Dr Monica Musenero
I have heard some Ugandans express offence concerning the “Cheap Milk Economy.”
I fully understand your feelings. But allow me share a few thoughts. Right now, is not the time to be offended, it is time for strategy. It is time to be innovative!
Over the past months, I have analysed the strategies used by Europeans in their dealings with Africans and other developing nations and I think we have great lessons to pick as we transform our economy.
When Europe built industries following the industrial revolution, they needed more people in the workforce. At first, they were using their own people to produce raw materials, but they soon realized this was not sustainable.
So, they established industrial schools (the origin of the current education system we have) to skill their people to work downstream in industries.
They also bought slaves from Africa as cheap labour to do the bottom-tier grunt work of producing raw materials. When campaigns against slave trade intensified, they fought it off as hard as possible, while knowing they couldn’t hold off the revolution forever.
During that time, they shifted strategy to colonising the nations from which they had got their slaves.
The only change was now, the raw materials could be produced in the same place as the “slaves previously came from”.
By the time slave trade ended, they had strategically shifted slave labour into colonies! Which no one at the time objected to.
When colonies started getting “big headed” and clamouring for independence, the Europeans once again fought off this change, well knowing it was yet again only a matter of time before the change would come.
As they fought for their status quo, they continued strategically innovating ways to shift their economies away from industries that depended on raw materials from the colonies.
By the time they lowered the Union Jacks, they were already well into the implementation of the new plans for their economies.
In the first few years, they kept the factories running on cheap raw materials willingly supplied by former colonies, still in slave mode. But knowing the education they had left for them, they knew it was a matter of time till raw materials run out or become valueless.
On their own, former colonies lacked capacity to innovate and sustain productivity, combined with the clandestine shift to “knowledge based economies,” there would no longer be a ready market for African raw materials.
But they needed to keep former colonies as markets for the products from their new knowledge-based economies. But how do you sell to bankrupt nations? To answer this question, European nations innovated Credit and Aid.
Broke former colonies would soon need to borrow to stay afloat. So they set up new mechanisms to keep the former colonies working for them, this time by lending them money.
Now back to cheap milk
We have played ahead and achieved a huge feat — producing cheap milk. That is a good precursor to industrialisation of the milk-value-chain. We should not destabilise the market by discouraging the buyers of the cheap milk.
If we can make it cheaper, let us do it. Income is not about price, it is about amount of money earned. But we must be in the middle of “our decade” of innovation! We must now strategically focus on the next leg of the dairy value-chain.
One day, there will be no cheap milk out of Uganda. Not that it will become expensive, it is that we will be selling cheaper value-added products. It is not price that matters, “Cheap is a business strategy”.
China used it well. What we need most now is the good will and confidence of Ugandans towards their science, technology and innovation teams.
Our recent goal with the National Science Week was to give you a glimpse of what we are up to. We do not have to prematurely spill all the beans now. Keep thinking of the bigger picture. Making Uganda the Best
Lessons learnt
Development is a value-chain that unfolds in unpredictable ways.
Be alert to follow it along the bends and turns and work to turn each change into an advantage.
Make the most of what already exists, while constantly innovating to keep ahead of the times.
From my analysis, keep your Innovations at least 10 years ahead of the shift.
Always be strategic. By the time they realize you have shifted, you should be far ahead, offering them the next product.
What offends you and your livelihood should serve to make you wiser, work harder, smarter and clandestinely. Don’t simply be annoyed, THINK! INNOVATE! ADAPT! PLAN! ACT!
The writer is minister of Science, Technology and Innovation in the Office of the President
