A Trip to the New-Old World, Part 4
The Prime Minister and the WorldBank
Enter THE Prime Minister of Uganda.
How? Well, an intricate web of small-world connections led back to New Mexico.
I met his sons at the University of New Mexico. Of all the places they could go on exchange, they came here. They had dreadlocks then and studied engineering. They’ve matured into family men, sharing a new look of shaved heads and suave mini-beards, carrying their American educations and mannerisms as tools rather than identities.
Solo, the older brother, had dated a girl on the floor of my dorm freshman year. We had some good talks then. Reunited nearly 15 years later in Uganda, we picked up like it was yesterday. He’s making some legit inroads on payment and banking disruption with mobile money. We geeked on the blockchain, cryptocurrency, and overthrowing the banking system one night as techno-futurists. His entrepreneur drive and skills are fierce.
His brother Kwame was now a fresh Harvard alumnus and spoke next to me on the business panel the week I arrived. Kwame’s political aspirations in Uganda ran parallel to his role in the training. He’s the real deal — a natural and self-developed leader.
The brothers made a call, and we found time on the PM’s Monday though they could not join — agenda unknown.
Kampala traffic had the usual traffic jams and delays, so we bailed on the Uber taxi and held our breath for an intense Bodo Boda (motorcycle taxi) workaround to get to Parliament (not that Parliament, though it was to be funktastic-flex).
3 security checks and as many sign-ins and interviews awaited us when we arrived at the Ministry. The process seemed arbitrary, and any white-skin privilege felt elsewhere was stripped away by stone-faced security personnel. When we asked for the PM’s floor number, brows furrowed and eyes scanned us for threats and intentions.
Enter the indie movie script
We ascended into a ridiculous elevator. I remembered the strange tales of elevator programming — engineers would set (somewhat) complex logic for the system, program priorities as different humans on different floors requested rides. This elevator contained an unbelievable stream of announcements, in an odd, female-British voice.
Welcome, select your floor.
*pressed number.
9th Floor.
(Beethoven’s 5th begins to play, then stops)
Going Up.
Beethoven’s 5th restarts. The elevator stops at a floor. Music stops.
4th Floor.
Welcome, select your floor. 7th Floor.
The music restarts, same song, from the beginning. Music stops.
Going up.
Music restarts, same Beethoven intro.
5th floor. Welcome, select your….
And so it ran, all day long, in a mind-numbing recycling of the same phrases, constantly interrupting and restarting the same piece of classical music. Each floor’s receptionist could hear this insanity, hundreds or even thousands of times a day.
We exited the madness just as my eyes reached there wideness limit and my hands unconsciously moved to my ears for protection from dementia.
Then, the characters came out of the script.
Sunglasses were worn inside. Bright suits and gold chains adorned the open collars of the sharkskin leisure suits. A few AK-47s were being swung around. I was fully expecting one or all to be dipped in gold. The overly-casual and crass demeanor of the main gatekeeper had us sign in again, double check the schedule, re-ask for our passports, our purpose, looking for any point of contention he could eek out.
After an arbitrary pause for effect, he made a blasé gesture to let us pass into a long hallway.
My bias from terrible, stereotyping movies of African dictators sat thick on my mind’s eye.
The main handler came out to greet us warmly, wearing a henchman’s outfit of matching, silver top and bottom. Comfortable and unofficially uniformed, he guided us into a waiting room with a mix of nervous businessmen and more characters wearing big sunglasses indoors. CNN International blared a steady stream of mostly non-American events from a large monitor mounted at one end.
“He is keeping an entire delegation waiting just for you.”
We entered a new series of pre-rooms and passed a heavy wooden frame into the Minister’s Chambers.
He rose with warm enthusiasm from his MASSIVE desk.
I’m talking the biggest desk I have ever seen. So long and impractical, he tripped slightly shuffling around the far corner of it as he moved to greet us. He had to, since we literally could not reach our hands together across the massive expanse of cherry and oak.
Some relic of colonial grandiosity, the desk was a mismatch to his character. It sat heavy between us after he circled back and resumed his chair. After checking his ringing iPhone, he immediately launched a dialogue to spite its presence.
And so, the surreal flow with an esteemed father-figure began.
I heard you know something about technology, young man. Tell me, what do you see for Uganda?
He locked eyes and was really listening.
(In my head ) Whoa, that was fast. Ok, so I’m deemed legitimate enough to offer tech strategy to the Prime Minister of Uganda. What am I doing here?!)
I shrugged off the imposter syndrome and breathed into the cortisol rise.
Well sir, Uganda is a greenfield in many ways. It doesn’t have the limitations of old infrastructure holding it back from trying and building new technology to leapfrog into the future.
My point was a mix of a semi-bold declaration of the “developing world’s” advantages and some careful instincts of message-framing leftover from my time in politics. I turned the conversation back to him.
What do you see in Uganda’s future?
“We have to embrace technology. We have to make it our own.”
Foreign tech use should be temporary. It was time to build and control their own techno-destiny.
I Flashbacked to the day before:
His statement connected to the identity crisis discovered at the 2017 LEO forum.
After a scathing dissection by the panel on identity, I had nervously rose to ask a question from my furious flow-notes. The subject brought back a fear I had not felt in years. I trembled with cortisol and doubt — a sign of needed discomfort to grow.
The moderator, seeing the first white face since the event began, introduced me excitedly, awkwardly:
“Ah! Since we’ve been discussing white supremacy, here’s an alternative perspective to ask a question.”
Brutal intro. I quieted my own inner critic and disclaimed it with something strange like:
Well, I am a white male, but hopefully not a supremacist…
and continued to ask a winding statement and question with as much confidence as my white-boy could muster, ending with:
Has faceless technology allowed a modern version of dependency theory to hide behind it?
(i.e. Do you think we whites are sucking you dry again with the distraction of cool apps?)
Though they skirted the question, I was surprised to find the most vocal African right activist on the panel (Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire, yeah I referred to him in pronouns rather than butcher his name) — nodded his head throughout my statement.
He was cordial at the post-panel lunch. I was left in awe at my new understanding of reality, and the awareness and compassion of those living it.
I switched back to the Prime Minister.
Stay present.
He was not having the reversal.
But that is a bigger question I struggle with every day. I want to hear YOUR view.
The heat was on.
How would you solve our educational crisis with technology?
Heavy question. I painted a sloppy-yet-passionate, idealized future scene (likely even less eloquent in reality) :
Individual students could have a customized experience — something that matched their recognized curiosity and values. With artificial intelligence, we can build tools to assist teachers in this optimization of learning. Instead of a blanket approach, each student can check in — even offline. You download the platform once and distribute it to any school, running on minimal hardware, the leapfrog trend.
He nodded with a low, deep “Mmm” to signal that, indeed, he was deeply listening.
Imagine using smartphones to give VR experiences. You bring the place, the expereince to the student with a cheap headset and smartphone — something like Google Cardboard and an Android phone.
We flowed, if only for a few minutes — onto the blockchain. How Uganda and East Africa could jump past (leapfrog) the banking and legal systems which restrained business in the US. I noted his son was already open to and building some of my futurism.
The rest was a blur of rapid references to current events, the worry and distaste for our American president, smaller talk on culture and our business.
He ended with a confident politeness, rising again for the journey ‘round his desk, and walked us to the door.
“You must excuse me, I have kept a delegation waiting this afternoon. I hope you will return to my Uganda.”
We descended past the brightly colored characters, into the ruthless elevator, down to the long streets congested, for some post-Prime Minister decompression and processing.
Did that really just happen? Is this real life? What exactly did I say?
For the next week, through a flurry of rapid work-life we ran.
My new favorite food (Ethiopian) and restaurant (Ethiopian Village in Muyenga) was thoroughly indulged. Eating with your hands, dipping injera in homemade butter, wrapping it in slow cooked collard greens and beef — the experience stops time and floods your taste, touch, texture, attention with an overlapping spectrum of sensory bliss.
In the post-gluttony twilight, I asked my new friend, the seasoned and loyal waiter of Ethiopian Village, about the vague memorial plaque. He solemnly and deeply described the terror, shock, and slow recovery of a horrific backpack bomb blast in 2010. The restaurant was filled with soccer-watchers for a big game. He was there. He survived by luck of service duty, being busied in the kitchen, out of blast radius.
He joined me at the table for a moment of silence.
The next day, and through the weekend, James and I sprinted on a proposal-of-interest for value chain development funded by The World Bank. Yeah, that World Bank. They’ve worked to change their image and impact, and teach the developing world to export their own fish rather than keep them dependent on air-drops of spoiling fish.
We pulled together — mostly from James’ rolodex and my team need definitions — a team of 8 African and European consultants and trainers with deep experience in the farming, fishery, and larger supply chains. It was a flurry of calls, rapid content writing, and fast strategy to assemble some serious talent and ask/answer “how the hell could we really help Rwanda enter the global value chain?” Yeah, again, out of my comfort zone and what a rush.
Our Rwandan teammate translated the final draft to French (Google Translate is still learning) and we submitted ~ 30 minutes before the deadline.
Whew. Time to disconnect and enter nature.
