Banish pessimism at 50

By Warren Nyamugasira

ESSENTIALLY there are two types of Ugandans who succeed – the lucky ones who are born with a silver spoon in their mouths and those who work extremely hard to realize their dreams.

Even with the ‘born lucky’, they must work hard to remain lucky if they don’t want their luck to run out. 

The hard workers often realise from an early age the need to succeed.

They fight back at anything that stands in their way and by getting down to real business when disaster strikes they respond positively to ‘their moment of truth’, driven by understanding the imperative to swim least they sink.

We all watched the man known as ‘Blade Runner’, Africa’s own Oscar Pistorius, become the first amputee to compete in a track event at the Olympics, finishing second in his heat to advance to the semifinals.

What we may not know is that Pistorius was born without fibulas, necessitating his legs to be amputated (below the knee) before he was one year old. He runs on carbon-fiber blades and has won a number of Paralympics gold medals. 

But before he could run in the Olympics, he had to wage a long fight to convince South African and international athletic officials that he was fast enough for the Olympics and the blades didn’t give him an unfair advantage.

“I’ve worked for six years ... to get my chance”, he said. There are many Pistorius’ in business, social enterprises, spiritual enterprises, civil entrepreneurs and even sexual enterprises who have gone from zero to hero and from rags to riches, including Uganda’s Gold Medalist Stephen Kiprotich and many others who are profiled periodically in our media. 

The rest are unseen and unsung.

On the other hand, there is another category of Ugandans who do not succeed – the unfortunate who get overwhelmed by circumstances beyond their control; and those who allow themselves to slide into pessimism - a quagmire, which causes them to resign to their fate for the rest of their lives.

At 50, Uganda finds herself with lots of pessimists who are living dangerously and hopelessly, including elite with ‘good education’, who have slipped into such dangerous abyss that they are unable to see opportunities even if they were thrust upon them. 

A few days ago, one such elite asked me a shocking question, “Do you think we have a country”?

Seventy eight percent of Uganda’s population is below the age of 35, the age of dynamism, of adventure, of exploration, experimentation and of conquest. 

There are many initiatives to promote entrepreneurship among college/university-educated Ugandan youth to enable them attain personal financial stability and create employment opportunities among their peers and within their communities. 

Focus is on college-graduate who can initiate and run enterprises that create jobs for themselves, their peers, the poor and the unemployed. 

“Enterprise incubators” provide college graduate market upstarts with business expertise, coaching and mentorship and access to finance and investors. 

Enterprise Uganda is one such initiative. Many youth who have taken the opportunities have made a break-through.

Yet of the over 20,000 college graduates who enter the labour market annually, many do not take advantage of these schemes, and for lack of the Pistorius/Kiprotich spirit, they end up on the street, at home or on drugs, frustrated and frustrating others.

I have said it before; others have said it and I wish to reiterate it: “Our life vest is under our seat and in our backyard”, in our unexploited agriculture, mineral wealth, eco and cultural-tourism, greening Uganda and human capital. 

Every citizen and every inch of this country is endowed with potential for creating sustainable wealth. 

At 50, Uganda must reach out for the life vest and escape the wreckage of pessimism and poverty of the mind and body in which we are trapped in order to unlock and unleash its enormous potential for its own benefit.

The writer is an economist and development consultant