We went, we saw and Mbarara delivered

OPINION

This opinion was first published in the New Vision on May 3, 2023

By Henry Rugamba

On April 24, 2023 Rotarians from Uganda, Tanzania and across Africa began descending on to Mbarara for their annual conference and the first of 98 conferences held outside Kampala.

The idea to take the leap of faith to host a conference outside Kampala dates back to 2018 when the then Rotary district governor-elect, Francis Xavier Ssentamu, chose Mbarara as his conference venue then scheduled for April 2020.

We know what happened in March 2020 when the world stopped and all his plans came crashing down.

The wonderful thing about Rotarians is that they are like elephants; they never forget and never go back on a promise.

The current district governors for Rotary District 9213 covering part of Uganda led by Mike Kennedy Ssebalu and District 9214 covering Uganda and Tanzania led by Peace Taremwa decided that it was time to make it up to Mbarara and on April 24 over 1500 Rotarians and friends began the descent into Mbarara.

Economists will tell you economic growth is driven oftentimes by consumer spending and business investment. What we did as Rotarians over the past few days validated the investment decisions people have made in Mbarara and more importantly have been the guinea pigs that have tested the capacity of upcountry Uganda to host big meetings.

Mbarara was a success and Mbarara hotels, bars, restaurants, entertainment, sports and health facilities all delivered above and beyond our expectations.

The recovery from the impact of the Covid-19 shutdown will take this kind of concerted effort from all of us; we need to ‘de-Kampala’ our economy. We need bold leap of faith decisions from policy makers, not soft target taxation policies. What if you we had a tiered taxation policy, for example descending tax rates based on distance from Kampala. The further you are the less you pay.

The keynote speaker at the conference, UNAIDS executive director and ex-Member of Parliament for Mbarara, Winnie Byanyima could not hide her emotions about the economic impact this conference was having on her home town.

She called on Rotarians to carry on this tradition and host a conference in Gulu to experience the culture, food and hospitality of northern Uganda. Winnie’s comments made me think, rotarians should be inviting bids from the cities in Uganda as is done for the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics to host our annual conferences and I think the Government too can spread its wings by taking big meetings out of Kampala to help these new cities grow in infrastructure and human capacity to host conferences and even government ministries.

I must end this article by making direct compliments first to the sponsors Uganda Breweries Ltd, Centenary Bank, Roke Telekom, UWA, VERO Mineral Water, SSEKO Designs, Media World, Prudential, Sonalika Agric Implements and Pepsi who took a leap of faith to associate with the conference. Rotarians give a good return on sponsorship investment.

Secondly, I want to thank the authorities in Mbarara and the Rotarians in Mbarara on whose wings we flew.

Evidently our fellow Rotarians are good citizens of this city. They were able to secure all the permissions we required to host that number of people. They deployed security at our conference venue Las Vegas Hotel and Mbarara Sports Club that hosted the conference golf tournament.

If Mbarara can deliver, I am sure other cities in our country can too if given the opportunity and if there is a deliberate policy to share the national conference cake.

We have good inter-city roads and local businesses need our patronage to grow our economy.

The writer is the founder of Songa Communications