Poised for Explosive Growth

KAMPALA, UGANDA--Dressed in a black and white gown and putting on a black tassel, Simon Kajimo walks around with measured steps and a broad smile. Like many others dressed like him on this January morning, Kajimo, 32, is headed to the Makerere University graduation square in downtown Kampala for one of the biggest days of his life.

For three years, Kajimo has been studying an undergraduate degree course in human resource management. He has been juggling work with studies, only attending evening classes. 

In 2005, he got a job as a human resource assistant with Lacedri Forex Bureau in Kampala after completing a human resource management diploma course. He worked hard and was soon appointed the Kasanga branch manager.

But it was not until 2008 that he enrolled for a degree course. Kajimo is now the human resource manager for the entire company, which employs 50 workers.

"It is not easy getting a job in Uganda. For me, it was a combination of luck and having a network of relatives and friends who helped me with job search," Kajimo, a father of a two-year-old girl, says.

When he finished the diploma course, his sister assisted him in getting the Lacedri Forex Bureau job. "If you don't know so many people out there, it can take you so long to get a job in Uganda," he says with a smile.

Kajimo was among about 11,000 students who graduated from Makerere University Jan. 19. In a 2008 report, Uganda's Public Service Commission said the country's labor market could only accommodate 50 per cent of university graduates. Analysts say the situation could have worsened.

Such gloom on the job market is common in almost every African country, where millions of educated youth remain unemployed many years after completing university education.

Add to this a slew of corruption and political instability and you end up with a deadly cocktail that has made the richest continent (in terms of natural resources) the subject of discussions at conferences, workshops and seminars around the globe. Never mind that most African countries have been independent for about 50 years.

This trend has somehow lent credence to the argument that the best way to help Africa out of her problems – poverty, high unemployment, civil war, lack of democracy, among others – is re-colonization.

So the question is: Is this really what Africa needs? Is it true that Africa can't solve her own problems? How about the impression that "nothing seems to work in Africa?"

On the day Kajimo was relishing his academic achievement, former South African president Thabo Mbeki was in a Makerere University hall, grappling with these questions before an audience of distinguished academics.

During the workshop, organized by the Makerere University Institute of Social Research (MISR), Mbeki said that solutions to the problems bedeviling the continent would come only from Africans themselves. He noted that international interventions in Africa had failed because they were done in the interest of outside forces, particularly Western countries, and not Africans.

"I would like to believe that all of us are opposed to any new imperialism, whatever form it might take, and would therefore see the defense of the independence of all our peoples as a fundamental and strategic imperative," said Mbeki, noting that "the defense of that independence …means that we should not delegate to others the similarly strategic task to which we must respond without equivocation, to entrench democracy in our countries, to protect human rights, and to ensure that our countries are governed properly, in the interests of the masses of our people".

But the question that remains unanswered is: Is it all doom and gloom in Africa? Are there stories of hope on the continent?

In December 2011, The Economist magazine published a story entitled "The Hopeful Continent," noting most Africans still live on less than two dollars a day, thanks to a slump in food production per person, drought, famine, worsening climatic conditions, among other things."Yet against that depressingly familiar backdrop, some fundamental numbers are moving in the right direction. Africa now has a fast-growing middle class: according to Standard Bank, around 60 million Africans have an income of $3,000 a year, and 100 million will in 2015. The rate of foreign investment has soared around tenfold in the past decade," the report said.

It added that Africa could break into the global market for light manufacturing and for services such as call centers. Cross-border commerce, long suppressed by political rivalry, is growing, as tariffs fall and barriers to trade are dismantled.