BY MUWANGA DEO: If Uganda was a visionary country just like some of our neighboring countries, we would have been a 2nd world country by now.
Most of the times, you may look through a newspaper or see something on the internet about a Ugandan who has made an innovative product but struggles to put it on the market or upgrade it to usable standards because of financial constraints. The people who make these innovations have a passion for what they do and also a vision of what they would like for their products to be in the future but unfortunately, the government turns a blind eye to such brilliant brains hence letting their dreams shutter yet they would have been key in this technological world.
Samuel mugarura, a third year Chemistry student at Makerere University in 2016 was threatened by police for his innovativeness in making tear gas. At one time on a TV station I saw a man who makes electricity for his home using a bicycle mechanism. Those examples are just a fraction of the young innovative brains we have in Uganda that the Government is overlooking.
Suppose the Government would invest directly in such brains instead of distributing money in brown envelops to people who just waste it unproductively, imagine the level Uganda would be at In terms of technology? We could have been making things such as Phones and Computers by yesterday but we even have to buy bicycles that can be manufactured here. Speaking of which, a one Kasoma Noordin, A Ugandan makes bicycle frames from bamboo stems just to save the environment by using natural materials other than metal.
We are a third world country because to us, politics comes first them economics takes the back seat. If the Government could invest in innovators then we wouldn’t need china to run most of our projects here.
