Qatar 2022: What's Uganda's pre, post World Cup strategy?

Qatar recently revised down from $200b to $100b its budget for hosting the football World Cup in 2022. Already $500m is being spent every week, according to the country's finance minister, Ali Shareef al-Emadi.  

Five years prior to action on pitch, and before our Uganda Cranes qualifies, we already have an opportunity to participate in activities leading to the tournament.

Thanks to the negotiation skills of both former and incumbent ministers of gender, labour and social development, Muluri Mukasa and Hajjat Janat Mukwaya respectively as well as Ambassador Dr Yahya Rashid Ssemuddu. Over 40,000 workers—skilled and unskilled are in Qatar for hired labour.  

Football analysts will soon discuss strategies for Uganda Cranes to qualify. But how can we make better of the bird already in our hand? 

If the process is transparent, a possible economic-driven strife can be averted. This is by equally enlisting the pro-government ‘crime preventers' as well as opposition leaning unemployed youths for this deal.

Only if every worker manages to remit home for saving $100 monthly, it comes to $48m annually. Now contrasted with Qatar's weekly expenditure, this appears not fundamental at all. But we are discussing Uganda — with GDP $40b that includes oil still underneath.

The challenge, therefore, is how to retain this inflow into the growing economy without it repatriated. This does not come by accident. It does by deliberate strategies.

Pre-World Cup strategy: How to secure $50m annually

It entails financial literacy (FL). From experience, Uganda sent nearly 10,000 casual workers into Iraq for post-conflict jobs. Due to limited FL, they blew up all their proceeds in thin air and today several are back to positions before that deal—penniless, jobless. 

While in Iraq, they construed financial security as only to secure a plot of land and mount some rentals. Soon they mortgaged the small possessions for bank loans, which, due to financial illiteracy, they failed to recover. Several others were fleeced by friends and relatives.

Now, unless the responsive ministry and the labour exporting association conducts a FL sensitisation, the Qatar bound group holds similar mindsets as of Iraq returnees.

As it turned out, rental investments were not guided by financial intelligence (Finntel). They are not actually reliable savings to translate into sustainable investments that expand the national GDP.

Whereas the construction sector profiteered, perhaps proceeds were never retained in the economy as they had to outsource more off shower production raw materials.

Thus, in this strategy, before departure, workers must be sensitised of the critical national need to retain about $200m when Qatar 2022 concludes.

Post-World Cup strategy: How to retain $200m after 4 years

It is a stakeholders' collective effort — Government, labour agencies and individual workers.

It stresses the discipline of saving, need for massive local investors (to reduce capital flight) and the critical need of creating sustainable job opportunities—for, it may take ages if not never for another Qatar 2022 to return.

Traditionally, there areas unexplored and unexploited by Ugandans majorly due to information disparities.       

To begin with, what is the selection criteria for a job in Qatar? Limited to the urban-information rich? What about the majority information-poor in rural settings? Is it for the ‘connected?' What about the majority outside centres of influence?

This is where the ministry and agencies must concentrate first: equitable information dissemination — via all forms of media: print, electronic and social platforms via telecom service provides.

Few Ugandans are literate about saving by investing in government treasury bills or the national bourse (stock exchange markets). But for the next four years of such investments, the local-foreign-based investors will not only have safe-guarded their labor savings; they would play a role in retaining substantial inflows within the national economy—for profits are spread domestically.

Finally, Ugandans must be helped to appreciate the adage: to walk fast you walk alone. But to reach far, you walk as a group—of course devoid of graft.    

The writer is a lecturer at the Department of Mass Communication at the Islamic University in Uganda