Disclaimer first. This rejoinder is my personal opinion as a private citizen. The article I am responding to was authored by Prof Lawrence Muganga, Vice Chancellor, Victoria University, as an ‘Open Letter’ to President Museveni ( see https://www.observer.ug/index.php/viewpoint/81604-dear-mr-president-here-s-why-uganda-should-accelerate-technology-growth).

My response is not an official government position, much less a response from President Museveni. It is a reaction to an open letter. Prof Muganga veers off when he roots for matters ICT as a panacea to our underdevelopment and unemployment problem, inter alia. ICT, to paraphrase President Museveni during the Transform Africa Summit 2013 at The Kigali Serena, cannot ‘be eaten alone’. He uses the Runyankore word okunyaata. This means eating food without sauce.

In simple terms, ICT is an enabler, it works and serves operations in other primary and secondary sectors. Indeed, during the said Summit, President Museveni emphasised that ICT will only be useful if tailored and deployed in agriculture, which remains the biggest employer and livelihood for most of Africa and indeed the world. And one innovation pitching for financing during this Summit, was a device that detects and determines the type and quantities of essential minerals in the soil in a given area.

Innovated by one Prince Dukundane (a student then) at the College of Science and Technology, University of Rwanda, the device would be useful to agronomists and farmers in the application of the correct type and number of fertilisers in a given piece of land for agriculture. There. Applied technology. It is neither in a vacuum nor self-sufficient. The mistake we all are making is the rush to ICT as if it is a ‘wholesome sector’ on its own. This is what Prof Muganga, who is not alone here, is advancing.

We need to rethink our appreciation of ICT. Perhaps it may be helpful to position it in its historical context to appreciate where it serves best. The digital age, as the ICT phenomenon is referred to, constitutes the fourth stage in man’s quest to tame and use science for his benefit. This is why it is called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It builds on previous revolutions in a logical sequence.

The First Industrial Revolution happened when water and the steam engine replaced muscle power (both human and animal: engine power output is still measured in horsepowers-HP) to do work. The invention of electricity, which replaced the steam engine, birthed the Second Industrial Revolution and the key feature here was mass production of goods in factories. Advancement and innovations building on the second, led to The Third Industrial Revolution, which dawned with the invention of electronics and the key feature here was automation.

Uganda and Africa, (pockets of innovation notwithstanding) are largely on the receiving, consumption of matters digital, the way it has been, since the disruption of the continent’s evolution by foreign intervention. Human and animal muscle power is still a key driver of production in Africa. Prof Muganga, therefore, by virtue of his vantage position in influencing the development trajectory of Uganda and Africa, should appreciate that the several ‘hitech’ wonders and marvels he enumerates in his article, need a solid brick-and-mortar economy, onto which to anchor and thrive as enablers, not wholesome stand-alones.

Even mundane things such as mobile money are not stand-alones. The money to be mobiled must be earned first. It is an illusion to think that Zebiikiire in Rwakishayaaye is ‘financially included’, simply because, through his katochi phone, occasionally receives a few thousand shillings from his son, a water vendor in a Kampala slum.

Meaningful financial inclusion will be when Zebiikiire sells his cassava to a pharmaceutical starch factory in Kajaaho Industrial Park, receiving meaningful income from agriculture; his son employed as a machine operator in the same food processing complex. Here is where we need to focus. The developed world did not jump to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. They built solid brick-and-mortar economies, liberated their innovative brains from the daily pangs of hunger and unemployment, and voilà, they are into the digital era and driving global dynamics.

We must start where it matters. And Prof Muganga belongs to the torch-bearer class for this to happen.

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