To build the economy, learn from cotton and coffee

SIR— Coffee, the biggest foreign exchange earner until recently, is a result of collective effort by peasants. Uganda is the fourth largest coffee producer in the world; yet it has never resorted to large-scale farms to achieve this fact. Today, Uganda is rightly striving to achieve the next stage of its economic development — adding value to its raw materials so as to fetch better prices on the world market. What then would be better than mobilising the people of Uganda, as was done for coffee, into small-scale industries to produce commodities for local consumption as well as export? We need not re-invent the wheel. I have seen small-scale industrial machinery at some Lugogo trade shows every year. This machinery is capable of manufacturing anything from textiles to roasting coffee which would be affordable by a small group of people or co-operative. Let us the example of India, which is by far an industrialised country. There, the small-scale manufacturers produce commodities for big industries for export. This would avoid the need to persuade “big” foreign investors who think they are doing us a favour by transferring our foreign currency to their own countries. It is collective effort which will build the economy as coffee and cotton did during the early years of our nationhood.S. MukasaKampala