story of hope for the African continent; a continent usually known for its dark side, a continent many prefer to call ‘Third World.’

“There is a true picture of Africa, a picture of hope and progress, of opportunity and optimism,” I wrote back to my editor who asked me about my next topic for Relativity Online Magazine. 

But most importantly, judging from the comments I got from my last month’s article, I realize that more than ever, Africa is faced with opportunity, meaning that the whole notion of it being called the ‘Third World’ is no longer holding ground. What we have is a flat planet, where Africa is slowly being exposed to similar environments and opportunities. Only the way we respond to what lays before us appears to be different.

Through the continued importation of technology and goods and services from the West, along with hundreds of tourists visiting the so-called ‘Dark Continent,’ business people hunting for its assets , industrialized nations donating huge amounts of money to African governments to keep Africa green, and countries like China dashing to Africa for its natural resources, Africa’s place in the international trade system has been guaranteed as the real donor to the rest of the world . . . and therefore is an ‘equal.’ And if that is the case, then we can safely say that there is no 1^st, 2^nd or 3^rd world. The world is now flat!

Uganda, for instance, has the best coffee in the world, but because we export it as a raw material to the West, value is added to it. By extension, when the West sells this processed coffee back to Africa, it’s monetary value increases and is able to employ more people. If a kilogram of Ugandan coffee beans fetches about $10 on the world market, the processors in the West are able to earn ten times what Uganda takes home by exporting it back to Africa as a finished product. Therefore, in the world trade system, Uganda and the ‘third world,’ seem to be the real donors and matter most to the rest of the world. So, how can they be ‘Third World?’

The world should be told why gold necklace they wear, the diamond ring the buy for a wedding, the organic food they eat and the market that opens up to its product is African. The fact that Western industrialists and businessmen continue to interest themselves in African raw materials and then send these goods back to into the African market in exchange for money, means the world has been flat.

This is the world that 24 year-old Marlena from Australia, seemed to envisage while commenting on my last month’s article.

She said:

“Although I have not been to Uganda, I have visited Africa 3 times. Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa were all beautiful and I want to see more of Africa in the future. The word that kept going though my mind when I was there was ‘why?’ Why is a continent so rich in natural resources, so poor, so malnourished, so embroiled in conflict, and so lost? I mean no disrespect with this question, but just wonder why so much potential is being untapped. A part of me wonders if the problem is learned helplessness, the leftover psychological scars of colonization.”

My response is straight and simple- bad leadership and poor technology!

Although every development-oriented African has been grappling with this same question for the last 50 years, colonialism, which is largely blamed for our underdevelopment, has been away for nearly the same time. True, colonialism left a huge scar on many African potential economies. Their growths have been largely hampered by the effects of colonialism. Africa was largely Balkanized as different colonial masters competed over its resources. And there is no doubt that much of the fine infrastructure we see dotting Western capitals like Brussels was largely built using the plundered resources of Africa. The question of slavery and how it depleted Africa of its human resources is a further vivid example of why Africa largely lagged behind.

But I do not entirely blame this for the African misery. No African country is under colonialism now.  I believe we were colonized largely because we were disorganized. Our chiefs were greedy and gave out huge resources and land to the colonialists for exchange of things like necklaces. Colonialism cannot be the reason why this disorganization is still with us today.

The answer is that the African political leadership is corrupt and bankrupt. 400 million dollars of Uganda’s annual 3 billion dollar budget is stolen by public officials and politicians every year. What this means is that if the leadership cared, this stolen money would be invested in developing technologies and add value to our raw materials, so we can more ably compete with the rest of the world.

Africa needs three things: good and patriotic leadership, Western markets for our products and push for more science. But because the leadership has played into the unprincipled stereotypical classification of Africa as ‘third world,’ ‘developing,’ and ‘backward,’ meaning that nothing good can come out of the continent, a sense of hopelessness keeps hovering over everyone, with no attempt to harness our huge natural resources.

But now that Africa has been exposed through the media and the internet, many of our scientists are beginning to get down to work.

One such scientist is a man named Vincent Twinomusinguzi, a Ugandan who has invented organic bio-chemical compounds that that can preserve organic foods in their natural form for a long time, preventing animal and plant diseases. It is a near guarantee for food production and security, and also includes compounds that can cure human ailments. What this revolution is hoping to achieve is that it will be transforming Uganda, and Africa, into the undisputed organic food basket for the rest of the world. All this is happening from a ‘Third World’ country, yet inventors are supposed to come from the ‘Developed World,’ an indication that slowly, the world is becoming flat.

From Arinaitwe Rugyendo. . .

From Lute Wa Lutengano . . .

One Timothy Ekironyoro and a nubile Ugandan beauty, Susan Mofeti, had just got married in Uganda a few weeks ago. After the well attended and celebrated event they decided to disappear for a well deserved honeymoon.

What would be more exotic than a stay in one of the most exotic places in the world, Rio de Janeiro – the city of congas and samba carnivals; the city of the Copa Cabana and Ipanema beaches; the city of golden beauties and tequila nights. The young Ugandan couple must surely have enjoyed their stay.

After their blissful honeymoon, they boarded an international flight from Rio to Paris, where they most likely hoped to spend a few days before flying back to Uganda. As fate would have it, the couple boarded the now infamous Air France flight that disappeared over the Atlantic.

The tragic event of the Air France flight jolted many people around the world as being one of the most heart jerking accidents in recent memory. For a short time, the whole world became one in grieving for the sudden loss of life of the otherwise normal travelers.

The Americans were, as usual, fast enough to declare two of their compatriots on that flight. This was not the case with several other countries. For example, the fate of the couple, Mr. and Mrs. Ekironyoro, was not to be known until a few days later.

Stephen Wamono, the Administrative Attaché at the Ugandan embassy in Paris said, “We were grieving because lives had been lost and we were sorry for our French friends. We didn’t have any idea Ugandans were involved.”

The mere thought that the bodies of this young Ugandan couple are lying somewhere at the bed of the vast Atlantic waters, thousands of miles from the ‘Pearl of Africa’, their motherland, was enough to bring back some nearly tragic memories of my own.

Back in mid 80s, I and my compatriot, one Amant Macha, found ourselves sojourning in the land of the Aussies, surrounded by the vast waters of the Pacific. In the course of our movements, we boarded an Air New Zealand flight from Melbourne to Auckland.

Mid air, not long after takeoff, an engine caught fire. I remember narrating this episode some years back, but what I did not write about then was the haunting and very resigned thought of a distant and despondent death. That contemplation of us, two forlorn Tanzanians, in a plane with more than two hundred passengers, having flown over thousands of miles from Dar es Salaam to the end of the world, had only come to die alone.

As the plane wobbled over the Pacific skies, I was slowly, with the added stimulus of the generous amounts of whisky served, philosophizing about my unique soon-to-be death.

I resigned to my fate, which I contended had long been determined and that after my short stint in this world, the son of the Bena from Njombe from the Southern Highlands of Tanzania, would plummet to his death from the skies over the Pacific; that his body would soon become a snack for some Pacific Ocean sharks.

But as fate would have it, the engine fire was put out by an airborne fire fighting plane and we limped through the air back in Melbourne; after which the whisky took the better of me.

The passengers of the Air France flight were not as lucky as I . . . and for that I am grateful.

Born and raised in Uganda’s Western District of Mbarara, Staff Writer Arinaitwe Rugyendo is a young media entrepreneur. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Makerere University in Kampala and is currently working towards a Master’s in New Media and Society from the University of Leicester in England. Rugyendo has worked in the field of journalism for more than a decade and currently is co-owner and operator of ‘Red Pepper’, Uganda’s leading daily tabloid newspaper. He maintains his country has as a unique and important story, grounded in its fervent support of liberation movements in the DRC, Rwanda, Southern Sudan, South Africa, Burundi and Somalia, that needs to be told. Outspoken, undeviating, and unafraid to the speak the truth, Rugyendo represents RELATIVITY OnLine’s candid search for realistic portrayals of the world in which we all live. Rugyendo’s newspaper can also be seen online at  http://www.redpepper.ug/