#OutToLunch: Give school buses same rights as ambulances

By Denis Jjuuko

There is a primary school in Kampala whose bus is seen frequently in towns as far as Mityana picking up kids daily. Another Kampala school bus is seen every day in Entebbe picking up kids. To avoid Kampala’s crippling traffic jams, the buses arrive hours before dawn to pick up the kids so that they are in class on time. Sometimes, the kids are seen dead asleep as the buses maneuver the horrendous traffic jams.

In order for teachers to maximise the children’s presence at school, they teach them till late, which means that the buses struggle to clear huge evening rush hour traffic jams to drop the kids at home. This means that the kids arrive very late in the evening yet they have homework to do and hand in the next day, leaving them short of enough time to sleep.

This doesn’t only affect kids who live in faraway places from Kampala like Mityana and Entebbe. Those who live in Kampala face a similar problem. Vans pick them pre-dawn so they could do several trips picking up kids and dropping them.

It is also common upcountry. I know somebody who lives in Bushenyi but his children attend a day school in Mbarara city.

Where the kids are dropped off by the parents or guardians, it isn’t any different. For parents to arrive at work on time, they, too, leave home pre-dawn, drop the kids at school and then proceed to work. And many can’t leave their offices before 5.00pm, which means that they pick up kids late from school.

I think it is against that background that the education policy review commission has recommended that schools should close by 3.00pm to enable children be children. It is a welcome idea that will see kids have time to play and most importantly have time to sleep and develop as normal human beings than programmed chips with the sole purpose of passing national exams.

However, for this to work, there is a lot that needs to be done that the education policy review commission may not have talked about. The government must be interested in providing high quality education across the country. The only reason a Bushenyi parent may enroll a child in a Mbarara city school is because they are trying to provide the best for their kids. They have looked at what is available in Bushenyi and they think it is not good enough for their children. If the schools in their communities were great, they would have enrolled them there.

In the area where I live near Kampala, there isn’t a single public school where I can enroll my kids. If I did, my consciousness wouldn’t enable me sleep at night. Yet in the last 10 years or so, more than five big private schools have been built by entrepreneurs. If individuals can build schools, it means government can build even more.

With better public schools near where parents live, government can ban bussing kids across the city or from one town to another because there would be a good public school where kids can be enrolled. A parent living in Naalya would not have to send their kid to Lubowa by bus. However, they could send them there by private cars. This is the norm in some developed countries.

In many countries, school buses are distinctively designed and painted yellow. Everyone will notice them from a mile away. They enjoy public transport lanes where such infrastructure exists and where it doesn’t, they are given the same road right of way as ambulances. That saves kids time being on the road for many hours.

Distinctive buses would ensure our kids don’t have to be piled in Toyota Ipsums like grasshoppers and being driven dangerously in order to arrive at school on time.

Uganda already owns Kiira Motors, which makes buses at their plant just outside Jinja. They can give them the order to make unique school buses and offer them tax free to schools with favourable payment terms. The income from the bus should also not be taxed to make it affordable. If a school doesn’t want to offer this service directly, they could make an arrangement with a third-party service provider.

The buses would have to operate within a specific radius of about 5km-10km from the school to which they are attached to avoid the scenario where they pick kids from all over greater Kampala.

The writer is a communication and visibility consultant. djjuuko@gmail.com

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#OutToLunch: What employees should know before launching a side hustle

By Denis Jjuuko On Friday 29 August this year, I was invited to speak to the staff of Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB) about side hustles for corporates during their end of month Fireplace session. The Fireplace is an internal meeting where guest speakers discuss various topics every last Friday of the month. Here is an abridged version of my presentation. I believe others could find an interesting thing or two. In August 1972, Idi Amin launched his so-called economic war which led to the expulsion of Asians. In the months that followed, Uganda experienced unprecedent inflation. With the economy in free fall, many workers realized that their salaries were no longer sufficient. At Makerere University, the country’s premier higher institution of learning, professors took to driving taxis to supplement their income. One professor, until recently a minister in Museveni’s government, was the taxi driver. His colleague, an education professor, was the ‘turn boy’ or conductor. Others became teachers in secondary schools. Their wives turned the garages of their residences into unofficial canteens. Amin’s economic war led to the birth of side hustles in Uganda, where employees do something outside their official jobs to supplement their incomes. The importance of side hustles was further cemented in 1990s when the Structural Adjustment Programme led to thousands of people losing their jobs. Recent mergers of government agencies (rationalization as they call it) and closure of funding organizations like USAID continue to make employees think of life beyond their offices with polished floors. So, if you are thinking of starting a side hustle, what key things should one think about? Here are a few points to ponder. Time: Side hustles for people doing 8-5 jobs should not be too time consuming. Get a hustle like buying and selling land, flipping houses, buying and selling cars, bonds and unit trusts (if you can call them side hustles), or even supplies. Bars, salons, and restaurants require a lot of time when starting which you may not have as you have to concentrate on your job as well. Also, workers in such sectors are unreliable. You don’t know which day they will not turn up. Or when they will sell a crate of beer and replace it creating an impression there are no customers. Still, you don’t want to stay awake in a kafunda so that a few men not eager to get home can finish their beer and leave to enable you close the day’s operations. Cash payments: Avoid side businesses where most of the payments are made in cash. You don’t know when the workers will disappear with it. Most side hustles are small and may not have systems to protect revenues especially in the beginning. Side businesses where people pay in the bank are better. There you can protect your revenue. I know there are mobile money payment codes these days but there are still a few issues with them to be fully embraced. Small is beautiful: All business plans show profitability at one stage. Also, however much research you do, there will always be stuff you will only learn when doing the business. Start small and allow yourself to learn the trade. Don’t throw all your life savings in a business at the beginning. Don’t borrow to start. If you are to borrow, maybe from family. Start with your savings or pool money with others. Six months rule: Before you quit your job to fully concentrate on the side hustle, instruct your bank to send 100% of your salary to an investment account or unit trusts or bonds. Don’t touch this money. Now, see if you can rely on the side hustle for six months. Pay all business and personal expenses from the business. That way you will know if the business is profitable or if you have been subsidizing it with your salary. That way you will avoid looking for a job a few months of leaving one. Do what others are doing: Your side hustle doesn’t have to be innovative or ground breaking. Do what others are doing. See a sector you can invest in, where you can easily raise start up capital and get going. But run it better than others. Ground breaking ideas can then be implemented when you have money you can afford to lose or can raise the required capital from angel investors. Cashflow is the lifeblood of business: Look for businesses which have good cashflows. Planting trees that mature after 20 years should be for people investing for retirement. But doing something that brings in money regularly helps keep the business operational without necessarily relying on the salary or salary loans. Do people need to do typical side hustles? Should everyone do business? There is no clear answer. One just needs to find a model that works for them. Apart from some telecoms and banks, many businesses in Uganda that publicly publish their returns show net profitability of around 10%-15% annually. This means that an employee who invests in treasury bonds or unit trusts is likely to earn the same percentage without any hustle of running after the ever-elusive customers. It can also be a strategy of accumulating capital to venture into capital intensive side hustles that don’t require a lot of time like real estate. The writer is a communication and visibility consultant. djjuuko@gmail.com

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#OutToLunch: Unambitious delayed projects, potholes creating a self-doubting population

#OutToLunch: Unambitious delayed projects, potholes creating a self-doubting population By Denis Jjuuko A few years ago, I used to frequent Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital to largely attend meetings at the African Union headquarters. If you kept away for a few months, you would return to a city that you wouldn’t recognize. A new flyover would exist within a few months. You would see people laying down railway lines and find these huge buses providing public transport. Addis Ababa in the mid 2000s was a construction site that was turning slums into hotels of certain status and other infrastructural projects. They seemed to deliver their projects without much delays. One thing I also noticed about Ethiopians is that they claimed to have the biggest everything. A cab driver or a university professor would quickly tell you that they had the biggest market in Africa — the Merkato, equivalent of our Owino. They claimed they had the largest number of cows on the continent, biggest airline, largest number of producers of leather products and coffee, biggest army and even the most beautiful women. Although some of these claims may be true and others could be debatable, Ethiopians have come to believe that they have to do the biggest things. And they go ahead and do them. Just the other day, Ethiopian Airlines launched perhaps the biggest hotel in Africa. Ethiopian Skylight Hotel in Addis Ababa boasts of 1,024 modern rooms. That is perhaps why they decided to utilize River Nile a little bit more, they didn’t go around building a 100 Megawatts dam. They went for 5,150MW. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) that was launched a few weeks ago is, true to Ethiopian style, billed as one of the largest infrastructural projects on the continent. And like roads and railway lines in Addis Ababa, the hydroelectricity dam, which cost US$5 billion to build was completed in 14 short years. It had many challenges such as protests from Egypt over the use of River Nile — like they do whenever anyone else wants to use the Nile waters as well as funding, technical skills and even bloody wars. But the project never got derailed. Compare it to the Grand Inga Dam in the Democratic Republic of Congo, perhaps the world’s wealthiest country, and you will understand what I am saying. Or just look at some of the countries where it takes a year or more to build a single kilometer of a dual carriage road without interchanges and bridges. To build the GERD, Ethiopia got most of the funding from local contributions in form of donations, and selling of bonds locally and to Ethiopians in the diaspora among other sources. They got very little foreign debt to achieve their project which ideally should ensure affordable electricity access to many people in Ethiopia while exporting some to neighboring countries thereby getting much more foreign revenue. Ethiopia is not some country in America, Europe or Asia. It is actually considered part of East Africa and a mere two hours by air from Entebbe. They face similar challenges like us. Wars, famine, draught and diseases among others. Like Uganda, they are landlocked and depend a lot on agriculture. In fact, we have just toppled them as the largest coffee exporter on the continent. They still produce more coffee though only that they consume a lot of it domestically. Since we are so similar and ideally neighbors, what do they have in their DNA that we don’t? How can they run an airline with more than 150 aircraft while we struggle with about six including leased ones? How can they build flyovers in Addis in months while we take decades to complete ours? Or build small hydroelectricity dams with defaults while they complete mega ones? There is a need to dream big by technocrats and be intentional about building a culture that leads us to achieve our targets and on time. We can have as many patriotic lectures as we wish but if people are driving over potholes every day and have them normalized as the way of life, we won’t achieve more ambitious targets like GERD. We will end up with a population that self-doubts itself. Businesspeople will not dream of creating mega factories or big businesses. Their ambitions will remain importing a few containers from China, driving an old Landcruiser, building a storied house in a slummy area, and another in the village and a few apartments. An ordinary Ethiopian seeing the country launching GERD or the largest hotel on the continent will dream of something as big. The writer is a communication and visibility consultant. djjuuko@gmail.com

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Out to Lunch

#OutToLunch: Invest in a residential house or start a business? It is your profile that matters

By Denis Jjuuko It is one of those debates that will never end similar to the one most people are used to —chicken and the egg, what came first? Though this time it is on a personal residential house and a business or even investing in financial assets like treasury bonds. It is an issue we have discussed before in previous editions of #OutToLunch. Since it won’t go away, why not revisit it? First, let us get to speed with the differing arguments. One side of the coin posits that people especially young ones investing in personal residential houses are stifling growth and funds that may have been used to invest elsewhere is stuck in bricks and mortar. That renting is many times cheaper than owning a personal residential house. The argument continues that people should invest in personal residential houses when they are financially secure. Millions can be stuck in a residential house which doesn’t provide much returns. The other side of the coin argues otherwise. That a personal residential house is a prerequisite for growth. That it is an investment too and unlike businesses or financial assets, it is not as affected by inflation. The argument is that a residential house’s value increases year on year as the country develops. It is a low-risk asset class that leads to increment in one’s net worth. Proponents of this view also argue about peace of mind. The landlord doesn’t have to get worried if he popped in and found you eating chicken! And it can be an asset one could use as collateral for financing to invest in other areas, the argument continues. What decision, then, should a young person make? Invest their money in business, bonds or start on a personal residential house journey? These questions need contextualization, which is never provided by those who advance one argument against the other. For example, what does one want? What does the person do for a living? Can one do both? Many people are not wired not to lose money especially if they can withdraw it at any time the way it is with financial assets. If they hear something is profitable, they rush to invest into it without thinking. That is why many scammers exist. They know people who have money are easily tempted. A cousin has no fees? They rush to give. Real estate is hard to liquidate, which forces many easily excitable people to keep their wealth for the long term. But does a personal residential house curtail somebody’s financial growth? It could, where money that would have been invested in business is channeled into an asset that may not bring back immediate returns. Many Ugandans love building houses in their ancestral villages where they visit a few times a year and can’t rent out or turn them into small bed and breakfast enterprises. Others want very big and fancy ones, which they probably don’t need. And such projects could lead to the collapse of a business or deny one funds that they could have invested elsewhere to ensure financial growth. This brings us back to the issue of contextualization that we talked about earlier. In this case, it is the profile of the person. If you decided to invest in a business or financial assets, do you have the temperament to see money accumulating on your investment account without spending it on ostentatious goods? Can you see your friends holidaying in Santorini and not feel the urge to do the same? If you are a man, are you be able to handle a spouse that sings in your ear everyday about not owning a house? Of if you visit your friends, do you feel left out because you are renting? Will you be able to handle the stress that comes with a business failing? Or you will regret why you didn’t build? As you can see, there are many questions in this article. Questions whose answers can only be provided not by financial advisors on X and TikTok but by the person who is in the middle of making the decision. Building a personal residential house may be the best decision one could make. For another, it might not be the best decision. The type of house and where it is built matters as well. Similar to financial assets, where one invests matters. However, I believe that people can build residential houses while also investing in businesses or financial assets at the same time. Most Ugandans build incrementally, which is done over several years. If one had a certain amount of money, depending on their interests, they could have a percentage in a personal residential house and another in business or financial assets. The writer is a communication and visibility consultant. djjuuko@gmail.com

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