Another great successful marathon

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OPINION

By Simon Kaheru

The amazing Amos Wekesa has pulled off another great success for Uganda with the Rwenzori Marathon 2025 edition - and taught us more lessons.

Mine was: Ugandans are running a lot more, though we are not Learning as much as we should. Like most of you out there, I applaud almost everything Amos does because he blends into it passion, professionalism, patriotism and profit for people. Not just profit for himself - but for everyone who chooses to get involved.

The Rwenzori Marathon is only one of the numerous running and walking events we have going on in this country on a regular basis.

Most of you engage in these events for your health, to collect money for charities, to market brands, to increase sales of products and to show off your abilities.

All reasons count and are very good.

I missed going to Kasese because I was in a whole different country. One day, as I followed the commentaries and social media updates, my work colleague disrupted my thoughts by suddenly jumping up to take a brisk walk. She seemed to be responding to a distant command relayed to her by the snazzy Apple Watch on her wrist. When she got back, I teased her about being managed by technology.

“Surely, you should have the discipline by now to simply go on a walk or a run without having to follow prompts from an App!” I laughed. “It’s not just an App,” she explained.

“I have too many kilometres to cover for the rest of the month so every so often I need to do catch-up walks.”

I have an App myself where I stage walking and running challenges (sadly, I have fallen behind recently), so I thought I understood her and started talking, but she cut me short.

Hers was different. She was given an Apple Watch by her medical insurance service provider. The deal is simple: if she meets a specific target of steps or kilometres walked or run during a month, she does not have to pay the monthly deposit for the watch. She is actually being paid to walk or run a certain number of kilometres every month.

On top of that, if she goes to the gym a certain number of times a month and clocks in using the health insurance service provider app, they pay her gym membership and other benefits over weekends. I almost went running with her on the spot after she told me this.

The health insurance service provider does this so that they save more money on the insurance premiums she has to pay. See, if their members are healthier, then they don’t have to spend on hospitals, drugs, etc.

Here’s the Learning from the Running: We can do the same, right here in Uganda! First of all, the health insurance companies operating here are the same as those in the country she lives in. They are just being lazy at execution here because we are lazy at adoption.

Ignore them for now; surely, our Ministry of Health could do this quite easily if it chose to be serious.

The technologies used to track walks and steps can certainly be linked to our NINs, medical records at health centres, SIM cards and so on and so forth. The Ministry of Health doesn’t have to go this alone - they have the Uganda Communications Commission, NITA-U and a host of other government departments to work with.

Plus, the private sector players like Amos Wekesa, are focused on doing things the right way. For decades now, we have had marathons and runs in Uganda being operated with similar technologies, so... why aren’t we running with this?

The Ministry of Health should have a Directorate of Wellness for this specific purpose. All marathons and runs should be managed under this directorate. All health insurance service providers should be involved as well, supporting participants as we train for the events.

Then every other government department should get some form of access to the database of all participants at these events, so they can give us incentives to keep us even healthier.

Even the Uganda Revenue Authority can get in on this, by offering to charge lower taxes on proper running shoes for those who run or exercise seriously, as evidenced by the Uganda Marathons And Running App...and there’s the name right there: UMARA. I won’t copyright this - in the spirit of Amos Wekesa, I am handing it over to Uganda for everybody to benefit.

This is the introduction of the UMARA (Uganda Marathon and Running App) health incentive scheme.

www.skaheru.com @skaheru