The first time I went to Kampala the third time I was there.

Kampala through the eyes of a tourist can be ‘done’ in one day. A ‘special-hire’ taxi takes you from the imposing Gaddafi mosque, to the museum, to the Kasubi tombs, and can drop you in some nice restaurant in Kololo in time for a dinner of ostrich curry and grilled crocodile imported from South Africa. That’s all very nice.

Kampala

Kampala through the eyes of those who live and work there is, inevitably, another city. Felix is the contact who has brought us here, to make some media appearances on behalf of our organisation. He got his first job at ten, founded an events management company at the age of fourteen, has worked for the government, in another life was a DJ, and now finds himself a civil society activist more-or-less under the wing of a leading Ugandan philanthropist. From our mzungu-dominated hostel, where loud pop music oppresses those eating breakfast and Sunday is mudwrestling day, he leads us through 

Kampala’s rush-hour of snaking taxi-buses and swarming taxi-bikes. London has far more inhabitants than Kampala, but here it seems that more of those inhabitants find themselves in the same place at the same time. It’s overwhelming. Through this density of street-vendors, commuters, high-rise blocks and small identikit businesses, we reach the industrial area all-concrete, all-broad streets, and comparatively empty. This is where the media studios can be found. 

Snaking taxi-buses

Robert is our host on the show. He speaks English with a soothing, honeyed accent, a mixture of educated Ugandan and BBC World Service. And he talks with a disarming, welcoming familiarity, dropping in reminiscences of his time in south-west London and lamentations about the teaching style in Ugandan schools. It’s like a conversation with an old friend. He’s the exception, though, in this environment dominated by young, energetic media professionals. The next show to be filmed is on social media, and the 24-year old producer Irene, in ripped jeans and converse, is running around trying to locate a Mac charger whilst shouting her Twitter handle at me. Our turn is over, though, and Felix leads us out and on.

The next stop is the offices of the civil society organisation, aimed at inspiring and empowering Ugandans. The office is luxurious - dark polished wood and leather seats - and the partitions are in an Oriental style; we are told that it was a Chinese company that did the renovations. While we wait for the organisation’s head to finish a meeting, we are shown pictures of events, of massed crowds, tree-planting ceremonies and panels of speakers. Certificates on the wall give further proof of success. When we are finally shown in, John is a whirlwind; leisurely seated, one leg over the other, he unleashes a wave of charisma and forthright opinions about anything we care to mention or not mention, which stuns us into awed and appreciative silence. He speaks with such passion that I don’t want him to stop, as the whole of Africa’s problems are laid out and solved in a matter of minutes. There is a lot of wisdom there – “if you want anything out of Africa, you must involve Africans... if you are not impacting the lives of people then you should go on holiday”- and whether or not you agree with all that he says, you have to respect this man, who is made “bitter, and hungry and angry” by the state of his country, and has contributed a large part of the fortune he has amassed to doing something about it. Abruptly, our interview is over, and we file out, clinging to his business card and recoiling from the force. We continue our journey with Felix.

His manner now is informal and confident, self-assured, throwing in jokes here and there and indulging in directness that verges on bluntness with these people he barely knows. This is his city and he leads us, halting traffic with his hand and informing us about the buildings we pass. We reach the enterprise fair, which is slightly limp in the light rain. There are stove-manufacturers here, ‘Uganda’s first chocolate-makers,’ spice-sellers, and a woman much-celebrated for making jewellery and accessories out of drinking straws. The soundtrack is pop, interspersed with comments from the eccentric MC – “Go and eat lunch, I want to see happy, smiling faces... Microfinance, the next song is yours”. His slight absurdity leaks into reality with the appearance of a solitary camel, which strolls through the stalls. Just when we turn to leave, the dancers arrive, hips detached from the rest of their bodies as they shake. Felix’s invitation to us to join in is politely declined.

Gratuitous camel at the SME fair

We wander back towards the mosque, which we do intend to visit (we are tourists, not natives of Kampala), back through the many layers of the city. Our guide and the language barrier insulate us from the slight intimidation I have felt before here. He does translate the occasional comment, though, and they range from the outright offensive to the strangely epic: “there are many white people roaming around”. We negotiate the taxi park and climb the Old Kampala hill, reaching the mosque with Felix’s shoes and suaveness intact. It’s here we part, the visitors dropped delicately back into the role of bazungu tourists, where perhaps we belong.

Names have been changed.

“Over there is like here, neither better nor worse”

For someone who is spending a fair amount of time outside his own society, and has to deal with the romanticising and/or exaggeration of difference, in my own mind and in the minds of others, Tayeb Salih, in his enigmatic novel ‘Season of Migration to the North,’ has some nice antidotes.

 

The narrator comes back from seven years in England, to his native Sudan. He’s asked about the people ‘there,’ and remarks to himself,

“...that just like us they are born and die, and in the journey from the cradle to the grave they dream dreams some of which come true and some of which are frustrated; that they fear the unknown, search for love and seek contentment in wife and child; that some are strong and some are weak; that some have been given more than they deserve by life, while others have been deprived by it, but that the differences are narrowing and most of the weak are no longer weak”.

Or,

“[o]ver there is like here, neither better nor worse.”

It’s a sentiment I sympathise with. Finally, for those who want to believe Africa is a ‘hopeless continent’ or alternatively that it is ‘rising’, Salih replies:

“[j]ust because a man has been created on the Equator some mad people regard him as a slave, others as a god. Where lies the mean?”

Colonialism, sexuality, violence, destruction, poetry, hope, hopelessness: it’s a good read.

Entrepreneurs won't save the world, but entrepreneurship will

23 Things

The entrepreneurial energy in a country like Kenya is overwhelming. You can illustrate it with stats: self-employment accounts for fully 66% of total employment in Kenya. You can illustrate it with stories: take one of the entrepreneurs we are working with at Balloon Kenya as an example. He tutors Masters students on research methods, and also writes business plans, manages three distinct tea plantations, grows wheat, and used to be in a dance group hired out for events. He’s 24 years old. It’s the dynamism of such inventive individuals that will create economic and social change, and pull Kenya forward.

Or maybe not.

The problem is that there is too much quail here in Kericho. A couple of years back there was a sudden boom and now, even in our small group of Balloon Kenya entrepreneurs, there are no less than five quail farmers. And these businesspeople are committed and enthusiastic, so much so that one individual wore a shirt imploring people to “Ask Me About Quail” to the bar we went to last Saturday. It’s a problem you see pretty much everywhere around Kericho town: as soon as something is shown to be profitable, people pile in, be it touting tea or shining shoes.

For Ha-Joon Chang, whose book ‘23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism’ I’ve been reading, this is the “fallacy of composition”: the fact that some people can succeed with a particular business does not mean that everyone can. Now this wouldn’t be a problem if there were constant innovation in the development of new business lines. Number of quail farmers triples? Some move in to farming quail for export, or selectively breeding the quail for a better product, and we are back to quail harmony. But unfortunately this isn’t possible most of the time; as Ha-Joon notes,

“...there is only a limited range of (simple) businesses that the poor in developing countries can take on, given their limited skills, the narrow range of technologies available, and the limited amount of finance that they can mobilize...”

An individual can’t be productive on her own; productivity is collective, coming from the entire socio-economic system you are operating in. Societal institutions, scientific infrastructure, company law, the education system, the financial system, patent and copyright laws: these things are what make it happen. Since the Second World War, there’s been huge growth in the world economy, but it’s not because of individual pioneers like Gates or Edison, says Ha-Joon, it’s the work of the collective.

I’ve always found the idea of the ‘heroic entrepreneur,’ who makes something out of nothing, to be grating, I think because I’ve felt jealous that it wasn’t me. The reason I should find it grating is that the idea of the heroic entrepreneur is a myth, distracting us from the real task of ‘building institutions and organizations of collective entrepreneurship’ which is the real way for countries to escape poverty. Entrepreneurship, but not just by entrepreneurs.

As in many spheres of life, you can't succeed in entrepreneurship on your own

One of the entrepreneurs we work with wants to retire a multi-millionaire (in Kenyan shillings that is) at 40, having created a large, innovative business employing tens of people. He’s an avid reader of business books with titles like ‘Think, and Grow Rich’. Unfortunately, without the right environment, thinking is unlikely to be enough.