Power

It's a warm and peaceful Friday evening and I'm looking forward to the weekend. I've been here in Uganda a week now, and friends are asking me, well....what do you think? My answer is that it's both beautiful and heartbreaking here.

I keep saying how wonderful the people are and I know that I'm doing a terrible job of describing the intelligence and spirit and earnestness of the Ugandan people. I am absolutely confounded as to why, in a country with such incredible people, and with such rich resources, there also exists this preponderance of abject poverty. I can only believe that it must be the imbalance of power in society because if everyone was free to contribute to the best of their abilities, then Uganda would not be in the situation it's in today.

One example of that situation is the country is ranked 110 out of 144 countries with respect to its ability to leverage technology. That ability, as you may well know, has a positive economic impact. For every 10 percent increase in technology adoption, you get over a half percent GDP bump. In today's knowledge economy tech savviness wins the race and Uganda has fallen far behind countries like Kenya where the government sponsors iHub incubators, Open Data, and other technology initiatives. Uganda has done a good job establishing cellular networks and privatizing technology services, but it still has a long way to go. And in the latest budget there is only just over $6 million earmarked for technology improvements. That's not going to buy much...certainly not enough to lift the poorest members of society out of poverty.

And here the level of poverty is startling, as is the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest members of society. I've spent the last two days at a trade show in a four star hotel that could hold its own in any European country. It was shock after spending the last week living in everyday Ugandan society, walking into the air conditioned luxury of this hotel - a hotel that is no more than a mile away from one of the slums of Kampala. We drove through this slum yesterday and it was like nothing I've ever seen...hundreds of ramshackle wooden board houses leaning together over an open ditch. Children running alongside the cars that slowly negotiate the pothole strewn dirt road. An elderly man sitting on the ground in the doorway of a house that used to be a shipping container. The toxic smoke of open trash fires mixing with diesel exhaust, choking the air. I can't conceive of a world where people have to live like this.

And even though I have only been here a week, I have a sense of what it feel like to be powerless to change the situation. At the hotel there was an elderly woman scavenging plastic bottles from the outdoor vendor area at the end of the day. I saw her picking up bottles and placing them into large plastic bags...one about the same size as she was, the other slightly smaller. After filling the two bags, she began to fill a third. The problem was that she couldn't quite manage all three. She balanced the largest bag on the top of her head and held the second bag, but when she tried to pick up the third, she tipped the bag that was balanced on her head, and in righting it, spilled the contents of the small bag onto the ground. I saw her struggling, went over to her and picked up the bottles, put them back in the bag, and handed it to her. She gave me the most beautiful smile. I wanted to cry. Here I was, a citizen of one of the most powerful countries in the world and this was all I could do to help her.

People ask me what the Development Practice program is that I'm studying at Trinity. It's a program that teaches us about critical issues that have been outlined in the Millennium Development Goals, like extreme poverty, and provides training for how to address these issues. With technology, the best kind of training is the kind that's hands on. It's impossible to learn how to use a computer unless you can sit in front of one, type on the keyboard, click the mouse, and see the result on the monitor. It would appear that is true for Development as well. For the past year I've been learning the theory of structural power imbalances, and the impediment they are to a fair and just society, but until I got here to Uganda I didn't really understand.

There's no point in learning about the problems though, if you don't also learn about the solutions. Monday's post will be dedicated to talking about the Civil Society Organizations in Uganda that exist to level the playing field. If anything is going to fix this power imbalance problem, I think it will be them.