The Questions
1. What opportunities exist for investors in your country?
2. What are the challenges facing investors?
3. What advice would you offer investors?
4. What is government doing and what needs to be done to improve the investment climate?
5. How can the financial sector help in facilitating investment in your country?
1 Uganda, and indeed Africa, has a wide range of business opportunities. It is an excellent place to invest with good returns, offering opportunities in public utilities, education and manufacturing.
Pinpointing a particular sector is difficult but new ideas are not necessary. In Europe or the US, you require a new product or service and a complex marketing plan to keep ahead of the competition. In Africa, you need only to bring good ideas that have worked elsewhere.
2 The biggest challenge in Uganda is the lack of skills. There is a broad base of people who are trainable rather than skilled. When MTN arrived in Uganda, we could recruit computer science graduates who had never seen a computer. But Ugandans are keen and willing to learn. On our network team, in technically demanding positions, we now have no expatriates.
3 I regularly see good ideas but no business plan. First-hand research is essential. And do not underestimate the challenges: we were spending $1.5m a year on training for about 320 staff members. Uganda offers great returns but it is not for the timid.
4 The government is focused on the private sector. At the top level they are easy to access and deliver on promises. However, this attitude has not trickled down to bureaucrats who deal with day-to-day matters of business. The revenue authorities, for instance, still take the attitude that businesses will cheat so there is a difficult relationship. Everything takes longer than it should. It has improved in the past five years but not as much as I would like.
5 Like other African countries, there is a shortage of capital, particularly large amounts of foreign exchange. Volatile currency prices mean large-scale investments funded with foreign capital need to be managed carefully. Otherwise, there are plenty of good banks and services are relatively good.
