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Wake up and smell the coffee before it’s too late.

Wake up and smell the coffee before it’s too late.

By next week, around 800,000 children will have taken their GCSEs. The number of candidates exceeds last year’s by about 50 thousand. This is a big win for the development of Uganda’s capital and a sign of the ongoing recovery from Covid-19.

Unfortunately, about a million people will not take the exam, despite taking the exam seven years ago. The story of our obscene school dropout rates has been told from every angle imaginable so we don’t need to repeat it again.

The economy doesn’t have the capacity to absorb them and the thousands of others who won’t make it to high school or drop out along the way. When they come of age, many will likely try to find work in the Middle East while the rest hustle in the machine that is Uganda’s amorphous informal economy. Over the past couple of years, the Ugandan government has made some baffling decisions.

The populist anti-gay law was the latest to be passed, despite many people calling for caution. There is a heated debate currently underway, with coffee farmers at loggerheads with the government over a disgusting bill aimed at regulating the cash crop.

The maneuvering began about three years ago, when there was a behind-the-scenes plan to transfer the country’s coffee business to a certain Enrique Pinetti.

The uproar was unprecedented, including an argument that the woman was a wheeled vehicle dealer and had no experience in the business. This was quickly abandoned but then followed by another money grab scheme in which billions of shillings were given to some Ugandan coffee businessmen linked to the regime without clear explanation.

The jury is still out on the scheme, but it appears the threat remains. For some reason, we always want to keep digging when we are already in a deep hole. With a billion-dollar crop, it’s understandable why farmers are up in arms.

Despite what the numbers say, the economy is simply not working. Evidence of this is the dropout rate of astronomy schools – more than 65 percent – among poor and rural residents.

The lethargy and inefficiency of the civil service has failed to provide a quick response to the bread and butter issues that most concern citizens. This is why there is resistance to rationalization of the Uganda Coffee Development Authority because in a sea of ​​mediocrity it is one of the few bright lights that remain.

Their primary mission may be to increase production, improve quality, stimulate consumption and provide leadership in coffee research, but they do more.

Coffee does more. This keeps children in school. He pays the medical bills. He builds houses and businesses. It makes dreams come true. If handled correctly, it can accommodate millions of young people who drop out of our school system and waste their energy on survival activities.

With rational thinking, these same young people could export millions of bags of coffee and live large here, instead of exporting themselves into modern slavery in the Middle East. But this responsibility cannot be left to politicians.

As we have seen in the past, they only prioritize their needs and in many matters have proven their inability to distinguish between the main and decisive importance of things.

Even though he has proven himself to be a versatile person on a variety of issues, even the President must wait this issue out and let stakeholders take the lead.

The government has suffered from a chronic trust deficit for more than a decade. This is mainly due to the same decisions – made or not – at the expense of the citizens and to the detriment of the few.

Worse, as always, he still hasn’t done a good job of communicating his intentions and rationale. We need to get to a point where people feel confident that government is acting in their best interests. Such decisions do not inspire confidence.

If, after almost 40 years of your rule, a significant proportion of your children are still dropping out of school, you need their parents to go into the coffee trade last year.

You need to add it to the curriculum and make development and trading an alternative career path. Basically you need farmers on your side because you can’t afford to piss them off.