‘Out of box’ thinking needed to solve Uganda’s challenges

A story is told of a man who was forced to “think out of the box” to help his ailing mother from the confines of his prison cell. The man who was serving time for a crime received a note from his mother. In the note she was lamenting how she would not be able to plant crops in her garden in the coming season due to poor health. The man replied to her in a note.

“Dear mum. Unfortunately, as you are aware I am serving time in prison for a crime. There is not much I can do for you under the circumstances. However, there is $1,000 I hid in the garden behind your house. Tomorrow, find a hoe and go and look for it. It should not be too difficult to find.”

He folded the note, enveloped it and handed it to the prison warder for onward delivery to his mother. He knew that the prison warder would read the letter although he was not supposed to.

True to his expectations, the prison warder read the note and next day the prison authorities dispatched a group of young strong men equipped with hoes to go and look for the money in the garden behind his mother’s house.

Within a few hours they had dug up the entire acre of the old woman’s garden in search of the money. They, however, did not find any money despite all their efforts.

After a few days, the man in prison asked to speak to his mother, a request that was granted.

He informed her that she should go ahead and plant the crops since the land was now prepared (tilled). He said that was the best he could do from the confines of his prison cell.

The man had “thought outside the box” and found a way to help his mother despite being incarcerated. The story spells an important lesson which can be drawn on by our government planners.

We can solve most of Uganda’s problems by being creative and thinking outside the box.

Last week the Minister of Finance, Mr Matia Kasaija, yet again confessed that there are not enough funds to pay teachers. Even before this confession, many ministries had not been getting their fund allocations in full or in time. It is very clear now that what we have long feared is now a reality. We have serious financial woes.

Without downplaying the gravity of the challenges that await us, it should, however, not be all gloom. A weak balance sheet should not mean an end of the road for our beloved nation. We as a nation have a choice to either despair and sink or to dig deep into our solutions bag and come up with better coping strategies. And these strategies should differ from the traditional old age strategies. New “out of box” strategies need to be employed. Like they say, “we cannot solve our current problems at the level of consciousness that created them.”

Like the man in the story above, who was able to get his mother’s field ploughed without expending even a coin, we can think deep and hard and find ingenious solutions to our financial and other woes. Solutions that will require less use of the already scarce financial resources.

For instance, as opposed to increasing the number of street sweepers, a mouth-watering prize can be put in place for the cleanest zone in Kampala. We can, for instance, put up Shs 1 billion as prize to the cleanest zone and 100 million for the chairperson of that zone. I can bet, with such an incentive in place, especially under the prevailing hard economic times, people will not be reminded to clean up their surroundings.

To deal with corruption, we could for instance start civil action of socially alienating the corrupt. We could decide that the corrupt or “economic traitors” will be denied much craved recognition in society. They could be denied special seats in churches or at functions or even denied invitations to functions. Or even more radically, the children of the corrupt could be denied wives or husbands. We could come up with some radical social punitive and deterring measures.

This radical approach has been used in the Indian communities and has been very effective in averting dishonesty. In the Indian communities, a lender will not sign an agreement with a borrower, but if the borrower does not pay back, he or she will be socially alienated. No one will ever help them, their children will never find spouses, they will basically be socially alienated. It has been proven to be very effective. The price to pay for being dishonest among Indians is very high. We can borrow this approach most especially when our judicial system cannot be trusted.

According to Einstein, “to do the same thing and expect different results amounts to insanity.” Let us aim to employ new “out of box strategies” as we usher in the new year and we shall be on a path to improve our performance. For God and my country

Edward Makobore Julian

Economist and Farmer