The man at the gate, lacking an intercom, leaves to deliver the message of a guest’s arrival by mouth. Fresh patches of plaster point to renovations on the iron-roofed single-storey building in the Kampala suburb of Bukasa. The occupants of the main workstation compete for space with stacks of paperwork. As Choksi, the administrator, offers a drink, she apologizes for the lack of glasses. The water comes in a mug with a conspicuous crack on the side. It’s a scene akin to start-ups run by varsity drop-outs in their parents’ garage. Only this time, the founder is a millionaire.
For two decades, Ian Clarke, a Northern Irish-Ugandan medical doctor, made his fortune operating the International Medical Group, which boasts 22 clinics, a health insurance company, a hospital, a diagnostic laboratory and a university. In 2015, he sold a majority stake to Mauritian company, Ciel Healthcare, retaining a shareholding of just 9.88%, according to records at Uganda’s company registry reviewed by FORBES AFRICA.
“I am in my 60s and you get to a point where you say ‘I have been doing this all my life because I am passionate about it’. I wanted to make a difference, and then somebody gives you a lot of money. You say ‘okay, that’s not bad’,” Clarke says.
Selling a huge stake in his company didn’t mean Clarke was prepared to put his feet up.
“I probably should have gone on a cruise, traveled the world and spent my money. And then decided I would invest it in start-up entrepreneurial companies, and I look at that now and I say ‘what the hell was I doing?’”
Clarke is no stranger to such decisions.
In 1987, he had a thriving medical practice and a retail business in Northern Ireland. But, a constant urge to live life to the fullest saw him move to Uganda, which was emerging from a five-year guerilla war that brought President Yoweri Museveni to power. Having sold his business to a brother, Clarke uprooted his family the following year and flew off to Uganda as part of the Church Missionary Society. He was assigned to Kiwoko, in the Luweero region, 77 kilometers north of the capital, Kampala.
Word spread of a doctor’s presence in the deprived village, and Clarke woke up to lengthy queues of people seeking medical attention. A priest at the local church gave up his chair and a papyrus mat served as the examination table. Operations took place under a tree. When Clarke sought volunteers for his makeshift clinic, he found Moses Sekidde, a 20-year-old elementary school dropout who understood just enough English to serve as an interpreter. Clarke trained a group of about 30 to handle simple ailments, leaving himself to deal with the complicated ones, which could be as many as 300 cases a day.
When rains poured, they moved the clinic into the church, where one vestry served as the examination room and the other as the treatment room. This was unsustainable and a few months in, the community started laying bricks for construction of a dispensary. By 1991, with the support of donations, the Kiwoko clinic had been built into a fully-fledged hospital.
“As a person I liked him because that was my first time to see a person from a developed country participating in activities which I thought an Englishman couldn’t do,” says Sekidde. “He was our driver, he was a carpenter, at times he would be the health educator teaching mothers, and other times he participated in farming.”
“Your duties at that time depended on the needs of the day,” adds Sekidde, who has since obtained university education and remains employed by the hospital.
Clarke’s past in Northern Ireland prepared him for the work he was doing in Uganda.
“Even though I was a medical doctor, I had done some business in Ireland as well. So I think, unlike many doctors who just know their medicine, I had learned something, I had a retail business which I sold to my brother. He’s got a very successful business there. And I was brought up on a farm,” says Clarke.
“That ability to just take what’s there and work with it, which I suppose I learned on the farm, is probably what I put to work in Luweero and built a clinic and then the clinic became a hospital and so on and so forth.”
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After running the hospital for a few years, Clarke suffered testicular cancer which saw him leave for treatment in Ireland. He returned to Uganda in 1994 to start his own practice, the International Medical Center in Kampala, which evolved into the International Medical Group.
“I basically made a decision that I didn’t want to be just working the aid world. I didn’t want to always be begging for money,” says Clarke.
“That’s when I sort of moved and said let me do a clinic that people will pay for and then I would use the surplus to build – my ambition was to build a hospital… I had this vision and this goal, but there were many steps to achieve that. And in that process there were some successes and some failures. And a lot of it was just grind. Don’t forget it took 20 years, at least, from that time to today.”
As Chairman of the eponymous company, Clarke Group, he oversees diversified holdings in entities, including the International Medical Group; a US sterilization tech company, Eniware; an elementary school; the International Health Science University; chicken and coffee farms; the Seasons Lodge, a hotel in Zanzibar; and a start-up low-cost tech building company, IMG Construction. By next year, the group hopes to establish a business school in Kampala.
“I don’t really have these big bank balances, sitting around. I always invest in something. People come to me and they want me to invest in funds… but I think I would rather manage my own investments and be in control,” he says.
<div id="attachment_34050" style="width: 511px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34050" class=" wp-image-34050" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Clarke-Group-house-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="501" height="332" />A low-cost house is being built at a site piloted by the Clarke Group in the Muyenga suburb of Kampala. (Photo by Joseph Burite)</div>
With so many business interests, Clarke relies on his son, Sean , to help him run Clarke Group. Sean seems to follow in his father’s footsteps, having uprooted his family from Bristol, England, to return to Uganda seven years ago. The holder of an MBA had risen through the ranks of the International Medical Group to become chief operating officer, before the sale, and now runs the education segment of the group.
“Sean is the CEO of the education [segment], I am concentrating on the farm and I am still chairman on the medical side. So it splits it up easier,” says Clarke, who has two other children, Lauren and Michael. “I don’t want him following in my footsteps. I mean it’s easy for him being in my shadow, but saying he is the CEO of Clarke Education – that then put’s responsibility on his shoulders and he’s got to develop that and he’s got good experience.”
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Sean is relishing the opportunity.
“There’s a lot about Uganda that I like. There’s a can-do sort of thing. You really feel like you can do whatever you want to do,” Sean Clarke, 41, says. “In the west, a lot of doors are closed. If you have a business idea, someone is already doing it. If you have a concept, there are a lot of things getting in your way, there’s a lot of bureaucracy to overcome. There’s a lot of regulation and a lot of circulation in a lot of markets if you want to do something.”
“In Uganda, there’s a lot of need and need equates to opportunity. And I think that’s where we have thrived,” adds Sean.
Though successful, Clarke remains humble.
“I am not an especially humble person, but I remind myself that I didn’t get here because I’m such a brilliant person. Any of those ventures could have failed. There were plenty of times that I lost money and made wrong decisions.”
“If you have a moment where things are okay, then be thankful and don’t ever get to that point where you are arrogant or think you are better than other people,” says Clarke.
“I don’t think I can ever feel like here I am, I am on top of the mountain. I don’t think an entrepreneur is really ever certain.”
He may be humble, but there’s no denying Clarke’s achievements. &#8211; Written by Joseph Burite

The Missionary That Built A Business Empire

The Java House café at The Village mall in Kampala is teeming with customers as smiling waiters serve coffee as hot as the afternoon mercury.
Amos Wekesa, who has run two of Uganda’s most successful tour companies, Great Lakes Safaris and Uganda Lodges, for the last 16 years, is here with friends, chilling in military style shorts and a t-shirt with the words ‘I&#8217;m So Uganda’ on it. Within minutes of speaking with him, it’s clear he is a walking-talking ambassador of his country.
“I have never boarded a plane in the last 10 years without ‘Uganda’ on my chest,” says the amiable 44-year-old. “I encourage every Ugandan to do the same. No one can talk about Uganda better than Ugandans, and everyone should help spread the message.”
With an annual income of $6 million from his companies, Wekesa says he has been fortunate, but has had to work extremely hard. The day we meet is his first day off in four weeks – he started it by running 10 kilometers and slept through the rest of it before heading to Java House.
The whole café seems to know him – customers and staff stop by his table to shake hands and ask about his most recent mountain expedition or his next trip across the Nile.
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Wekesa, born into a family of smugglers in Lwakhakha on the border of Uganda and Kenya, says this is a world away from the life of penury he knew growing up in the 70s. Daily provisions were scarce and from the age of seven, Wekesa would smuggle rations like sugar and coffee from across the border to sell illegally in Uganda, sleeping with his many siblings in thatched houses that leaked. He never went to school until the age of 10, or even wore a pair of shoes until much after.
“The day of a hungry man is an extremely long day. If hunger can’t inspire you, then nothing in life can. And I was hungry for success,” says Wekesa.
Today, he owns properties across Uganda and hopes to build a five-star hotel in Entebbe before he turns 50. He already has two-and-a-half acres of land allotted for this purpose.
Every year, through his companies, he also helps an increasing number of Indians – forced to flee Uganda to the United Kingdom during Idi Amin’s regime – return and re-settle in Uganda.
“Most of them were young and angry when they left in 1972, but are happy to see the changes in the Uganda of today,” says Wekesa, who helps reconnect them with the friends, colleagues and homes their families left behind. By 2022, Wekesa says he aims to “have 5,000 of them returning”.
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The tourism industry helped Wekesa find himself. Until age 28, he did odd jobs – starting out as a sweeper earning less than $5 a month – but his experience as a small-time tour guide led him to save $200 to open his first business, Great Lakes Safaris.
“Uganda is the most diverse country in the world. There’s no other that has as many fresh water bodies… and then the great climate and fertile soil.”
Although Wekesa believes tourism in Uganda has “not yet begun”, he sees a lot of hope as the government knows its potential as a good driver of the economy. Forever the optimist, he says tourism has the capacity to generate as much as $12 billion a year.
The father of three is also a lover of sport, having played competitive tennis “until about five years ago”.
“Competence in sport helps you make better judgments in life. You have to fight for your position and that’s what a businessman does. It helps you understand teamwork.”
He encourages his children to play sport but admits they will never understand the hardship of his childhood.
“My mother is still alive,” says Wekesa, “but cries every time she sees me, as when I was a baby, because of the poverty, she had wanted to kill me but stopped herself when she had a dream one night and somebody told her, ‘don’t touch that child’!”
Luckily for Uganda she didn’t.

‘If Hunger Can’t Inspire You, Nothing Can’

It had been a day of noisy celebration, but you could have heard a pin drop just before midnight on the cusp of October 9, 1962, when the independent nation of Uganda was born.
Sixty thousand people stood in respectful silence at the poignant ceremony at the Kololo Stadium, in Kampala. The British flag, which had fluttered over Uganda for 68 years, was lowered to the strains of God Save the Queen; seconds later the black, yellow and red of Uganda was raised to the country’s new anthem. The crowd roared its approval and applauded the birth of Uganda; overhead fireworks crackled in the skies, bonfires blazed from the hilltops and across the city people sang and danced in the streets.
After decades of colonial rule Uganda was to join the growing club of free and independent nations in Africa. A nation that was to decide its own destiny under the authority of its own leaders in Kampala, rather than that of detached civil servants in London.
It was the climax of a day where all roads led to Kampala. From the break of dawn, thousands flooded into the city. As they arrived, many were handed free food and drink in celebration of a day to remember.
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From London, through the skies, arrived the Duke and Duchess of Kent, who were Britain’s representatives, at Entebbe Airport. The new government made the Duke of Kent the first ever Freeman of Kampala.
A glance at the grainy newsreel of the day is a peek into Africa’s long-lost colonial past. The Duke of Kent wore a white uniform and ceremonial sword on his hip; there was a 21-gun salute as he left the plane and a company of soldiers from the King’s African Rifles to inspect before he left the tarmac. Waiting for him was the governor general, Sir Walter Coutts, in a cocked hat with feathers. If you took the plane and the tarmac away, it could have been a scene from the 1860s instead of the 1960s.
As the bars and streets of the city filled up, 20,000 people turned out to watch a regatta on Lake Victoria, featuring races between long canoes. An annual event that began more than 100 years before the British arrived and survives until this day.
In the heat of the Kampala afternoon, there was a genteel garden party for 4,000 people complete with a brass band, tea and cakes. Strolling through the party, as slim as a reed, was Milton Obote, then just 37 years old, the man who was soon to become the first Prime Minister of Uganda. Later, the Prime Minister opened the new Independence Pavilion of Science and Industry at the Uganda Museum.
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As the sun went down, crowds poured into Kololo Stadium for the midnight handover. A military tattoo, that could have been in Edinburgh, saw British soldiers and Ugandans dance step for step.
First, the world-famous Acholi dancers from northern Uganda, who set the pace with a routine to the pulse of beating drums, then came a group of soldiers from the Scottish infantry regiment, the Gordon Highlanders, resplendent in kilts, who danced a Highland reel.
It was a night of military might to the sound of fife and drum; the Fourth Battalion of the Kings African Rifles, soon to become the First Battalion of the Uganda Rifles, performed a perfect slow march before the cheering crowds.
“Our independence shall mean great responsibilities for all of us without exception. Collectively, we shall all be responsible to safeguard our independence and to ensure peace and stability within our country. In addition, the government in whose name I now speak offers to you a firm determination to protect your life and property and opportunities for your advancement,” said the new Prime Minister Obote in his speech.
“It is in this ensuring of peace and stability and this determination for the protection of life and property coupled with opportunities for advancement as individuals and combinations and as a country that I now call upon all to pass an irrevocable resolution marking our new status and guiding us into the future. Let us add to that resolution that we are of Uganda and Uganda is ours. Let us recognize that and pay our tribute to these friends from inside and outside Uganda who have helped us on our way to independence. Let us remember the best we have received and now inherit from the British administrators. I also ask all to give the missionaries past and present a special praise for the light they brought and do still maintain.”
As the black, yellow and red flag flew through the dawn, Ugandans woke up to a new world where they were, at last, masters of their own destiny.

A Night To Remember As Uganda Was Born

Few countries enjoyed as much sustained growth in recent history as Uganda, which averaged 7% over the last three decades. And then came a slow turn.
Now expected to grow around 4% this year, among the slowest in East Africa, there is rising sentiment that forecasts may have been too optimistic.
“Since the downturn of 2009, successive forecasts have predicted a recovery in growth rates that did not materialize,” said a September IMF working paper that assessed medium-term budget frameworks of Uganda and five other sub-Saharan Africa countries. “The existence of separate functions and organizational arrangements for the preparation of countries’ multi-year national development plans and the budget remains problematic. In most sub-Saharan African countries, coordination of national planning and preparation of the budget remains challenging.”
Indeed, Uganda’s National Planning Authority (NPA), which aims for the nation to attain middle-income status by 2020, is expressing reservations about manufacturing, a key pillar of its current development plan.
“We thought by the end of the financial year 2016/17, industry would be contributing 27.4% but it only contributed 19.6%,” said NPA Chairman Wilberforce Kisamba Mugerwa in a speech on September 12.
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Growth in East Africa’s third largest economy, driven by the service sector at the expense of industry and manufacturing sectors, has led to non-inclusive growth, according to Andrew Mold, Acting Director of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in Eastern Africa.
High power tariffs are a major factor curbing manufacturing.  The price is more than double the government’s target of $0.05 per unit for industrial consumers. The government, looking to cut the cost of Bujagali Power Station,  the country’s largest hydropower producer, is in talks with the African Development Bank and the International Finance Corporation to refinance its loan, extending repayment from seven to 15 years, according to Energy Minister Irene Muloni.
Even as industries consume about 70% of Uganda’s 860MW in power output, a 10% target of annual growth in demand for power is unlikely at the current economic growth rate, according to Selestino Babungi, Managing Director of Umeme, the country’s largest power distributor. The government’s aim to install 2,500MW by 2020 is also a “stringent target,” says Harrison Mutikanga, CEO of Uganda Electricity Generation Company.
While Uganda’s low electricity access levels of 22% are attracting global companies into utilities, a consumption risk exists as subsidies are necessary, says Sabine Dall’Omo, Siemens CEO for South and East Africa.
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Meanwhile, credit growth to manufacturing has been down this year, a trend that poses negative risks to private investment growth and recovery of domestic economic activity, says the Bank of Uganda in a June report.
Yet Uganda and India are seen as the fastest growing economies through to 2025 at 7.7% annually, according to Harvard University’s Atlas of Economic Complexity report, which attributes much of the prospective growth on rapid population increase.
Uganda, with a population of 41 million, is also looking to boost tourism and agricultural output. It’s targeting a million tourists out of China, which could increase overall arrivals from 1.3 million to four million by 2020, says Tourism Minister, Ephraim Kamuntu.
Production of coffee, the country’s largest export, is projected to rise from 3.5 million 60 kilogram bags to 20 million in 2020, says the Uganda Coffee Development Authority.
For Finance Minister Matia Kasaija, the country’s climate is key.
“The weather really cheated us, because we were not ready,” Kasaija tells FORBES AFRICA in reference to last year’s drought that saw growth slow to 3%.
“We shall go back to our growth rate of 5% and above this year,” he says optimistically. &#8211; Written by Joseph Burite

Power Woes Stall Uganda’s Rise

African Gold Refinery, a Ugandan company, expects to process $1 billion worth of gold a year but is battling would-be smugglers turning to the precious metal to make easy money.
Gold is lucrative in this part of the world. Gold shipments by East Africa’s third largest economy surged to $204 million in the 2015/16 financial year, from $230,000 a year earlier, according to the Bank of Uganda.
“For the first time the country registered an increase in exports just on account of that one unit,” said Richard Kaijuka, Chairman of African Gold Refinery, in April in the capital Kampala. “It’s certainly a game-changer for the region. The outlook is looking good – without doubt.”
“The beauty about it is if this smuggling can stop, we are able to export. This unit alone can process $1 billion per annum,” Kaijuka said.
<div id="attachment_32840" style="width: 483px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32840" class=" wp-image-32840" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/DSC_0054-copy-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="473" height="314" />An Africa Gold Refinery employee prepares to melt gold (Photo by Joseph Burite)</div>
While a 2014 government geological survey revealed significant mineral deposits, including gold, iron ore and uranium, Uganda has no commercial gold mining operations in place. The country relies on artisanal laborers who sell raw minerals to unregulated middlemen. About 24 firms currently possess gold prospecting licenses, none of which has a mining lease, according to a ministry of energy and mining cadaster.
Since launching operations in 2014, African Gold Refinery has seen significant flow of gold from neighboring countries, according to Kaijuka.
“Dubai has over 14 refineries and they don’t produce anything. Ours is to create a ‘mini-Dubai’ in this region. We have even got gold from West Africa, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, from Tanzania,” he said.
The formal launch of the refinery in February heightened concerns conflict minerals would find their way to the market, fueling volatility in the Great Lakes Region.
“Our fear was that having a plant in Uganda with all these minerals and our porous borders, where people cross and conduct a lot of smuggling in and out of the country, and sometimes we don’t know how much we have in the country and how much is going out. How much is coming in because of this smuggling? Our fear was that maybe some of it would fuel conflicts,” says Peter Wandera, the Executive Director of Transparency International Uganda.
“Government should begin listening to the stakeholders. Let the government be more transparent because issues of extractives have a lot of secrets around them. It should be more open to external views,” he says.
“The refinery is to add value to our exports,” says Irene Muloni, Uganda’s Cabinet Minister for Energy and Minerals. “We have even removed royalties so that people can export through the legal channels.”
<div id="attachment_32843" style="width: 465px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32843" class=" wp-image-32843" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/DSC_0110-copy-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="455" height="302" />A receiving desk for gold (Photo by Joseph Burite)</div>
Muloni shied away from giving export targets for the current financial year.
Kaijuka, who is also the Vice Chairman of the not-for-profit, non-governmental Uganda Chamber of Mines and Petroleum (UCMP), says African Gold Refineries is based on responsible sourcing of its gold that it refines operating by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) guidelines.
“By going for responsible sourcing, it means we are eliminating those that are illegal. That’s the whole point,” he said. &#8211; Written by Joseph Burite

Smugglers Take Sheen From Uganda’s Bright Gold Refinery

President Museveni: We had to persuade our parliament to prioritize infrastructure instead of other areas like increasing public servants salaries. We restrained them and we put up money for the roads, for the electricity, the schools, social infrastructure, for the hospitals, so I have no complaints. I am together now with our leadership. Because in the past they would be not so clear as to what comes first.
Forbes Africa: Almost every country is struggling with electricity. How big is the infrastructure deficit in Uganda?
President Museveni: It was a big problem in the past but we have now caught up with the demand and remain ahead of demand all the time. We are building new dams now, Karuma, 600-700MWs, Isimba almost 200MWs and there are new ones which are on the way. And then there are power sources which can be put up quickly like the ones using heavy fuel oil..
Forbes Africa: What about renewable energy? How far is Uganda into geothermal, solar and wind?
President Museveni: The issue about solar has been the cost, the cost per unit. For us we think that a unit cost of 4c, 5c, American cents, is the one we need for industry. So if the solar costs can go down then we can take it up. But it has been high up to now, I think it is about 16c now, it used to be 40c. It was therefore not suitable for industries, maybe it was suitable for lighting but not for industries yet.
Forbes Africa: Rwanda has had a very good track record of bringing back its skilled people. How do you plan on doing that for Uganda?
President Museveni: It is simple, just pay them better salaries, that’s all. There’s no other problem because they prefer to be near their families, so the only issue is payment of good salaries.
Forbes Africa: There’s been much talk about the oil industry in Uganda, how is that progressing?
President Museveni: Around 2018, that’s when the first oil will be coming out of the ground. So there’s no problem. The oil price has gone down globally, however we shall make money out of the petroleum. It is additional income. We are already getting money from other sectors, it will be additional and it will be useful for infrastructure building. We will not have to borrow anymore, we will just use that oil money to build the power dams, to build some of the roads, to pay the debt of the Chinese on the railway. That’s what we shall use that oil money for.
Forbes Africa: What are you doing to try and get foreign investors coming into Uganda and putting their money in?
President Museveni: Foreign investors follow profits. If the profits are good, if the investment atmosphere is stable, they come. And they are coming, especially the Chinese, they’re coming in big numbers, the Indians to some extent, the people from the Gulf, the Arabs. The western investors are fewer but they’re also there and then we have our own indigenous people both African and Indian… many of them look at the mineral sector, phosphates and steel where the Chinese are active. We’ve got another big project of copper. We’ve got another one of cement, again the Chinese are involved.
Forbes Africa: Your view on the Ugandan economy, how do you see it going?
President Museveni: Well the way I would like to summarize it for you is that in the last 30 years the economy of Uganda has been growing at a rate of 5 to 6% per annum in spite of no electricity, in spite of high transport costs and in spite of other bottlenecks.

“Just Pay Them Better Salaries”

Before he had reached the age of 10, Amos Wekesa put all his energy into smuggling goods at Uganda’s border with Kenya in the mountainous area of Mbale. He also tried his hand at making mats from banana fibers to earn a little money to support his family that was surviving on around a dollar a day.
Today, all this is history and Wekesa is now considered one of the most successful tourism ambassadors in Uganda, with an annual income of $4 million. He achieved this by founding Great Lakes Safaris and Uganda Lodges Ltd – one of the leading tour companies in Uganda.
“I was born in 1973 in a small village of Wakaka – in the current Manafwa District – to a family that was caught up in abject poverty to the extent that, by the age of nine, I had not gone to school and had been involved in smuggling,” says Wekesa.
“The time we were born was not good for the average Ugandan because everything was in short supply. That is how we got involved in smuggling.”
Wekesa has never forgotten that “the gomesi our mother covered herself with was the same gomesi we also covered ourselves with.”
His life changed when the Salvation Army, which ran a home for less privileged people in the neighboring Tororo District, visited his village looking for two boys from impoverished families. Wekesa was one of the lucky two. He transferred to Tororo in 1983, a district closer to the capital, Kampala.
“At the age of 10, I was taken to nursery school. I remember going for P1 interviews and the head teacher taking me to P2 as I was too old to study with six-year-olds. I liked primary school and wanted to be like every other child,” says Wekesa.
However, when he went to secondary school (Wairaka College for O-levels and St. Peter’s Tororo for A-levels) he did not enjoy studying.
“I liked other activities like sports, drama and was always in leadership positions at all levels. This made me an average [student].”
“Success does not necessarily come because you excel in class but because you have learned something in life,” he says.
In 1996, Wekesa was put on a bus to go to Kampala and look for a tourism school.
“I did a certificate for nine months. In 1997, I went out to look for my first job [and] became a sweeper earning approximately $10 a month.”
Wekesa later became an office messenger at Nile Safaris, earning $20 a month. He then shifted to another tour company, Habari Travels, where he was paid a dollar a day. His last stint at being an employee was with Afric Voyage, for $65 a month. It was during this time that he managed to save $200 in a year and started a briefcase company called Great Lakes Safaris in 2001. Wekesa’s first office was below a staircase in downtown Kampala.
Equipped with a phone and receipts, Wekesa would approach rich people, with Mercedes Benzes and new Coronas, and convince them to hire out their cars.
“I would attend weddings without being invited and market my services as a dealer in posh cars for hire,” he says.
Wekesa would also walk to Parliament and convince MPs to hire out their four-wheel cars to him. He would then go to tour companies and ask them to drive their clients to different tourism sites. Being a driver and having worked as a tour guide, Wekesa had to entertain the tourists while keeping the MPs’ cars in good shape and also making sure the companies were happy with his services.
While doing the tours, and reading books about tourism, his passion for the industry grew.
Off the top of his head, Wekesa can tell you that Uganda is 91,135 square miles, with around 1,056 different species that constitute about 11% of the world’s species of birds. Queen Elizabeth National Park has around 656 species of birds – the highest concentration of birds of any protected area in the world.
“The United States (US) has 784 different species of birds and rakes in $32 billion annually through retail sales only. Uganda’s GDP is only $22.8 billion.”
Wekesa’s change of fortune started in 2001 – the year he bought the first car – after organizing a trip for a woman from the World Bank.
“I gave her a good guide to Queen Elizabeth. She came back happy and said this was the most beautiful country she had ever visited. She told me she would do something for me once she got back to the US.”
“This taught me a good lesson. The sustainability of a business is satisfied clients.”
In the same year, the woman from the World Bank recommended Great Lakes Safaris to a research group from the World Bank.
“I gave the group to one of the best tour guides in Uganda, Martin Okoth. One of the guys was so happy he also promised to do something… I never took him seriously.”
Business then died down and it became so difficult that Wekesa contemplated closing the company.
“Something in me said ‘be resilient’. People advised me to close but I had to cling on. All this time, I would see tourists at the airport and wonder how Uganda could have such tourist attractions and people live in abject poverty. I said ‘I’m going to try to be a solution to this problem’ as my passion for tourism was so high.”
“Later, I got a call from Washington from a guy called Tom Carter, an editor with The Washington Times. He told me he had travelled with me on one of his trips to Uganda and had written about his experiences. The story was published and that is when tourists started flowing in.”
The change in fortunes allowed Wekesa to buy more vehicles and in 2003 he started buying property outside the city. Today, he has an eco-friendly hotel in almost every national park in the country.
Wekesa spends a lot of his time teaching young Ugandans to use tourism as a business. He wants the government to follow his lead.
“We must appreciate the fact that the government is full of people who were around during the hard times in the country. Their mindset is fixed on agriculture. However, I’m now happy the president is talking about tourism.”
He says the government should invest more in marketing tourism. Kenya spends $40 million on marketing every year, Tanzania $12 million, Rwanda $5 million, while Uganda spends just $600,000.
Uganda has the potential to become a favored destination for tourists.
“We have the best diversity of cultures. We have more inland water than any other country, 10 national parks, 12 game reserves, all unique in their own way. Uganda is like Africa compressed. It’s a convergence of all different types of attractions,” he says.
Most of the five-star hotels in East Africa are run by Kenyans, Indians and South Africans. Rwanda is building an $18-million tourism school while Tanzania has the best school in the region.
“Uganda’s government should also develop infrastructures for these tourists to use.”
For those still in doubt, Wekesa has only this to say: “If you want to see the most incredible beauty in the world, come to Uganda.”

The Smuggler Who Became A Sweeper  – Then A Millionaire

It was a business born of tragedy in Uganda. When Best Ayiorworth’s father died, it spelt struggle. She dropped out of school for lack of money. But it led her to starting a microlending business at the age of 19.
Ayiorworth was just 12 years old when her schooling came to an abrupt halt. Her unemployed, widowed mother tried her best to get all her children through school. But she died trying. It was left to Ayiorworth’s eldest sister and brother.
“When I was around senior 2, the brother who follows her and my other sister intervened and started pushing us ahead. So I managed to reach senior 4, but they could not go further than that. I wanted to go further. I wanted to join A-level, go to university, but I couldn’t,” says Ayiorworth.
“Meanwhile the same problem I got was that even if my mother didn’t die, I was going to face something of that kind because I saw it happen to my big sisters.”
Often in Uganda when families struggle to put their children through school, the girl is forced to stay at home. A lack of support from parents and girls reaching puberty add to the pressure leading to young girls dropping out of school, even in areas where schooling is relatively cheap.
“That was actually one of the biggest problems. I grew up seeing that and me dropping out was a blow. That is actually something that awakened everything that was in me. I always saw those things happen around me. It was not something that made me feel like ‘oh I have to do something,’ but when I had to drop out myself, that thing pained me. It pained me like crazy,” she says.
All was not lost for Ayiorworth. Her elder siblings encouraged her to attend vocational training schools where she learned catering. The director of the school saw something in Ayiorworth.
It led to her joining KampaBits, a youth-based ICT organization that improves the lives of those living in informal settlements. It’s here that she learned graphic and web design. During the course at KampaBits, Ayiorworth joined S7 Project, a skills empowerment center in Kampala. While there, a firend of the founder of S7 Project, Laura Fredrick, helped her get her first job as a chef at Little Donkey, a small Mexican restaurant in Kampala.
Ayiorworth and Fredrick had talked of the idea of keeping girls in school, with the help of a goat. At the time, at 19 years old and having grown up in a village, it was inevitable that her first idea would be inspired by the environment she grew up in.
“I wanted to get goats and give it to girls or their guardians. So when the goat gives birth, after three months I get back the kids if they are two or three and I leave the goats with the girls so that it can give birth again. And the goat can help the girl. They can either sell it or it keeps giving birth and it multiplies and the girl is supported that way,” she says.
The only problem was Ayiorworth didn’t have money to buy a goat. She went back to the drawing board and came up with another idea that would win her awards.
“I knew the community where I came from and I knew the pettiest businesses that mothers could do and they could earn something for me. [I thought] maybe I should support the mothers with that category of girls, with the business so they can support the girls,” she says.
With her first salary of $40 she earned from Little Donkey, she made loans to 10 women. They sold anything from second-hand clothing to fried peanuts.
The business ran for about three months allowing Ayiorworth to save around Ush300,000 ($110), catching the attention of the S7 director. He was so impressed that he loaned Ayiorworth about Ush800,000 ($295) at 2% interest.
Ayiorworth registered Girl Power Micro-Lending Organisation (GIPOMO) and structured it so that the education of girls was tied to loans.
The women are grouped in threes as a prerequisite in getting a loan, of which they pay a monthly 10% interest.
“If I give you Ush10,000, you have to bring back Ush11,000. Then I can give it back to you right away. The idea is to make sure the money is secure. The interest remains and I give you back the Ush10,000,” she says.
It was far from easy. About nine months into the business, two women ran away with USh400,000 (around $150). Ayiorworth did not allow that to dissuade her. She put in new guidelines and carried on.
One of which was if a girl that was supposed to be educated from the scheme complained three times, the guardian is booted off the scheme.
GIPOMO’s success for having developed and implemented an innovative solution to a challenge facing Ayiorworth’s community garnered her the Anzisha Prize in 2013 for young African entrepreneurs. She ploughed the $25,000 prize money into her business, boosting her savings pool to over Ush45 million ($16,500).
Her passion for education for young girls has encouraged her to implement other projects like Women in Agriculture where women are helped to make money off it through planting crops that are sold to other companies at a cheap price. GIPOMO makes a 5% interest from the sales.
Although Ayiorworth started GIPOMO as a class project, it is still going strong.
Today, GIPOMO has registered over 65 women, but there’s another 200 still waiting to join. It is revolutionizing girls’ education
in Uganda.
It just goes to show what the failure to afford a goat, followed by a good idea, can do.

A Lending Scheme  No Kidding

It was her parents’ inability to pay her fees that made Best Ayiorworth drop out of secondary school. But that spurred at the time, 19-year-old Ugandan girl to start a microlending business to help other young girls complete their schooling.
Ayiorworth started Girl Power Micro-credit Organization (GIPOMO) focusing on the education of young girls in her community in Northern Uganda. She designed it in such a way that if mothers are introduced to business with the help of microfinance loans, they would in turn focus on the education of their daughters.
In Uganda, where families struggle to put their children through school, the girl child is often overlooked and forced to stay at home.
“It pained me like crazy when I had to drop out of school,” says Ayiorworth. Pain led to creativity.
The business did not happen overnight though. One of her sisters helped Ayiorworth enrol for various short courses to pass time. She dabbled in graphic design, web design, did a catering course and was employed as a chef at a Mexican restaurant. She used her first salary of $40 to start her organization.
She thought if she could empower women financially, they in turn, would support the education of their children, especially the girls. Ayiorwoth began by giving monthly micro loans with 10% interest rates, to enable women to grow their small businesses. She would reinvest her profit back into her business. When her mentor at a vocational training school saw the idea being implemented, she loaned Ayiorwoth USh800,000 ($295) to boost the business.
But nine months into the enterprise, two women ran away with USh400,000 ($142). Ayiorworth did not let that upset her. She laid rules that would help her run the enterprise more successfully. If the women who were part of the business did not meet the organization’s mandate of supporting the girl child with the money they made, she disqualified them from the scheme.
Although Ayiorworth started GIPOMO as a class project, it is still going strong. She says she has saved over USh6 million ($2,200) and is working with about 35 women in her village in Nebbi District.

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The Student Model

Kirumira Rose Namubiru is one of Uganda’s busiest and most well-known sculptors, specializing in the human form. Yet, when we meet her, Namubiru, a doctorate and senior lecturer at the School of Industrial and Fine Arts at Makerere University in Uganda’s capital Kampala, says recognition did not come easily.
Her very first outdoor exhibit was marred by controversy. Namubiru had been assigned by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 1987 to create two sculptures for their offices in Kampala. She cast what later became the famous Mother Uganda and UNDP sculptures.
Mother Uganda, a semi-nude sculpture of a black woman, was hugely criticized because people thought it depicted nudism and sexism – two topics taboo in most African cultures.
The controversy was widely covered in the local press.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29518" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Lilian-Mary-Nabulime-standing-with-some-of-her-works-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Lilian-Mary-Nabulime-standing-with-some-of-her-works-225x300.jpg 225w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Lilian-Mary-Nabulime-standing-with-some-of-her-works-300x400.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Lilian-Mary-Nabulime-standing-with-some-of-her-works-600x800.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Lilian-Mary-Nabulime-standing-with-some-of-her-works-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Lilian-Mary-Nabulime-standing-with-some-of-her-works.jpg 767w" sizes="(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px" />
“I was just starting [out]. I got many threats. I didn’t know what to do or say, but my professor, the late Musango Gwantamu, stood by me. I explained that the sculpture wasn’t naked but a portrayal of the beauty of the motherland [of] Uganda, in [the] shape of a woman,” says Namubiru.
In the end, the dust settled and the sculpture stands till today. Namubiru jokes she now wishes she had made her work even more beautiful.
“I could have rounded the bust a little bit more and given it more hips,” she says. More importantly, Namubiru says she was encouraged to carry on as she realized her work could create an impact.
Namubiru’s sculptures are displayed around the world, most notably: The Page (1995) in Winnipeg, Canada; Ambassador (1999) in the US, Omumbejja (1997-2010) in Denmark, and Friendship (2000) in Changchun, China.
She built her reputation fusing traditional visual art skills, techniques and knowledge with style, tending towards the decorative.
Her original exposure outside Makerere was at the international artists’ workshop at the Thapong Visual Arts Centre in Botswana in 1994. Soon, she felt the need to organize exhibitions in Uganda similar to those she had attended in other countries. In 1998, she successfully organized the first-ever international artists’ workshop in Uganda.
Namubiru foresees a brighter future for female sculptors due to growing synergies among artists globally. She however calls for more funding and enforcement of policies targeting art.
Art For AIDS
A senior lecturer at the School of Industrial and Fine Arts at Makerere University, Lilian Mary Nabulime created sculptures on a wide range of themes before switching her focus to HIV/AIDS during her PhD studies at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The reasons were also personal.
Traumatized by the suffering of her husband and other relatives who had the condition, she felt the need to initiate a campaign that could spread awareness about the disease so prevalent in her home country Uganda.
Using translucent soap bars, Nabulime sculpted male and female genitalia depicting the lives and experiences of women living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda. Over the years, these creations have become important tools in awareness campaigns.
Nabulime’s models have created a sculptural language that transcends literacy barriers and ethnic differences and divides to reach the largest possible audience. During her master’s degree in 1992, curvy tree stumps were her trademark but she also fashioned installations from the roots of trees.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29520 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/DSC_0922-203x300.jpg" alt="" width="203" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_0922-203x300.jpg 203w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_0922-300x443.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_0922-600x886.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_0922-768x1134.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_0922-694x1024.jpg 694w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_0922.jpg 693w" sizes="(max-width: 203px) 100vw, 203px" />
“One time there was a heavy storm that brought down huge trees at the university. The exposed roots inspired me to get into root sculpturing. I made quite a number of them, some in huge sizes,” says Nabulime.
She sought assistance from the German Cultural Society for her first exhibition, held at Sheraton Kampala Hotel, along were two other male painters. Although she only sold a handful of pieces, the exhibition brought numerous opportunities. She went on to participate in over 50 exhibitions and hundreds of workshops in Africa and beyond.

DSC_0938

Nudism Or Beauty?

Emmanuel Katongole is a brisk, no nonsense, entrepreneur with a powerful desk and a sharp suit. If you look closely, beneath his distinguished grey hair, you can see the traces of pain that steeled one of Uganda’s leading entrepreneurs.
Katongole watched his three elder sisters die for want of medical care. It is no coincidence that he has dedicated his life, as an entrepreneur, to making pills to fight two of Africa’s great killers: malaria and HIV/Aids.
“My elder sister got pregnant at 15 and died while giving birth, she bled to death because she couldn’t go to hospital. The other two died of HIV/Aids, leaving me alone. This is not only hearing of it, I saw it. So many other families have gone through this,” says Katongole.
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“It was an influence in this kind of business. I think about them often and now we see our medicines being made and thousands upon thousands surviving. That gives you a good feeling.”
To say Katongole grew up the hard way is an understatement. He was born in 1962 in the rural Mityana district in the hills of Uganda and spent most of his childhood herding goats and fighting off hyenas.
“We grew up right from childhood being independent and had to work to survive. That has grown with me,” he says.
Neither his father, nor his mother, could read nor write; his father worked as a laborer, his mother sold roasted maize by the side of the road. In 1965, Katongole senior moved the family to Kampala, in search of a better life, when he secured a job working as a night porter at the Palace of Kabaka – the seat of the King of Buganda. One day Katongole senior went to work, never to return.
“It is believed that he was caught in the gunfire that resulted from the soured relations between the Buganda kingdom and the central government at the time. We never saw him again,” says Katongole.
It meant more hardship for the family. Veronica Katongole had to make the tough decision to withdraw her three daughters from education so she could afford to pay for her son to go through school. Young Katongole did not wear shoes, ride in a vehicle nor switch on a light bulb until he won a scholarship to Namilyango College near Kampala. The hard work paid off and Katongole graduated from Makerere University – known in Kampala as the ivory tower – in statistics and applied economics. He got a job and began looking for areas of business not yet saturated. As it turned out, 1987 was a good year for entrepreneurs in Kampala. The Ugandan government was easing state controls and liberalizing the foreign exchange market.
Katongole saw that 1.5 million, out of 30 million, Ugandans were HIV positive. On top of this, malaria killed 300 people a day; the equivalent of an Airbus A340 crashing seven days a week, he says. In 1997, Katongole and five partners put in $5,000 each to found Quality Chemicals on a patch of dusty land on the poor fringes of Kampala. The first year was lean; the company turned over less than a million dollars.
“The turning point came in 2001. This is when the world became very tough about intellectual property and patents. When the World Trade Organization came in, we saw this as an opportunity. Uganda was among 16 of the poorest of the poor nations made exempt. Patented medicines were expensive &#8211; do you allow poor people to die because of patents?”
It cleared the way for Quality Chemicals to manufacture six million pills a day to tackle both deadly diseases. The coup was a joint venture, in 2005, with Indian pharmaceutical giant, Cipla, which was looking for a foothold in the continent. This poured capital and expertise into the company and by 2013 turnover was $65 million; this year, the accountants project $76 million. In November, Cipla spent $15 million on increasing its stake to 51%. Katongole and his fellow five founders retain 23%.
It is a late autumn morning in the outskirts of Kampala and Quality Chemicals is humming. Outside there are goats grazing in the sun, it is nearly noon and more than 30 degrees Celsius; inside it is cool and busy. Hundreds of people in white coats are hard at work making the handfuls of pills that can be the difference between life and death for a village full of people.
The company exports to Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and South Sudan. It is far from an easy business.
“The infrastructure problems of the country notwithstanding, we have problem with access to markets. You know, we have got a lot of donor products coming in and these hinder the development potential of our market. There are also subsidies given by other countries which hurt our market. Then there is the power shortage. It is not so much of a big problem since we bought our own generator,” says Katongole.
“We could do better, but if you compare what is happening globally, there has been a concerted effort by the state to sustain the economy. Inflation has been between 8 and 12 percent for many years; that is not bad for African countries. If you look at the exchange rate, it is largely under control, fluctuations here and there, but not bad. Interest rates, of 20 to 24 percent, are relatively stable, but they are high. Banks are helpful, but the economy is relatively small.”
Despite this, Quality Chemicals is thinking big.
“Our dream is to be the number one company in our field in Africa. For now, the problem of malaria and aids is still big – we are also looking at making pills to tackle cancer and hypertension. These are the serious diseases we are thinking about.”
The next thought will be the completion of a second factory that will increase the workforce to 700.
“I tell you I always believe that every generation has its revolution and the revolution of our generation is entrepreneurship. A lot can be done. Well-handled entrepreneurship can do so much,” says Katongole.
This confident man has one tinge of regret; that he never had the chance to offer his hard working mother more of the fruits of his success. Veronica Katongole died of skin cancer in 2002. Among her last wishes were for her son to build an iron sheet roofed house for her – the family had grown up under mud and wattle. The second was that she wanted her funeral to be led by a Catholic priest.
The first request was built in Katongole’s first year of work; the second was led by the Archbishop of Kampala.
In a tribute to his mother, Katongole has launched bottled water, called Vero after her, where the proceeds go to charity, in her honor. Proof, that the legacy of an entrepreneur can be far more than money.
<h4>In The Business Of Caring</h4>
&nbsp;
In Uganda entrepreneurs are known for the money they have made but their reputations are often tainted with rumors of dishonest practices and dealings that helped pave their path to success. This is not the case when you mention Emmanuel Katongole in Uganda’s business community.
Katongole is widely recognized for his social entrepreneurship, philanthropy and unrelenting spirit. For someone who had to team up with his illiterate mother to sell local liquor to earn school fees, it is inspirational to now see him as a member of the Initiative for Global Development (IGD), a group that aims to reduce poverty worldwide and consists of successful business leaders from Africa, Asia, Europe and the United States (US).
Katongole is part of the esteemed company of former secretaries of state of the United States Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell, who co-chair the governing council of IGD.
Back in 1997, Katongole, along with five colleagues, founded Quality Chemicals. It grew to become the only company in sub-Saharan Africa that manufactures triple-combination antiretroviral (ARV) drugs. Today, the company manufactures and sells antiretroviral and antimalarial drugs. Given the crippling effects of malaria and HIV/Aids on the continent, Katongole has made a significant contribution towards reversing the effects of these diseases.
There have been accusations of him being too close to the Ugandan government and subsequently using his close connections to get ahead in business. Others, however, argue that the scourge of HIV/Aids and malaria has long been a major priority for the Ugandan government and any major player within that sphere would require a collaborative relationship with them.
Besides Quality Chemicals, Katongole founded Vero Mineral Water, in memory of his late mother, Veronica.
The business commits 10% of its proceeds towards social development causes such as education. For Katongole, entrepreneurship should solve society’s most pressing challenges and his businesses are testimony to this.
His background is one of extreme poverty and disease. He used this as inspiration to build an enterprise that not only creates wealth but confronts the twin evils of poverty and disease within its community. Katongole is the district governor of the Rotary Club in Tanzania and Uganda, which provides humanitarian services in that region of Africa.
“I think he has done a lot for Rotary and that is a good thing,” says Ugandan business mogul Patrick Bitature.
He adds that although Katongole has achieved a lot as an entrepreneur, he is bound to achieve a lot more in future.
“He is going places,” says Bitature.
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The Pain And Drive That Turned $5,000 Into $65 Million A Year

When Majida Nantanda – the coach of the Ugandan national women’s football team – was growing up, her four brothers treated her as an equal in their matches. She thought that was the way it was supposed to be.
When she went to school, she realized girls were not expected to run around kicking a ball. Nantanda’s opportunities to play the game were far fewer than those of her brothers. She knew that was not the way it was supposed to be.
Nantanda defied the odds, endured the jeers and forged a career in sport. Her determination and talent saw her play for the Ugandan national women’s football team for nine years. When she was done, she turned her attention to coaching and football development, with a twist.
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In 2009, Nantanda joined Tackle Africa, an organization that uses football for HIV/AIDS awareness among the youth. Her rationale was simple: “I committed to developing a grassroots football program to empower more girls and women in sports. But I also use football to address issues like health and education. Considering that football is by far the most popular sport in Uganda, if more coaches can be trained on how to provide HIV/AIDS education, it will have an important impact among the youth,” says Nantanda.
Nantanda offers something slightly different than her male counterparts, because she targets women’s education.
“For girls, it is about knowing their own rights, how to stand up for them and taking ownership of their bodies, something they learn through female coaches. Our female coaches teach girls to be strong, to speak up and make decisions. They work on empowering women to have free choice, particularly around their sex lives in an often male-dominated society,” says Tom Colborne, head of business development at Tackle Africa.
She is also a role model for young boys, who do not have the opportunity to meet many women in elevated positions within their societies. The female coaches are seen as figures of knowledge, confidence and authority, according to Colborne.
But it is not as simple as it sounds.
“I had many challenges in bringing a group of boys together to play organized football, and at the same time talk about an HIV topic related to the drill. Some parents discouraged their children when they heard I am speaking about condoms, but I did not lose hope. I explained to the parents, what, why and how football and life skills link together,” says Evelyn Achieng, a Tackle Africa coach in Kenya.
“I love the drills, we do them once a week. After we learn it, we practice and play it over and over until we remember it. Some drills show exactly what is happening in our bodies, so it is fun, but it is also important to learn. These games have really helped in my education. I am active, I listen and I concentrate. Here we all know each other and we help each other learn about discipline, HIV, life and making friends,” says Juma Christine, a beneficiary of Tackle Africa’s Kenyan project when he was younger.
Tackle Africa has 8,000 girls on their books, and 200 female coaches working in six countries across southern and East Africa. It is also working with the Tanzanian sports ministry to train 120 female coaches. Juliana Mokiwa is one of them and has already seen the dividends of her work pay off both in her personal life and in football.
“In Africa it is true that many women have no say with their husbands. Now, I have the knowledge about how I can make decisions. I have also learned different skills about football, which I will teach other coaches and players,” she says.
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Tackle Africa has seen the confidence and ability of female players grow, however footballing infrastructure remains a challenge, admits Colborne.
“There’s still a long way to go before there’s a women’s professional game in any of the countries we work in. Even the top division male players are rarely able to earn a decent living through the game. But, we see women’s national teams beginning to spring up and there are numerous organizations running women’s leagues,” he says.
Despite all that, Tackle Africa is not looking to unearth the next Nantanda, instead it is hoping to keep young people playing football, so they can reap the benefits associated with the program.
“We help female coaches to be better at coaching, so that they can develop players – not because we care about making better footballers, but because we know in order for our sessions to work, the coach must be credible [and only then will it have] young people coming back. With good female coaches, they can ensure girls attend their sessions as regularly as boys, and learn as much about football as they do about life.”

One Shot For GOAL Another At Life

When former Ugandan president, Idi Amin, gave Asians a 90-day ultimatum to get out of the country in August 1972, he sparked a desperate fight for life for more than 60,000 people.
Some, who feared Amin’s brutality, had nowhere to run. Their bodies were found in the waters of the Nile.
Hitherto happy families fretted as they sought survival. Among them was a Ugandan Indian retailer’s family that took flight leaving behind, in the midst of panic and confusion, a 16-year-old son.
This vulnerable teenager was Sudhir Ruparelia.
More than 40 years on from this tearful parting, Sudhir is ranked by FORBES as the 24th wealthiest person in Africa with an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion. His is a remarkable story of hard work and endurance.
In an interview at his plush office chambers, in the heart of Kampala, Sudhir recalls how staying behind didn’t bother him when his family fled to Britain.
“It was an awful moment for the Asian community. You couldn’t predict what was to happen to you the next day. But I convinced my parents to leave me behind on the promise that I would join them later,” he says.
Sudhir’s Ugandan-born parents had established a shop and gas station in the middle of Queen Elizabeth National Park in western Uganda. They ran it for years.
The bravery and tenacity that that helped Sudhir survive and prosper amid chaos can be traced back to his childhood.
Sudhir studied in schools that were far away from the wildlife park where his parents ran their business. This meant he traveled long distances alone.
He cadged lifts on trucks ferrying traders. The trucks would leave the bush loaded with fish and salt and return packed with merchandise. Although the East African railway service was booming at that time, Sudhir says it was only for the rich.
At school, there was no communication with his parents until the holidays.
This forged a hard edge to Sudhir. All he wanted from his departing family was money to survive. His wish was granted.
For six weeks, Sudhir ran riot with his friends.
“We had a lot of money to party and drink. The security personnel occasionally stopped us but we always sweet-talked them into releasing us,” he says.
His moment of truth came when intelligence men arrested one of his friends. They wanted to extort money.
“Once he was released, we all decided to leave since the city was also getting desolate. There were just about 100 Asians left,” says Sudhir.
There was nothing left, but to flee.
Sudhir landed alone in London and didn’t even know where to find his parents. Together with other exiles, he was checked into a refugee camp. On the second day, he set out to find friends in Finchley Central. He found eight of them living in a two-roomed house. He never returned to the camp.
After five weeks in London, Sudhir found his family, but only to tell them that he wasn’t content with his refugee status and that he was moving on. He headed to Birmingham and Manchester where there were jobs that could promise permanency.
Sudhir tried to get work at Ford Motor Company but was thwarted by a union closed shop. He moved to Ilford, in northeast London, where he found a job with a company that made test tubes for laboratories. He handled red-hot wax in making centimeter markings on test tubes.
“This was the most sickening job in the entire factory. I barely had any protection and the heat was unbearable. No wonder I worked for only five months and moved back to Finchley Central,” says Sudhir.
Next, he tried to join the Royal Air Force (RAF). He passed the tests and was on the verge of signing for five years.
The problem was he was a minor and needed the consent of his parents. His mother declined. Her idea of the military had been tainted by the cruelty she had witnessed by the Ugandan army. Sudhir’s father differed but the mother held sway.
The RAF offered education. Sudhir hoped for academic success, but it was not to be.
Next, came a string of lowly jobs leading to a supermarket where he worked hard and bought a car. He used it as a cab at the weekends for extra cash. At the same time, he enrolled at a college for A-level studies, majoring in economics and accounts. He completed his studies and worked for a number of companies.
His wife, Jyotsna, with whom he worked at the supermarket, advised him to concentrate on one business. When they got married, Sudhir ventured into real estate in London. He bought properties, renovated them and sold for a profit.
Through this time, Sudhir had an uncle who had stayed behind in Uganda. He kept the link with home.
In February 1985, Sudhir returned to Uganda, aged 29, with $25,000 he earned through real estate deals in London. Due to unrest, Uganda was hit by foreign exchange shortages that caused the decline of the Ugandan shilling (Ush) to a low in 1985 of Ush600 to $1.
Sudhir says he kept a low profile for over a year to allow him time to study and understand the ruined economy.
In December 1986, Sudhir opened a wholesale store, in Kampala’s central business district, dealing in imported beer, salt and wine. The civil war left the breweries of Uganda in ruins.
This made it lucrative to import beer, with household goods, from Kenya. Sudhir positioned himself as a channel between importers and retailers. He became a trusted business partner to the importers, who supplied him the items on credit and claimed payments after a couple of days, to accelerate returns. He ran the system effectively and set up the first solid distribution structure in Kampala.
“While in London, the strongest trait I learnt was being disciplined. I ensured that the suppliers’ money was always readily available as agreed,” he says.
After just three months, he became the number one dealer in imported beer in Kampala.
Armed with a sound supply chain, Sudhir wasted no time in elevating himself to importer. This required piles of foreign exchange. So, he started a currency exchange service, which was another untapped market in Uganda.
Though the sector operated informally, the demand was overwhelming. Sudhir earned $10,000 in profit every day. He invested part of this money in prime properties in Kampala.
In 1990, the government moved in with a policy to regulate forex businesses, which had mushroomed. Sudhir’s Crane Forex bureau became the first to be licensed in the country. This catapulted him beyond his wildest dreams. In just six months, Sudhir says, he was making more money than the commercial banks.
He itched to grow his financial services empire and in 1995 created Crane Bank with $1 million.
Part of his frustration, was the way commercial banks operated as if they were doing everyone a favor. The charges were high and the choice limited. Sudhir’s came up with a motto for his new bank: Serving To Grow And Growing To Serve.
He lowered bank charges, extended banking hours; becoming the first to operate to 5PM and on Saturdays. He also cut red tape.
Today, Crane Bank is worth $120 million in capital and has 38 branches across the country. The country’s second largest commercial bank was voted Bank of the Year Uganda in 2009 and also won the Banker Of The Year award in 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 by the Financial Times in London—where Sudhir’s working life began.
In 2011, the bank posted a 32.3% increment in profit, before tax, rising to Ush90.23 billion ($37 million) from Ush68.19 billion ($28 million) in 2010.
“We are currently about 35 million people in Uganda. Only three and a half million live in Kampala. The rest of the population is in the countryside. That has guided our philosophy of opening more branches up country,” says Sudhir.
His plan is to open 10 branches a year for the next three to four years, with the hope of expanding into Rwanda in March this year, followed by South Sudan.
In his office, Sudhir’s wide collection of awards is impressive. He has won almost of the top investment awards in Uganda, including the Presidential Export Award for 2002, 2006, 2005 and 2009. He also received an honorary Doctorate of Law in Business from the Uganda Pentecostal University for his investments in the Ugandan economy.
A family man, with two daughters and a son, Sudhir’s investments are run under the umbrella of Ruparelia Group of Companies, which also holds high value assets in the property development and management, insurance, education, media and hotel sectors.
Through his floriculture company, Rosebud Ltd, Sudhir has been exporting 13 million roses to Europe a month earning him a profit of $5 million per year. Production is set to increase once he acquires a planned 200 additional hectares. He will effectively produce one and a half million stems a day, creating 7,000 jobs and projected returns worth $95 to 100 million per year.
It hasn’t been all rosy at Uganda’s largest flower exporting farm though. The firm was cited in alleged environmental degradation. The National Association of Professional Environmentalists have accused Rosebud of polluting the Lutembe wetland, on the shores of Lake Victoria, with pesticide and fertilizer effluents, according to FORBES.
However, the National Environment Management Authority, a semi-autonomous institution and principal agency in Uganda charged with the responsibility of coordinating, monitoring, regulating and supervising environmental management in the country, says it has found no fault with Rosebud.
“We licensed Rosebud in 2004 with well stipulated guidelines to follow in safeguarding the environment. We have been monitoring their operations and have no queries save for the wrong perception of some members of the public,” says the authority’s executive director, Tom Okia Okurut.
Sudhir, who is hesitant to delve deeper into the matter because it is before a court, says his plans have the blessing of the environmental regulator.
Last year, residents tried to block the road leading to the farm in protesting the expansion plans. Through his lawyers, Sudhir sought a court injunction to have the development continue.
The Ugandan parliamentary committee on natural resources also instituted investigations into the matter but the speaker halted the proceedings citing sub judice. The real estate business is simpler.
Through his estate holding company, Meera Investments—named after his first daughter—Sudhir owns at least 300 residential and commercial properties in Uganda, from Crane Chambers in the central business district, to scores of apartment blocks, shopping centers, office buildings and tracts of valuable land. He estimates his rent is around $600 million a year from his real estate.
His five-star Speke Resort and Conference Centre, situated on 75 acres, by the shores of Lake Victoria near Kampala, played host to the 2007 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, which drew 59 leaders. Built for the Commonwealth meeting, the resort has 780 rooms, 10 conference rooms, a 1,000-seat ballroom and nine meeting rooms that can accommodate groups ranging from 10 to 300 people. It also has Uganda’s only Olympic size swimming pool, an equestrian center and a host of bars and restaurants.
The plush hotel, worth around $165 million, caught the eye of the late Libyan president, Muammar Gaddafi, who tried to buy it for $120 million. Sudhir turned him down.
His other assets include Speke Hotel, Kabira Country Club and Speke apartments, all high-end facilities in prime zones of Kampala and worth millions of dollars.
Sudhir also bought Victoria University from Edulink Holdings Ltd to add to his educational institutions portfolio already comprising of Kampala International School Uganda (KISU) and Kampala Parents’ School. The institutions are worth more than $40 million.
Asked what guides his investment, Sudhir says it is instinctive risk taking rather than feasibility studies.
“In Africa, feasibility studies are a waste of time. It’s about ability to see opportunity and take it up. If you did feasibility studies for a country like Uganda, you would never do anything,” he says.
Sudhir, the man who drove a cab for pennies and turned down Gaddafi, can never be accused of shrinking from a challenge.

The Man Who Earns  $600 Million A Year In Rent

By 1993, Uganda’s economic indicators were a far cry from what they are today. The East African state was, by then, just emerging from a string of civil wars. The infrastructure lay in ruins and unemployment was startlingly high. The banking sector was one of the few that offered enviable job opportunities. But here was Regina Mukiibi Mugongo, who had diligently worked with the now defunct Uganda Commercial Bank for 15 years, desperate to throw in the towel so as to become an entrepreneur.
Mukiibi rose through the ranks from a banking assistant to an accountant. She sought early retirement to enter into the travel business. But her request was turned down by her employers, who increased her salary, for they thought it was all about the money. Barely a year later, they learned that they were wrong when she submitted a second retirement request, this one was granted.
Mukiibi joined her brother’s travel bureau and it was on one of her numerous trips abroad that she discovered a business idea that would see her forge a new way.
“It was during these many trips to Europe that me and my brother [Frederick Katamba Mukiibi] thought about starting a funeral service company to offer professional send-offs for the deceased, just like we had witnessed,” she recalls.
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Little did she know that it would take years before they would see a cent. In 1994, they registered the Uganda Funeral Services (UFS) and pioneered its service across the African Great Lakes region. It took three years before operations kicked off in 1997, mainly due to differing cultural beliefs and practices within the region. Traditionally, nobody left the responsibility to handle and prepare the dead for burial to people not from the deceased’s clan and family.
“We risked the wrath of society and indeed they called us all sorts of names for our innovation. Most people interpreted our venture as taboo,” says Mukiibi.
Sadly, things would become harder before they became easier. Her brother, who was also a renowned lawyer in Kampala, passed away on a year after the company started operations, leaving her the mantle to carry on with the challenge of undertaking.
“For two months, I didn’t think I would be able to carry forward the business. Society was vehemently against what we had initiated that I even thought about going back to the bank to plead for my former job,” Mukiibi notes.
At the time, the communities around Bweyogerere, a Kampala city suburb on the eastern flank, were up in arms against the new funeral home she had established using part of her retirement package. It was the first of its kind in the country and a cultural shock to most. Nothing seemed to petrify residents more than learning that the funeral parlor was used for the embalmment of bodies, keeping vigil for the deceased and as a preservation room for cadavers.
She sought refuge by joining numerous national investor networks. Besides the support and protection the organizations offered her, they also held several events during which Mukibi created awareness for and marketed her services.
Mukiibi was forced to take on several jobs at no cost for demonstrational purposes and as a survival tactic. It was with relief that Mukiibi learned that similar services were being introduced by the Catholic Church in Uganda. Church leaders gave her hope and counseled her against giving up. When a priest passed on, the church enlisted her services. Soon after, elite citizens and the state also joined her list of clientele, as did foreign embassies in Kampala that need to repatriate bodies of the deceased.
Soon her business took off and she applied for a credit facility from a local commercial bank to boost it. This came easily given her good track record in the banking service. The funds helped her procure a permanent home within the precincts of Kampala.
Today, UFS’s offices are abuzz. Clients are constantly seen walking in and out. On the day that I conduct this interview, six families are processing a dignified goodbye for their departed. Mukiibi juggles between responding to my questions and playing her part as director in approving clients’ paperwork. She has to interrupt our interview to answer a few telephone calls with pathologists, clients and her team. It is then that I reflect on how Mukiibi has successfully transitioned from being a seasoned banker to an individual who stands side-by-side with bereaved families.
“When a departed family member is sent off in a dignified manner, in a way it reduces the trauma and agony that the bereaved family suffers,” she says.
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It was at Salisbury College of Funeral Sciences and Embalming in London that Mukiibi undertook professional training. Today, she is the proud proprietor of the only company in the African Great Lakes region to be a member of the National Funeral Directors Association based in Brookfield, Wisconsin, in the United States. She is also a council member of the International Federation of Thanatologists Association (IFTA) and FIAT-IFTA – the world organization of funeral operators headquartered in the Netherlands.
To date, she has won various international and local accolades in recognition of her outstanding service, the latest being the 2013 Phenomenal Woman of Funeral Services Trailblazer Award, which she picked up from the US-based 100 Black Women of Funeral Service, during their convention in Austin, Texas in October. Other accolades include the Best Ugandan Innovator in the senior category for the year 2004, Best Woman Entrepreneur 2007 and Regional Entrepreneur. She was also recognized as one of the top 50 brands when Uganda celebrated 50 years of independence in 2012.
With a fleet of over 30 hearses and a large team, Mukiibi stands out as a preferred service provider in a field that has since attracted about a dozen similar entities.
An expatriate from Thailand helps make customized coffin designs and other high-end furniture in the carpentry workshop she has established. Because Mukiibi understands the value of skills, she occasionally flies in professionals to train her staff in handling funeral services.
Her venture into neighboring Rwanda was short-lived due to what she describes as “non-commercial viability and unfriendly investment environment”. Regardless, she is happy with the breakthrough made in her home country.
Although in Uganda, like in many other African countries, most people rush into funeral arrangements after losing a person, Mukiibi says there is a growing trend to plan ahead for terminally-ill clients. Others have walked into her office to plan their own funerals. Her business has even transcended religious barriers as she has handled funerals for Muslim clients.
“People come in when they are completely shattered but they leave with a smile. Some have given us awesome gifts in appreciation,” she adds.
Her 10-year goal includes establishing a one-stop funeral center with a well-equipped morgue, modern crematorium, a cemetery and a funeral service institute affiliated to the US-based Mount Aida Funeral Training Institute.
Mukiibi bore the death of her brother and opposition to her business, but from her conviction sprung new life in a services industry that was unexplored in Africa.

From Banker To  The Business Of Burial

How did you become Africa’s 18th richest person?
Our group has invested steadily and has been very consistent, which has had a compound effect on our investments and the kind of assets we have. And also by the sheer nature that FORBES showed interest in Uganda, or has done more research in Africa and has taken more interest.
Tell us your story.
One of the first businesses we started dealing in was salt and the other was in beer—a rare and very fast-moving commodity—followed by other commodities… very soon we became one of the largest beer dealers in the country and this went on until about 1989. That is when the breweries refurbished themselves and started the production of beer. When they started production, they lobbied to the government to stop importation to protect the local industry and jobs. The government obliged… we had built up a huge clientele&#8230; all the hotels in town would buy beer from us;  we would have expatriates buying beer from us. At the time, foreign exchange was not allowed for luxury items like beer. So what would happen is that people would rent their houses in foreign currency. When they received their rent they would come and change it with us. In the meantime, the expatriate community needed to buy local provisions for their daily requirement. They would buy beer and other things from our store, they would also come and exchange foreign currency. We needed this foreign currency to pay for the importation of beer…
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After the closure of the beer business there were lots of people who wanted to change money with us. We started buying this currency and would actually deal with a trader who would need foreign currency to buy certain types of goods, we would swap this with local currency. Come 1990, Uganda liberalized the formal market, it was the second country in Africa to do so—Ghana was the first. We opened the first foreign exchange bureau called Crane Forex Bureau. Within six months we were doing more business than the banks’ foreign exchange departments. What transpired in the next two or three years was that the banks worked together and formed a cartel that would hit the forex bureaus by levying high charges and restraints. I realized that in order to sustain us we needed to go into the banking business so we eventually opened the first branch of Crane Bank on August 21, 1995. We had accumulated a lot of funds, so we were buying a lot of real estate. We bought our first property in 1991… The government nationalized all real estate, then the NRM [National Resistance Movement] government decided to return the Asian properties to its former owners but a lot of these people had settled in the West. They were doing well and had their families there, not all of them had intentions to come back. At that time there was an excess supply of real estate. The Asians who had property here never dreamed that this property would be returned to them so they came and cashed their money in. In the beginning, a lot of people were very skeptical about buying into the property: they were not sure about what would happen in the future. Now, we have a surplus of real estate in the country and people did not want the risk. I was one of the very few people at that time, who had faith in myself and I started investing at that time. Ever since then, we [Ruparelia Group] never looked back.
What is your view on the current state of the economy?
At the moment we are going through a restructuring. I guess this is always a good thing to do—a time to relook at all your businesses, trim them and flush out any inefficiencies. The problem here at the moment is that the politics are delaying the passing of a law, which will regulate the oil industry. Uganda desperately needs to pass these oil laws so when the oil comes, it is regulated and there is a transparent process it goes through. They don’t realize that every day they delay it, it costs the country a lot in lost revenue. So the government needs to clear that up.
What is the biggest weakness of the Ugandan economy now?
The left doesn’t know what the right is doing, unfortunately. The decision-making process of this country has gone very bad. Although there are a lot of processes, unfortunately these checks and balances have been misused, thereby the people have been scared into making decisions. The only way people feel they will survive in the job is by not making decisions and that’s very bad.
Recently donors have cut back on aid. Will this hurt the economy?
We don’t have only the issue of donors cutting aid; we have the issue of interest rates and of exchange controls – the foreign exchange rates. Now, Uganda cannot afford to have low interest rates at the moment because there will be capital flight out of the country. At the same time, it will have an effect on the foreign exchange rate. The currency depreciated by 8% at the end of last year. When you have further bad news by donor countries holding onto aid, it will have a negative effect on the country. I think Uganda gets about $800 million in aid and that is quite substantial as far as the budget support is concerned.
What should the Ugandan government do to promote entrepreneurs like yourself?
I think it’s always nice to have a government which has departments that make decisions. I think the decision-making process has deteriorated, that’s number one. Number two: the government needs to seriously finish all the regulatory bodies that are needed for the oil to take off. That’s the savior of this country. And if they can’t make decisions on how to solve oil regulation within the ministry then we are not going to go anywhere.
And the entrepreneurs? What can government do to promote businessmen such as yourself?
The only way any country can come out of unemployment is to support private industries, private entrepreneurs, who will then create jobs. They can’t solve all the problems of the nation but it will reduce unemployment and the other issues that go with it. Government went through one phase in 1990 when they first came in to support the industries and private enterprises. They brought in a lot of incentives, which has helped this country to get to where it is now. All it needs now are proper policies and if its oil is sorted out then industries will come here. Government does not need to do much more, just clean up its oil industry. If the oil is controlled and regulated and being produced you will see people queuing up to invest in this country.
What are your plans for 2013?
We have a lot of investments in real estate and we will continue [to invest]. We have projects of more than $150 million in the pipeline and we will fulfill those within the next 18 to 20 months. And hopefully, target a lot of service industries, which will service the oil industry; accommodation, education.
Do you think you will grow in the ranks in 2013?
Definitely. We have a lot of oil in this country and you can imagine that we have not even had one drop of oil come out, and the kind of resources that we have mobilized within the group.
Do you think you’ll be in the top 10 next year?
I am not sure but I am very happy to be at number 18 this year. The next few years will definitely have some kind of an impact. Crane Bank is expanding rapidly, it has 27 branches. By the end of this year, it will have 40 branches and then the year after, another 10, and it will continue to grow by at least 10 branches a year.

Tag: Uganda

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