“ A Long Way from Home A Ugandan Entrepreneur Finds Inspiration in India.”
By James Kassaga Arinaitwe, 2015 Acumen Global Fellow & Co-Founder & CEO Teach for Uganda
When I applied for the Acumen Global Fellowship, I knew exactly where I wanted to be placed: India.
As a boy from rural Uganda, I was always fascinated with Indian culture. Perhaps it was the Indian women draped in their bright saris who reminded me of my mother dressed in her Banyankore silk shawls and long, colorful kangas. My mother died when I was six, and the Indian women who graced the streets near my village where I’d sell eggs and milk were often my only physical reminders of her.
Perhaps it’s the fate that the doctor who delivered my grandmother, who raised me after I was orphaned, was among the earliest Indian immigrants to Uganda. He saved her life during the complicated delivery. My grandmother, now 90, was anointed with the name “Ruhindiya,” meaning “Born of the Indians” in my mother tongue of Runyankore.
Perhaps it’s because the first job I landed as a young man in Uganda’s capital of Kampala was working for Indian entrepreneurs. After many failed attempts searching for work to support my family, I finally secured a manual labor job at a juice factory owned and managed by Indian men. For 12 hours each day, I hauled heavy boxes of juice from the factory to the loading zone to earn roughly $1. It was the hardest job I’ve ever had, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually as well. My spirit would break when my bosses called me racial slurs, despite the fact that they were only a shade lighter than me and shared a history of British colonialism.
I may have only earned a few shillings, but that job opened my eyes to understand the many complex layers of humanity and South-South relations. Moreover, it revealed to me India’s entrepreneurial spirit, which allowed its people to shed the label of indentured servants working on African railways for the title of business moguls steering Uganda’s development. In fact, to this day, Indian-owned business fuel close to 80 percent of the Ugandan economy.
I wanted to learn how these Indians were able to overcome immense adversity and not only make a home thousands of miles away from their ancestral lands but also thrive there. From five-star hotels and tea estates and sugar and oil factories to schools and universities and supermarkets in last-mile villages, the enterprises created by Indian entrepreneurs are literally the glue that holds Uganda together.
Despite our ugly past, including the infamous Idi Amin’s brutal expulsion of thousands of Indians from Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni, who came into power in 1986, is credited with allowing the majority of Indians to return and repossess their businesses. Today, most Indians in Uganda identify as Ugandan and African first. Aspiring Ugandan entrepreneurs find a hero in Indian-Ugandan business mogul Ashish Thakar, who founded the Mara Foundation and Launchpad, which supports African entrepreneurs and incubates their ideas.
During my final interviews for the Acumen Fellowship, one of the panelists asked me, “Why India?” Perhaps he was concerned why someone like myself, a Ugandan who had never stepped foot in Asia, felt he could thrive working in a culture different from my own. Perhaps he wondered if I could handle the language barrier or pervasive racism against Africans.
It didn’t matter. My mind and my spirit were set on India. I made my case, telling the panelists the countries’ similarities, not their differences, intrigued me. I mentioned Uganda and India’s shared history of British imperialism, slowly emerging economies, suppressed civil societies, and human rights challenges. It worked — I became a 2015 Acumen Global Fellow and was placed with investee LabourNet in India. I felt I finally had the opportunity to get close to my dream of understanding the mindset, work ethic and spirit of an Indian entrepreneur.
I arrived in Bangalore, India, in November of 2014. Despite what I had learned from the books I read, my conversations with close Indian friends in both the U.S. and Uganda, and my Acumen training, nothing prepared me for when I stepped our of that rickshaw and into my office at LabourNet and officially arrived in India. The poverty I witnessed was abruptly and overwhelmingly displayed in a way I had never experienced in Uganda. Social injustices, from unsanitary living conditions for slum dwellers to street children competing for handouts, were magnified a thousand-fold in India.
Within a few weeks, I started work as LabourNet’s manager for special projects and led the creation of the first-ever sales manual and advocacy and communication strategy to help the company connect and build relationships with corporate partners. It was the first time I had ever worked for a 1000-employee company, and navigating those lines of communication, especially as a temporary staff member, was not an easy task.
But where I felt most challenged was out in the streets of Bangalore. I was frustrated I couldn’t speak Hindi, Telegu, Kannada or Tamil and talk to those who deeply touched my life, from my loyal rickshaw driver to the family who lived below me in a small room and cleaned my apartment with a work ethic that put mine to shame. I came to India to learn, to connect, and to stand in solidarity with people experiencing the same crushing cycle of poverty I had. Instead, I had become just another expat.
However, not all was lost. I fortunately found an incredible professional mentor and spiritual teacher in my supervisor at LabourNet, Kirti Vardhana.Kirti was a 2014 Acumen India Fellow, and we’d would meet twice a week to check in. He listened, understood my frustrations and offered his wisdom as we sipped chai together. He connected me with the Acumen’s India Fellows in Bangalore who shared my passions for addressing our countries’ structural inequalities. He even let me take off work on Saturdays to volunteer in the community or tour the city, so I could learn my way around, practice the local languages and find that connection I was looking for.
Within three months, my life had changed. Volunteering and mentoring at Sukrupa School reignited my passion for children and learning from their experiences, which were so different yet similar to my upbringing on the other side of the Indian Ocean. We all had the same hope: to have the opportunity to be our best selves. It felt reassuring to finally connect and no longer be seen as the “other.” Most importantly, I had developed a community made up of the most talented and generous souls I had every met. They had become my Acumen and LabourNet family — and they were just the support I needed at this point in my life.
At that time, I was reflecting on the idea of creating Teach For Uganda(TFU), a social enterprise modeled after the Teach for All approach. Seventy percent of Uganda’s population is below the age of 30, but roughly 200,000 students drop out each year. I wanted to give children the same opportunity I had to have access to an equitable, excellent education. Thanks to my Indian family, I was having late-night calls to consult with Teach For India staff and fellows and, by the time I traveled to Pune in June for Teach For All’s Early Stage Entrepreneurs Conference, my mind was made up. By the end of my fellowship, I was ready to take my lessons from Acumen, LabourNet and Teach For India and launch TFU.
Teach for Uganda is in its early stages, but I owe whatever success it has to my family of Acumen India Fellows. They devoted their time and talents without asking for anything in return. Just the other day, my Indian brothers and sisters designed the entire social media campaign for TFU, giving the organization a face to the rest of the world.
Their tireless sacrifice for an organization based in a country they’ve never stepped foot in reveals more than just their love for me — it shows the interconnectedness of humanity. To them, I was not seen as the “other.” I became their brother and they became my sisters and brothers. It is the African spiritual ideal of ubuntu, or “human kindness,” that forever unites me with them.
My nine months in India tested my worldview, challenged my ego and questioned my solidarity with the poor communities I aim to serve. My failures were many. Though challenging, those months changed my life and afforded me the beautiful community without whom there would be no Teach for Uganda today.
James Kassaga Arinaitwe is the co-founder and CEO of Teach for Uganda, an African Leadership Network Fellow, Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow and 2015 Acumen Global Fellow. His essays on Africa’s education and leadership development challenges have been published in The Guardian, NPR, Al Jazeera, and The New York Times. He tweets @Kassaga4UG
