‘…Ekisaija nitwija kukikwata obbunyangaro’…!
We all spontaneously and simultaneously burst out as we hugged and teased him. Excitement and all, savouring every moment of our favourite weekend get-away: a wild-run and fruit-eating spree in the expansive verdure of a mixed farm that Busheeka Ridges is.
The person we teased and hugged is our Mzee Mashurubu, the pillar behind Busheeka Ridges, a true East African investment. He co-owns it with college alumni and liberation comrades from across East Africa of the 60s, when the then EAC was an economic community in the truest meaning of the word, as Mzee nostalgically often says. The greeting we teased him with has become a family jargon, which we parroted from his comrade and cousin, a jolly TPDF lieutenant, in February 1979.
On their way to chasing Amin from power, the combined force of exiled Ugandan liberators and the Tanzanian army were confident of their victory, vowing to ‘catch him( Amin) by hand’, the TPDF officer assured our family and neighbours who had gathered to greet Mashurubu, on this rare occasion that he came home openly. Till that day, he had been a mystic and legend to us as we grew up. We heard all sorts of stories whispered about him, including several young men ‘crossing’ with him.
As we settled to a treasure-hunted breakfast (sweet potatoes harvested fresh from a ridge-top garden, baked in millet-husk ashes, and washed down with succulent goose-berries), the current talk of the UDB stimulus thing somehow crept into the merry talking. And Mzee simplified it all for us. According to him, it should be the State, through Uganda Development Corporation (UDC), to be the vanguard of Uganda’s industrialisation. No two ways about it. Scattering the few resources we have, some of which is actually borrowed money, will only make temporary palliative political sense, infinitesimal business sense and no economic sense at all.
From his long experience studying and working across East Africa since the early 1960s (his first degree is from the University Of Nairobi, while his first workplace was in a blanket–exporting factory in Dar es Salaam before patriotic duty came calling and he joined the liberation forces), the solid economies of the first independence decade were due to active State planning, deliberate investment in key sectors( called commanding heights in revolutionary lingo).
Indeed in Kenya, till today, most corporations even the newly privatised ones, are on a solid foundation by ICDC (Industrial and Commercial Development Corporation) the country’s investment arm, the counterpart of Uganda’s UDC. Even when the privatisation and liberalisation wave came sweeping, President Daniel Arap Moi (RIP), stuck to his guns, arguing ‘…hatutabinafishisa haya ma kampuni, hadi Wakenya watakapokuwa na uwezo wa kuyamiliki…’ (We shall only privatise State enterprises after Kenyans have garnered enough capacity to own them).
And herein lies the secret to Kenya’s economic might in the region, argues Mzee Mashurubu, even in the days of ‘free market economy. He cites the case of the latest addition in their portfolio, Nyahururu Horticultural Industries, a public-private joint venture.
This is a state-of-the-art food processing complex that manufactures industrial-made ready-to-eat vegetable salads: single or mixed: carrots, cabbages, onions, cucumbers, cauliflower. The raw cabbage, dirty and all, is sucked into a ‘pit’ at the starting level, and moves through several stages of slicing, washing, sterilisation, salting, drying, weighing, packing, labelling, emerging at the end in a beautiful pouch of ready-to-eat salad, of different pack weights.
And the demand is insatiable. The impact is visible across the PSPP-value chain, from the rural farmer to the tour operator serving snacks to his clients.
Are there Lessons for us in this Covinomics era?
Ben Matsiko Kahunga
Photo credit: http://pexels-photo-3637786
Email:isherugaba@gmail.com
Google: http://kahunga Ben Matsiko
