Godwin Toko
In October last year, the World Justice Project released its annual Rule of Law Index for 2023. The compilers of these reports gave themselves the unenviable task of watching 142 nations around the world – on the six continents inhabited by humans – for key issues concerning the rule of law. According to the 2023 report accessible online, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Germany took the first five spots in that order.
From the bottom, Venezuela, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Haiti, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) shared what was left of the last five spots after everyone else had taken their fair share. Uganda ranked 125th of the 142 countries assessed, scoring just 39 percent in total. Not a good score. In sub-Saharan Africa, we managed the seventh position – from the bottom – out of the 34 countries assessed. With this score, we came behind most of our regional counterparts including Rwanda which took the top spot for sub-Saharan Africa, Tanzania which took position 12, and Kenya which followed her at position 13.
Unfortunately, not all nations in the region were ranked; I am almost sure that Uganda would have easily outstripped South Sudan, Somalia, and Burundi. According to specific indicators used, Uganda scored 39 percent for constraints on government powers, 26 percent for the absence of corruption, 39 percent for open government, 35 percent for fundamental rights, 57 percent for order and security, 43 percent for regulatory enforcement, 42 percent for civil justice, and 32 percent for criminal justice.
The average Ugandan has probably not heard of the World Justice Project (WJP), or their rule of law index that they have released religiously since 2015. Yet, if you asked them to describe Uganda – or their experience of Uganda – based on the index used by WJP above, many would not rank the country any better than the report did.
Regardless of all else, Ugandan authorities need to get the country on a better track when it comes to matters rule of law. If the average Ugandan does not care much about the report or the rule of law for that matter, as some will argue, we cannot say the same for the investors Uganda has invested enormous resources over the last several years and aggressively tried to attract.
According to Investopedia, economic and political risk rank as the first issue considered by most investors before they commit their dollars in the form of foreign investment. Simply put, no investor worth their salt will invest their hard-earned money in a country where the courts of law have a reputation for deciding cases based on the perceived or real interests of a small ruling elite, or one that turns into a war zone whenever elections come around with soldiers in armoured vehicles patrolling the streets to keep order.
We have the unfortunate reality of competing for the few available investors with nations that have a lot of what we have as comparative advantage in terms of market, youthful population, cheap labour et al., to be ahead of the competition, we have invested heavily in entities like Uganda Investment Authority (UIA), started a special unit under State House to protect them from ourselves, and passed a number of laws and policies to make it easier for them to choose us. Commendable! However, God forbid that an investor gets down to a Google search on the rule of law when they have to decide where to plant their millions of dollars and land on the WJP's index, 2023.
Perhaps we will score better when the 2024 report is released next month and we should only pray that whichever investor asks artificial intelligence to comb the web for them on matters concerning the rule of law end up with a report that has us in a much better position. After all, for all our poor performance in 2023, we had improved by five points from the 2023 report.
The writer is a lawyer with a keen interest in politics, human rights, and governance.
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