Uganda’s First Lady: ‘Write Your Own Story’

There is something about first impressions.
When you meet Diana Kamuntu, two things instantly strike you about her: that she is tall – very tall – and that she would probably pass off as more movie star than manager.
Half an hour into meeting with the 37-year-old Ugandan entrepreneur and mother of three running a tour company in Kampala, facts emerge that she has been a business woman for the last decade, and that is as an elephant conservationist – who would have thought?
The youngest daughter of Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni plays it down.
“In the beginning, I was more on the tourism side but in the last few years, that’s when I went more into conservation, especially of the African elephant,” she says.
“I don’t think we as Ugandans know that much about it and knowing that it’s an issue that affects the whole continent.”
Her company, Age Safaris, is in the building we are in now, in the Luzira suburb of Kampala. By the reception to her offices is a giant carpet with the image of the President, hung on the wall.
How does she blend business with conservation, we ask.
“What I have learned over the years is that business is about people, it’s about the networking. The people you meet, the people you work with, is what makes a business, they become an extended family. For tourism in particular, I think it’s a great industry because it goes right down to the people. It trickles down to the communities, and changes whole communities,” says Kamuntu.
This she admits to learning from her parents.
“I guess for me the greatest thing I learned from my parents is their love for people. It’s what drives them, what keeps them going for work and being in touch with ordinary people. Many times, I have been with my father upcountry and he’ll stop the car to talk to people and ask them how their day is and how their families are. That will always remain with me. The greatest lesson in life is people.”
Her company works with an organization called Restoration Gateway that supports children and the vulnerable in northern Uganda.
But talk still veers to the African tusker.
“Here in Uganda, our African elephant population is steadily growing, it’s about 5,000 now. That’s not enough but it came from about 2,000 in the 1980s – it’s small but at least it’s not declining… During the war, many of the elephants migrated to the Congo but now they are slowly coming back and we are repopulating but in different parts of Africa, it’s mostly poaching, so the efforts are to try and stop that poaching and stop the market for ivory.”
The mountain gorilla, found in these parts, is even more endangered.
“Efforts mostly are about bringing awareness to everyone who visits that there are only about 750 to 800 mountain gorillas left in the world and more than half of them are in Uganda.”
<div id="attachment_34780" style="width: 311px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34780" class=" wp-image-34780" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Diana-Kamuntu-1-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="301" height="452" />Diana Kamuntu (Photo by Lovington Kambugu/Blush Media)</div>
Kamuntu’s travels take her far. Her husband Geoffrey is into the logistics business, and with children aged 12, 10 and eight, she says it’s hard work but certainly not as demanding as the early years when she had to “travel for exhibitions and business development”.
“The children are your priority and at the same time, you want to contribute. It’s a big challenge especially for women. Starting a business is not easy, as investment capital is hard to come by even though there are many microfinance projects targeting women. I think those are the biggest challenges that I’ve seen,” she says.
Kamuntu recounts her own career trajectory. She studied African History at the University of Minnesota in the United States.
“My father always made fun of me saying, ‘you went all the way to the States to study that’,” she laughs.
“Back in Uganda, for a bit I was [cattle] ranching with my father. Everyone knows he loves his cows – it’s our culture, the backbone of who we are. Then I started to venture into business. I would travel to many tourism destinations and see the number of tourists and think ‘you know if Uganda was discovered as a tourist destination, it would sell’. The more I went into it, the more I discovered what a unique country it is.”
Until the age of six, Kamuntu was in exile with the family. Her earliest memories are of winters in Sweden.
“And we spoke fluent Swedish,” she smiles.
“I guess as kids we didn’t know the struggles my mother was going through trying to raise four kids on her own. For us, it was a happy time really, but I guess there was always someone missing – my father, but his presence was always looming. I remember when my sisters and brother would want me to do something, they would say ‘daddy is coming today’, and then I would get up because I never really met him until I was six years old when we came back to Uganda and were reunited… That’s when I really got to know him.
“Both my parents are amazing. I think my father tried to make up for that time lost, so he would spoil us, especially the girls. He was always encouraging us to follow our dreams and dream big. Whatever he felt or you felt as a person was your calling, he would support you.”
Like both her parents, would she ever enter politics?
Kamuntu shakes her head. “I don’t aspire to be in politics… It’s a lot of sacrifice.”
It’s clear her heart is in many other things.
“Ugandans are very creative as a people so that’s our untapped potential,” she says.
It’s only when we meet her sister Natasha Karugire the following day and she mentions that she has cast Kamuntu as the leading lady of the movie, 27 Guns, she is currently filming that we know.
What was it again about first impressions?

‘The Greatest Lesson In Life Is People’

We are in one of the breakaway rooms of the conference center at the five-star Kampala Serena Hotel in Uganda, but the conversation is about Luweero, located two hours by road from Kampala.
Natasha Karugire, the eldest daughter of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, speaks breathlessly, her thoughts coming thick and fast, as she moves from one staccato sentence to another.
She is talking animatedly about the feature film, 27 Guns, she is currently making on Uganda’s ‘Bush War’, and 1981, when the young Museveni went into hiding as part of the National Resistance Army (NRA).
“He and 42 other men had only 27 guns between them, but what they had was faith and hope and fire,” says the 41-year-old mother of four, who started out as a fashion designer and has now scripted the film and is directing it. It is expected to premiere in February. When we meet her in September, she has been filming for two weeks, with an all-Ugandan crew and cast.
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Karugire’s creative energy is palpable as she speaks passionately about the project that has seen her literally live in the bush in Luweero, re-enacting the guerrilla war in which her father played a lead role. The NRA was based in different parts of Luweero for five years.
“It’s time we tell our own stories, and not wait for someone to come and tell it in a different voice, from a skewed perspective,” she says of the reason she started her film production company Isaiah 60 in March 2017.
“We have epic tales in Africa, and for us starting with Uganda, we have just such big stories… But you know the saddest thing for me is that our own citizens, a lot of the time, are unaware.”
She laments the tendency among the young to endorse the Western narrative.
“Whenever a story is being told by Hollywood about Africa, it’s so generic, there is a way that it’s told, the song that is played… And in your heart, you are feeling this is just not us, we are not only about this, there is so much more to the people of Africa… I think this film is our way of saying, ‘this is how we say it’.”
<div id="attachment_34773" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34773" class="wp-image-34773" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/27-Guns-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="333" />A scene from Natasha Karugire&#8217;s film, 27 Guns (Photo supplied)</div>
Growing up, Karugire says she was always artistic. “I draw, I sketch, take pictures and write poetry.”
At university, she studied fashion, design and marketing. She was barely 22, when she started her own business in Uganda’s non-existent fashion industry. She struggled.
“I started out in Uganda, when fashion was not understood,” she says simply. She got married at 24, and started a family. Her eldest child is now 16 and youngest five.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2017/12/12/connected-to-her-land/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Connected To Her Land</a>
Her husband Edwin, a lawyer, supported her “strange artistic journeys”.
But throughout her stint in the fashion business, Karugire kept asking herself if she was doing something she was passionate about and that kept her up at night.
“Almost the day I turned 40, something just happened,” says Karugire of her epiphany, that she should make a film about the struggle. Up until then, she had been putting together video clips, culled from old footage, for friends and family who loved them.
“I started reading my father’s books and I prayed, because we are Christians, my first point of call always is to ask God, that’s when I started writing a script for the first time,” she says.
“I realized I could not go to bed, I could not talk about anything else , and that’s when it hit me that this is my passion.”
Soon, Karugire met a producer in England, but “she was patronizing about the story”, saying it would probably be good for Ugandans and the region but not the international market.
Determined, she pressed on and started filming.
“It has such been a walk, quite a journey on so many levels , but right now, our faith is reaffirmed,” she says.
Funding for the film, she says, has come from people who believe in the story.
“But we are still looking for investors,” she tells us at the interview.
In the film, Karugire’s youngest sister, Diana Kamuntu, plays the role of the First Lady.
Talent, it seems, runs in the family.

‘It’s Time We Tell Our Own Stories’

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”

Despite its problems, East Africa’s third-largest economy has enjoyed a measure of political stability. In 1986, pragmatic former guerrilla leader, Yoweri Museveni, overthrew President Milton Obote and his National Resistance Movement (NRM); he has dominated the political landscape ever since and is expected to do so for the foreseeable future.
This vestige of political stability, coupled with western-backed economic reforms, culminated in robust economic growth for the east African nation. Between 2006 and 2010, growth averaged an impressive 7.2%. Growth has been supported predominantly by coffee exports, household consumption and infrastructure development. The commencement of oil production, following the discovery of oil in 2006, will be a further boost for growth in years to come.
However over the past financial year growth has taken a knock and was the lowest it has been for several years. Official statistics show growth to have slumped to 3.2% in FY2011/12, down from 6.7% the previous financial year. Growth was weighed down by rampant inflation and weak external demand, primarily emanating from concerns surrounding the Eurozone debt crisis.
<div id="attachment_994" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-994" class="size-large wp-image-994" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/iStock_000001291877Medium-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="711" />The equator, exactly at zero degrees north or south, The line is also painted on the road.</div>
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects growth to improve to 6% in 2012 and rise to 7% in 2013. Growth is likely to benefit from less stringent monetary policy on the back of subdued inflation. This is likely to improve credit extension to the private sector that had been adversely affected through tight monetary policy pursued since the middle of last year.
Inflation last year spiralled out of control prompting the Bank of Uganda to raise the central bank rate from 13% in July to 23% in November. Inflation decreased to 18% in June, from 18.6% a month earlier. Declining inflation allowed the central bank some scope to ease the policy rate. The central bank rate was lowered to 19% in July, down from 20% in June. Despite falling inflation, the Bank of Uganda is likely to be cautious in its monetary policy stance in months ahead. Rightly so as core inflation still remains high at 19.5% as of June.
Fiscal policy will complement monetary policy and remain accommodative in line with the country’s infrastructural and developmental ambitions.
Macroeconomic policy will be further anchored through the IMF’s Policy Support Instrument (PSI) program currently in place. In June the IMF gave the program a thumbs up which will soothe investor concerns.
There are several risks to growth in coming years. Uncertain global growth given the lack of a comprehensive and permanent solution to the European sovereign debt crisis should keep external demand low and continue to curtail exports. About 22% of Ugandan exports are destined for Europe.
Slowed global growth should keep energy prices low. Conversely, inflation will soar in the event that oil prices rise significantly. Food inflation in particular will also be dependent on rainfall conditions. Poor rains drove food inflation higher last year and it remained sticky at 12.7%, in June.
The possibility of war between Sudan and South Sudan will also have a considerable bearing on Uganda’s growth. The two neighbors engaged in border conflicts earlier in the year and have threatened each other with full-blown war. In the unfortunate event of war, Uganda has pledged to support South Sudan. A war between the two neighbors would threaten lucrative trade between Uganda and South Sudan.
Uganda has been rocked by mass protest following the general elections last year, which threatened the county’s stability. Continued protest will disrupt production. The protests have been led by opposition leaders and aim to turn the government’s attention to rising living costs, unemployment and rising corruption levels. Worryingly though, the protests have turned violent and police heavy-handedness to quell the protests has been reported.
Investors will be watching the economy closely in months to come. Top on their radar will be how quickly President Museveni addresses protests concerns. Any escalation of the protest would be detrimental to the economy. Investors will also have an eye on the commencement of oil production slated for 2013.

Tag: Yoweri Museveni

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Uganda’s First Lady: ‘Write Your Own Story’

‘The Greatest Lesson In Life Is People’

‘It’s Time We Tell Our Own Stories’

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