Hitting messenger: would Africa pass test on free press

In Uganda, the state covertly intimidate and influence dismissal from duty of journalists thought to be ‘critical’ to government

Alon Mwesigwa in Kampala

Taylor Krauss, an American journalist and freelance filmmaker was last July deported from Uganda after spending three days in detention. His crime was that he was found filming Dr Kiiza Besigye, the main opposition figure to president Museveni. Government says he had entered the country without journalist accreditation.

Krauss’ equipment was taken, footage deleted, and he was interrogated for several hours by the Uganda Police in Kampala.

Krauss is just one of tens of hundreds of journalists that face attacks on the continent. A report released on Tuesday on the press freedoms in Uganda, showed that 124 violations targeting journalists were recorded last year. Eighty five of these were by the Uganda Police.

Titled Narrowing space; media under attack, by the Human Rights Network for Journalist Uganda (HRNJ-U) and Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa (OSIEA), the report says the media in Uganda faced the toughest year in 2013 as reports of attacks increased, with two journalists being killed under unclear circumstances.

“The deaths reveal the extreme dangers faced by journalists in the execution of their work. The risk is higher with journalists who work during odd hours of the night, particularly female journalists,” said the report, which interviewed victims, witnesses, and alleged perpetrators.  

“Police employed various tactics like detention without trial, roughing up journalists, barring them from accessing news scenes, and deliberately tear gassing them,” says the report.

The report says government officials influencing dismissal of reporters. Some journalists in Uganda lost their jobs after they hosted opposition figures, the government regarded as ‘dangerous’ and were inciting the violence.     

Last year, the report says, two laws inimical to free press were passed. The Uganda Communications Act 2013 and the Pubic Order Management Act 2013. The former empowers the minister of Information to give directive to the communications commission to investigate journalists and media houses thought to go against their guidelines.

The latter provides that a journalist would be arrested if found covering a gathering of more than three people without police permission. 

Uganda’s Daily monitor and Red pepper newspapers were closed for ten days after they published a leaked letter that said Museveni was grooming his son to succeed him.  

The UN Special Rapporteur to Uganda Margaret Ssekagya said: “The report highlights a worrying trend by revealing the perpetrators. The courts must adjudicate and ensure the rights of journalists aren’t violated.”

Yet Uganda is not alone.

In the East African region, reports of media coming under attack have come to the fore. After the September Westgate Mall terrorist attacks in Kenya, Police Inspector-General David Kimaiyo threatened to arrest journalists John Allan Namu and Mohammed Ali of KTN television after they aired a story that raised questions over the conduct and coordination of security forces at the time of the attack.

Kimaiyo said the journalists intended to incite the public against government.

Last December, Kenya parliament passed two laws thought to be targeting the media. Journalists went to court and on January 31, a Nairobi-based court halted implementation of the Media Council Act 2013 and Kenya Information and Communications (Amendment) Act 2013 until the court considers the legal questions therein.

The media in Kenya says the laws violate Article 34 of Kenya’s constitution, which guarantees the media sector protection from government influence.  

In Tanzania, the situation is not any better.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) last August reported that some journalists have been attacked while critical media was being shut down.

In July 2012, CPJ says, the Tanzania’s Information Ministry indefinitely suspended the leading critical weekly, MwanaHalisi; its editor Saed Kubenea said the government-ordered shutdown emanated from the paper’s in-depth coverage of a 2012 physicians’ strike.

In Rwanda, journalists have been exiled to Uganda and other countries while others have been imprisoned for allegedly defaming President Paul Kagame.

Elsewhere on the continent, Aljazeera journalists, a BBC correspondent, and Dutch newspaper and radio journalist among others are under-going trial in Egypt for allegedly spreading false news and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which was designated a terrorist organisation. The trial has instigated would outcry over flinching press freedom on the continent.

In Somalia, CPJ says in 2012 alone twelve journalists were killed while on duty. In the capital Mogadishu, four journalists were dead in a 24-hour period in September 2012. The statistic makes Somalia one of the worst places for journalists on the continent.

CPJ has also listed Eritrea, Ethiopia and Egypt as having the biggest number of imprisoned journalists in Africa.

"I think they have been on this list year-in, year-out simply because of the governments' lack of tolerance towards any kind criticism. Every time a reporter reports something critically, they throw them in jail," Tom Rhodes, CPJ’s Nairobi-based east Africa representative, told Voice of America recently.

In Libya, journalists are expected to keep tight-lipped over the excesses of government. Several journalists have reportedly been physically assaulted with government showing less effort to protect them. 

Uganda's unemployed graduates held back by skills gap

Leaders race against time to cater for disaffected generation whose qualifications do not meet the needs of the job market

• Alon Mwesigwa in Kampala
• First published by theguardian.com, Thursday 16 January 2014 15.04 GMT

Its 2pm on a Thursday and Julius Abigaba walks into a betting shop in Wandegeya, a suburb of Kampala, Uganda's capital.
Abigaba, 26, was unlucky last night. He lost his bet of 10,000 shillings ($4) on four English football teams. He could have won 220,000 shillings($90).
"Just one team – Manchester United's loss to Everton – killed my receipt but today I will bet carefully," he says."I can lose today, but tomorrow I will win." Abigaba, a development studies graduate from Makerere University, is just outside the International Labor Organisation's 15-24 year-old age range for global youth unemployment, estimated at 73 million.
As a student, he dreamed big – to finish his education, work with a large organisation and, perhaps, earn a good wage. Three years after graduating, there are no jobs, and not even the hope that there will be any soon.
In the nearby Planet supermarket, William Mugisha dusts shelves. An environmental science graduate, he counts himself lucky to at least be earning something. "I just wanted an income to live on, however little," Mugisha says.
Youth unemployment in Uganda is the highest in Africa. A recent study, Lost opportunity? Gaps in youth policy and programming in Uganda, published by ActionAid, put youth unemployment at 62%, although the African Development Bank says it could be as high as 83%.
Uganda has the world's largest percentage of young people under 30 – 78% – according to the to the 2012 State of Uganda population report by the UN Population Fund. Worldwide, there are about 1.2 billion 15- to 24-year-olds. About 200 million are in Africa.
In the past decade, Uganda has experienced strong GDP growth, averaging 7% annually, but this has not generated jobs, a trend seen across the continent. Lack of employment is causing some young people to take risks. Last July, 36 young people, who had been running motorcycle taxis, were burnt to death as they tried to siphon fuel from a truck that had been involved in an accident.
And some young women are taking jobs overseas only to find themselves forced into prostitution, according to Ugandan police. "Every month, we get reports of over 20 Ugandans stranded seeking help. If the figure is multiplied in a year, it comes to over 250 Ugandans stranded abroad every year," says Moses Binoga, co-ordinator of the Anti-human Trafficking National Task Force.
Other young people are involved in drug trafficking. Dr Paul Nyende, a senior lecturer at Makerere University's School of Psychology, says young people with nothing to do are more easily lured into crime. "They can easily be lured into drug trafficking on promise of big pay," he says. "Many young people don't want to go back to the villages and do farming after campus. They want to stay and enjoy city life."
Yet the city cannot support them. It is estimated that more than 40,000 young people graduate from Ugandan universities each year. Yet the market can provide only 8,000 jobs annually.
Professor Augustus Nuwagaba, director of Reeve Consults Uganda, believes the problem lies in the education system. He says the country is stuck with the colonial education system that trains students to be clerks, teachers and lawyers. Times have changed, Nuwagaba says, and the country needs metal fabricators, carpenters and mechanics. Foreign investors also bemoan the lack of skilled workers in Uganda.
Lack of skills is a global problem. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) says training institutions continue to produce graduates whose skills do not match what the market wants. This mismatch makes it harder to tackle youth unemployment.
"As much as two-thirds of the young population is under-utilised in some developing economies, meaning they are unemployed, in irregular employment – most likely in the informal sector – or neither in the labour force nor in education or training," says the ILO report Global Employment Trends for Youth 2013 – A Generation at Risk.
East African governments that have discovered oil and gas – Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania – are grappling with how to use this to create job opportunities.
The "youth bulge" in Uganda's population has been recognised by the UN, with skills training and job creation among the targets suggested in drafts for the post-2015 development goals.
In Uganda, the government is attempting to tackle the problem. The 2012-13 budget allocated $10m to the Youth Venture Capital Fund to supply young people with startup capital. The state has also entered into partnerships with private companies to help train young people to set up businesses.
Charles Ocici, executive director of one of those companies, Enterprise Uganda, said: "A young person has got all it takes to start a job. No one should talk about lack of experience … it's the kind of literature you read and the people you associate with that will determine your success."
As for Abigaba, he's still betting on a change in his fortunes.

Ugandan ministers failing to tackle corruption, says HRW report

Government attacked for not taking action against senior officials, despite repeated promises to stamp out the practice

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• Alon Mwesigwa, Kampala
• theguardian.com, Tuesday 22 October 2013 13.00 BST

Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni and his government have vowed to tackle corruption. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

The Ugandan government has been criticised for failing to take action against senior officials implicated in corruption scandals, according to a new report.

The report, Letting the big fish swim: failure to prosecute high-level corruption in Uganda, published on Monday, said no high-ranking official, minister or political appointee had served a prison sentence despite investigations into numerous corruption scandals.

"The only conviction of a minister was overturned on appeal in 2013, after president [Museveni] himself offered to pay his legal costs," said the report, published by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Yale Law School's Allard K Lowenstein Human Rights Clinic.

The report describes corruption in Uganda as "severe, well-known" and something that "cuts across many sectors".

The report analysed 114 judgments issued by the anti-corruption court since its creation in 2009, and included interviews with current and former officials from the inspectorate of the government auditor general and the directorate of public prosecutions, MPs, legal attorneys, journalists and NGOs, conducted between May and August this year.

The report said there was limited information available to the public about some of these cases – only information for 34 judgments was publicly available from the Uganda Legal Information institute.

President Museveni and his government have repeatedly promised to stamp out corruption, but major corruption scandals resurface in government departments and ministries, said the report.

"This report is essential because this is the time when many donors are in a state of reflection to see how they can keep on assisting on development," said Maria Burnett, a senior Africa researcher at HRW. "Donors need to know that there is an element of impunity and lack of political will when it comes to [corruption] cases that are politically sensitive."

Pertinent to Uganda's case, the report said, is that those who testify against the powerful government officials are often intimidated and threatened.

Anti-corruption activists have been arrested, while NGOs that speak out arethreatened with de-registration or closure. Political interference, patronage, lack of appointed personnel in anti-corruption institutions have also hampered efforts to fight graft. 

The report cites major corruption scandals that have hit the country recently, in which high-level government officials were accused, but none were prosecuted.

In 2012, Britain was among the donors that suspended all direct aid to the Ugandan prime minister's office over allegations of fraud.

Meanwhile, millions of dollars were diverted from the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation in 2006, and from the Global Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria in 2010. "Despite investigations, none of the high-ranking government officials who managed the implicated offices have faced criminal sanction. Most often they have remained in office, untouched, while individuals working at the technical level have faced prosecution and, in some cases, jail time," said the report.

It added: "Mid-level managers faced prosecutions but the implicated ministers resigned only to return recently to key posts in government."

The prime minister Amama Mbabazi has also been accused of having been involved in corruption cases, including allegations related to the sale of land to the National Social Security Fund (NSSF), only to receive protection from the President Museveni, said the report.   

The Ugandan government is relying more on China for development assistance, especially for infrastructure projects, because Beijing does not impose the same conditions of democracy and human rights on its aid as traditional donors.

According to Transparency International's recent Global Corruption BarometerUganda was ranked the second most corrupt country in east Africa, after Kenya, and the 17th most corrupt in the world.

The HRW report said corruption in the country had mainly impacted ordinary people, as money intended for public services including life-saving treatment or infrastructure projects have all but been misappropriated.

Many rural schools in Uganda remain in a poor state and there are regularteachers' strikes over low pay. The health system is ailing, with more doctors preferring to work in foreign countries where they can receive better salaries.

Yet the country loses up to $258.6m (£160.3m) a year due to corruption, according to 2007 the African Peer Review Mechanism report.

Cissy Kagaba, the executive director of the Anti-Corruption Coalition of Uganda told Kampala's Observer newspaper that "even when there have been steps to fight corruption through the creation of institutions like IGG, DPP and the public accounts committee, all these have been made inefficient due to lack of political will".

The report says if the Ugandan government is committed to fighting corruption, it must stop arrests and intimidation of anti-corruption activists and strengthen the protections afforded to investigators, prosecutors and witnesses.

Youth Unemployment puzzle

William is a friend who, like me, graduated early this year with a honours degree in environmental science from Makerere University Uganda.
But like many other graduates in Uganda, William met face to face with the unemployment scourge. He searched left and right but to no fruition.
Eight months after we graduated, he gets an opportunity not to do what he studied for but to work in Planet Supermarket on Bombo road Kampala.
But there is more to this - William didn't want his colleagues to know that he was employed in a supermarket.
Whenever i went to the supermarket, he hid or pretended to be picking a certain product.
But i approached him recently and told him "Never scorn your job. It is giving what to eat."
Well, over to you William.
In Uganda, the unemployment rate has reached the highest of all time with more than 80,000 graduates that leave university, less than half get employed.
And government seems to have taken note.
In the 2011/12 financial year, government of Uganda set aside Shs 25bn youth fund to help youth entrepreneurs with capital. But who got this money, no one knows.
"We have never seen this money. The process of getting it is very tedious," Paul, unemployed  graduate with a Quantitative Economics degree told this blog.
There is more coming. The ministry Gender has set aside about Shs 262m for the youth projects - whether it will reach the intended people, it is a question of another day.
With all this happening, many youth have turned to gambling - with sports betting at the fore. They hope they will make a quick buck here. Is it possible - no one knows.
While William got an opportunity, he counts himself the luckiest. But not all can be lucky...The youth unemployment puzzle continues

Uganda’s dairy sector is a success story – new research

ALON MWESIGWA

Richard Mwebaze, a cattle farmer in Ibanda district liked his indigenous cows. If anyone dared advise him to sell them, that person would be counted among his enemies.

“I loved my cows. I just liked keeping them around,” he says.

While Mwebaze had much love for his cows – the long horned, Kinyankore cows, they had one problem: with about 40 cows, he would struggle to get 15 litres of milk daily.

Even then it took him a lot of time to get convinced that he needed to adopt a new breed that is productive and would offer him a lot of milk.

“It was after visiting one of my farmer friends that I realised I needed to change the breed. I sold my 40 cows and bought 12 high milk yielding cows,” Mwebaze narrates. “While I used not sell milk because it was very little. Now, I take about 80 litres of milk to our min-dairy in Ibanda town,” he says.

“Each litre is priced Shs 400, meaning every day I must earn Shs 32000 amounting to Shs 960, 000 a month.

“This is not bad either. I can live happy life with that [income].”

Mwebaze paints a picture how much transformation has taken place within the dairy industry in Uganda. More and more people have adopted improved breeds that guarantee high milk yields.

Dairy farmers and the sector in general have transformed a lot in the last two decades – from the indigenous cows with low milk yields to high yielding milk cows.

The study, Dairy sector reforms and transformations in Uganda since the 1990 to 2011, done by the Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC), shows that livestock sector, driven mainly by the dairy industry has maintained positive growth rates averaging at 3% per annum compared to the declining growth rates registered in food and cash crop subsectors. 

According to Isaac Shinyekwa, a research fellow at EPRC, the growth in the sector can be attributed to the farmers being assured of daily income as a result of selling milk.

“People have gone into dairy farming because they are assured of daily income. This is not the case with when you grow beans, where you have to wait for three months to sell after harvest,” he says.

As such, more and more people are taking on milk producing exotic cows from the indigenous cows. The study indicates that a number of exotic cows grew from 19% in 2006 to 25% in 2010.

“With increased trade in milk, households undertook to improve herd productivity through the adoption of improved dairy cattle breeds – exotic and cross breeds,” notes the report.

Milk production has also grown from 380 million litres in 1990 to 1.6billion litres in 2011. The sudden increase in milk relates to a gradual and over time change in the proportion of grade animals to local animals, according the study. Cattle population also grew from 5million in 1990 to over 10 million in 2010.

While the Western region remains the country’s milk hub, with output per unit farm estimated at 2600 litres per annum with exception of Northern Uganda, dairy farms in other regions improved in terms of average milk per annum – it’s attributed to growth in number of dairying households adapting to improved breeds.  

Jobs created

According to Mwebaze, a dairy farmer, dairy farming is one of the areas where one must employ at least someone to help them if they are to succeed on the farm.

“I employ about 8 people, where some work on the farm in terms of maintaining it, others in transporting the milk among other activities related with livestock,” he says.

Indeed, the study notes that the dairy sector has not only created employment for over 700, 000 dairy farming households,  but also for farm input dealers, dairy equipment dealers, dairy ingredients dealers, raw milk traders, transporters, min-dairies, and large scale milk processors and distributors.

Milk processing

While milk production has improved, the biggest chunks of the milk still go unprocessed, although, most of the processing companies like Sameer and others are operating under excess capacity. Sameer’s installed capacity is 50, 000 litres a day, but they process only 25000.

Only 20% of the milk is processed.  

Local farmers, however, are coming together in their groups to process their milk. “Co-operatives like Uganda Crane Creameries Cooperative Union (UCCU) in Mbarara, process the milk of the farmers in this group. They are able to make such products like yoghurt and cheese,” says Shinyekwa. 

Even with visible successes, a host of challenges fen the sector. Dr Swaibu Mbowa, a research fellow at the EPRC, notes that there is still a huge gap in infrastructure like roads and electricity to support the sector especially in the value addition development chain.

“The government need to promote the public private partnership and support min-dairies facilitated by farmer groups to increase the amount of milk processed,” says Mbowa.

Also farmers still receive low farm gate prices for their milk, especially in Western Uganda. For instance, Sameer buys each litre of milk at Shs 300, during peak seasons – the factor that acts as a disincentive to most farmers.

“While some challenges remain, we recommend that the government look into dairy farming as one way to fight poverty; the families in dairy farming, have an income and they are healthy because they drink the milk in addition to selling,” adds Mbowa. 

aamwesigwa@gmail.com

I wouldn't like to sit behind a campus girl

I wouldn’t like to sit behind a campus girl.

By Alon Mwesigwa

Lillian likes her garb. She wears low cut jeans and tops exposing enough cleavage. Wherever she passes, her female colleagues look at her beseechingly as if they have something to tell her.

 The male students can’t help it other than get a full dose of optical nutrition. When Lillian sidesteps them in a group of three or four students, they (male students) chitchat in murmurs punctuated by gales of laughter.

Is she bothered at all with the gales of laughter? No, she assertively goes on with her own business.

However, many male students wouldn’t wish to sit behind Lillian when in a lecture. This is because her pants go down and she exposes her under wears which can’t lend a chance to male students to pay attention to what the lecturer is doing.

Lillian is just a portrait of many campus girls. Most of them are so engrossed with low cut jeans and are determined to walk around all the chances there is to get at least one despite some students operating on taut budgets

Low cut jeans however, make them expose their under wears wherever they sit; on boda-bodas, in lectures, in the library and in the compound.  

The question remains begging in the minds of many male students whether they do it by design or it happens inadvertently.

Whereas most freshers (1^st years) look classy in their dresses within the first semester at campus, they are mingled into the mock-up and they start to dress in low-cut jeans immediately when the 2^nd semester begin.

Bruce, a student at Mak says exposing under wears is part of sexual harassment directed at male students and it has been there for ages but the University has kept mum.

Sharon Atuhaire, a second year student, says she feels derided by her fellows who dress like that.

 “It undercuts our decorum as girls and future parents,” laments Sharon “If I don’t show my knickers, it doesn't erase anything on the way I appear and neither does it add anything.”

Sandra who says low cut jeans are her preeminent mode, insists that it is up to those who wear them to keep pulling them up to ward off embarrassment.

However, some students maintain that Campus is one place people are crazy about fashion. Many students are convinced that dressing is a personal issue and thus, one dresses the way she thinks is the finest.

Raymond who always walks with his camera, wittily vows to start photographing them and post the pictures on facebook.

  aamwesigwa@gmail.com 

When the messenger is beaten

When the messenger is beaten
By Alon Mwesigwa
“You are headed for a tough job,” these were the comments of my friends as we watched news about the journalists that were beaten in the just concluded elections but as journalist in the making, I believe those are the hurdles we are set to face to serve the society.
As Ugandans went out to exercise their civic duty in the just concluded presidential polls and disputed Kampala mayoral elections, we hardly thought journalists would be the target of thugs.
A journalist was shot at during the presidential elections and six others were seriously beaten and injured during the mayoral elections. Violence against journalists is not new in Uganda and the habit is growing steadily. This is one form of intimidation that cripples the work of journalists. Unfortunately, the government has not done much to prevent such violence.
Like many other Ugandans, I am fascinated and bubble over when the economy is revamped, policies changed for the better, and Ugandans helped get out of poverty because of a particular story in the media.
Journalists and the media at large have got much to contribute to the development of this country. Among other things; they check on the operations of government, and are critical in the progress of this country. So, you can guess what it means for Uganda when the messenger is denied the chance to operate freely.
Besides weakening the institutional memory by scaring away those who would be willing to join the profession for the service of the society, Uganda is set for misgovernment, stunted development, illiteracy and high levels of poverty if violence against journalists is not checked.

Media houses need take stern action to prevent their journalists against unnecessary violence. The government too has a duty to prevent this instead of enacting laws set to cripple free media. Citizens alike should give the messenger a favourable environment in which to operate.

aamwesigwa@gmail.com