At what point do we finally accept the old adage that you can’t eat your cake and have it too.? We want foreign money, but we reject foreign conditions. We want infrastructure financing, but we tell the same financiers to “stop interfering” when they express leadership concerns. We don’t tell them to mind their business when they’re giving their taxpayers money to help turn our Murram roads into paved roads which in turn enable NRM win elections. This is the exact attitude that cost Uganda a functioning Road Crash Database.
When the EU gives us money, do we dictate terms to them?
When the World Bank raises concerns, do we tell them to keep quiet?
We cannot demand their money and simultaneously reject their standards.
Our bravado is expensive. It is the same bravado that made the World Bank cancel financing for the Transport Sector Development Project (TSDP) after allegations of sexual misconduct by contractors from China Railway Seventh Group. The Fort Portal–Kamwenge Road, which was being funded at the time, was left unfinished and government had to complete it using UGX 85 billion of our own revenue.
But the real tragedy is the Road Crash Database, which needed only USD 600,000, collapsed completely. Eleven years later, Uganda still has no national road crash information system. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Works and Transport had already spent USD 2 million on that same system which is money that produced nothing, money that is now part of the foreign loans ordinary Ugandans continue to service.
Tayebwa to EU Parliament: Stop meddling in our affairs. “I think we need to caution our colleagues from the European Parliament to reduce interference in the matters of our countries,” Tayebwa said
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