Try genetic engineering to sort out corruption
Jul 27, 2012
The brutality and pathological incompetence of the past regimes induced a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder from which Uganda seems not to have recovered.
The brutality and pathological incompetence of the past regimes induced a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder from which Uganda seems not to have recovered.
Ugandans do things that are unbelievably ridiculous; they are restless and convulsive as if the liberation wars of the yesteryears introduced a virus into the organism Uganda. Did you know that the substandard goods from China are custom-made at the behest of Ugandan traders and businessmen?
Morally, Uganda appears to be stricken, even dying or convalescing from a life-threatening greed and corruption illness which some suspect of retarding development.
A senior UN Official in whose company a senior civil servant and I traveled to China recently suggested that an experiment in genetic engineering may be necessary to create a corruption-free development oriented society. His comment was prompted by what we saw in Beijing: efficiency, effectiveness, development and organisation perfected to a fi ne art and a science both rolled into one.
An interdisciplinary approach: genetic method, genetic engineering triangulated with social psychology to focus on studying individual attitudes, their formation and change.
Genetics has medical applications and is used in animal and plant breeding. Is it not possible that corruption is a result of flawed genetic instruction?
Neuropathology experiments could focus on isolating the genes that is responsible for corruption so that it can be inactivated.
While we were in China, a manned submarine dived to the deepest level ever under the sea in the Mariana Trench and within hours the first Chinese woman Astronaut was also sent into space.
China has been quietly developing without gloating about it. Effectiveness is achieved when a country attains its desired outcomes. Efficiency can be defined in economic terms as the least necessary expenditure of resources to attain desired outcomes.
It is a measure of how well resources are utilised to produce output. To attain effectiveness and efficiency to pave the way for the kind of development for which South Korea and Vietnam are renowned, there is an urgent need to change attitudes and perception of political and economic rationality.
Understanding when and how to implement change is a vital part of management science but technology, a keyword in President Museveni’s speeches, is the conversion process used to transform inputs into outputs.
Because of the rapid rate of technological innovation, change is important to countries with the correct vision for development.
China has changed the way many things are done, how it relates to other countriesand react to situations of adversity. Change creates problems of legitimacy and viability whereby the former is established when a country finds that output fills a need but society’s needs and judgments change.
The realistic way forward for Africa is to copy the China model.
The writer is the director, School of Diplomacy, Governance and International Studies, Nkozi University