Revitalising the Chamber is our patriotic duty

By Andrew Rugasira

Uganda's 2040 Vision is built on strengthening the fundamentals of the economy by harnessing the nations abundant opportunities to enable us attain middle-income status. This will require a private sector that has effective business institutions.

No country has attained middle and high income status without a strong and competent Chamber of Commerce. Chambers of Commerce are historic, grassroots institutions set up to represent the interests of business. They originated in Marseilles, France, in 1599 and it was Napoleon who founded the public law model for chambers seen today in France, Germany, the Netherlands, parts of Africa, Middle East and Asia.

In 1919, a group of entrepreneurs calling themselves "merchants of peace" founded the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) to represent 'business everywhere' and create a system of rules, mechanisms and standards to govern trade, investment, and commercial relations that are used in most economies today.

Today, the ICC network covers over 120 countries, representing 40 million businesses, and holds the highest level of consultative status with the United Nations. It is a classic example of the private sector creating the enabling environment for business to flourish.

The Uganda National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (the Chamber) can better support government by developing innovative solutions to complex issues like local content capabilities, building agri-business and value-addition platforms, supply-chain and logistics systems and creating and protecting of our intellectual property.

Yet, our 83 year old Chamber is a far cry from its original vision of bringing entrepreneurs and businesses together, promoting trade and investment, enhancing business networking and partnerships and advocating for business friendly policies.

Today, it is broken, ineffective, and irrelevant and it has fundamentally failed to deliver on the aspirations of its members. It is tragic that such a historic institution has been allowed to degenerate this far because of poor leadership, weak governance structures and bad management.

Instead of the Chamber generating innovative ideas for local enterprise development like mentoring and incubation centers, youth job creation initiatives like apprenticeship programs and youth training schemes and effective promotion of trade and investments; it has been reduced to competing with other associations for legitimacy.

The Chamber should not be fighting for relevance but rather be driving the private sector agenda by providing government with globally tested models for agri-business start-ups, hospitality training programs, incentives for writing code for our techpreneurs and incubation centers for our youth entrepreneurs.

When the Chamber engages with government, it pushes for a convergence between what needs to be done and what is being done. This promotes efficiency and accountability and improves service delivery.

Sadly, no other business association could be more well connected both locally and internationally than our Chamber. It is part of the global network of 12,000 Chambers of Commerce, hosts the Uganda business desks for IGAD, COMESA, and the East African Business Council. The Chamber nominates a member on the board of UIA, Presidential Economic Commission, National Planning Authority, Economic Policy Research Centre, Council of Higher Education, Export Promotion Board, among others.

How can an organization with such wide institutional reach be so ineffective? Our Chamber doesn't even have a current paid-up member register to speak of and a number of sectoral business associations like KACITA, UMA, PSF and Enterprise Uganda have all sprung up due to the seeming irrelevance of our Chamber.

But, in reality, the Chamber as an umbrella organization doesn't compete with them but is supposed to lobby and advocate for their sectoral interests. A recent World Bank Country report (2016) noted that agriculture accounted for 79% of poverty reduction in Uganda between 2006 and 2013.

Imagine a revitalized Chamber supporting programs like operation wealth creation (OWC) by linking serious entrepreneurs across the country to the productive inputs and knowledge provisions to help scale their agribusinesses. In the policy arena, the Chamber has also lost its credibility.

In critical discussions like the recent one on the bailout of distressed businesses, or the ongoing debate on the high interest rates, the voice of the Chamber remains unheard. Whether it is supporting tenants and regarding the issue of dollarised rents or supporting farmers reduce their massive post-harvest loses because of poor storage infrastructure and inadequate market information, the Chamber can play an important role. Intra-African trade represents not more than 10% of exports. Value-added exports represent less than 18% of total exports and 65% of imports. Yet, the same manufacturers that are supposed to grow our export potential remain burdened by high interest rates, a depreciating currency and unfair competition from cheaper imports. The Chamber can play an important role in this conversation.

Tourism accounts for close to 8% of Uganda's GDP generating $1.9 billion in annual income. Each tourist represents an immediate and direct foreign investment- no stories, no fake business plans, no briefcase investors; spending real money is upon arrival. The Chamber can add it's voice to industry stakeholders to privilege tourism as a strategic sector. The Chamber can motivate trainings in global hospitality etiquette and grow the human capital capabilities of the sector.

This year's Annual General Meeting, is going to be one of the most important opportunities for Chamber members to choose either to remain in the current form or elect a new leadership and together revitalize and take it in a new direction- 'hakuna muchezo' is going to have to apply to the private sector too. No amount of inflating the delegates register, mismanaging district elections, disenfranchising legitimate members of their rights by denying their participation at Chamber meetings or unconstitutional changes to tilt the balance of rights in favour of the current leadership will work this time. Our patriotic duty is now to resist further institutional decay and begin the hard work of revitalizing our chamber.

Our government has a key strategic role to ensure that the electoral process at our AGM is conducted in a manner that doesn't disenfranchise Chamber members. The private sector has the stakeholder role to ensure that it is part of the Chamber membership, participate in Chamber activities and contribute to the organizations ' transformation. Together, we can turn this 83 year old institution around and leverage it for the economic prosperity of our country.

The writer is the chairman of the Good African Coffee Member and aspiring president of the Uganda National Chamber of Commerce and Industry