By Matthias Semanda
I have always pointed this out that African governments have succumbed to the pressure from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to sheepishly nurture and implement the Liberalization of Africa.
Uganda being one poor country with few thinking politicians, we have embraced such IMF and World Bank unpopular policies something that has killed the fore front Sectors of the Economy like Education, Health and the Financial Sectors.
MTN just like other several bloodsucking foreign ventures, has benefited from the Uganda government give-away of government enterprises to such exploitative ventures. What on this world is left as the key government income or revenue generating venture? All from Energy, Banking to Aviation were sold off.
Talking about MTN’s Mokash! After failing our indigenous saving corporatives and indigenous financial institutions that directly linked up with the rural agricultural sector to provide financial support and Markets for Farmers, our government is rather aiding the stealing of such Multinationals like MTN which introduce schemes that only take away from Ugandans and there’s nothing the state gains or even the local people.
The partnership between MTN and cba in this venture must also be an eye opener to several people that these loans and savings have got nothing to do with the Bank of Uganda however much MTN will claim that cba is regulated by the central bank! Why isn’t cba promoting this? In Uganda, there is no such a thing as financial protection. The government is simply a watchman- looking on as Ugandans are being conned and as several schemes that cost the government billions of money and the country losing more billions to such foreign schemes.
It should be noted that developed countries that advocate for these policies are not practicing the same. Countries like USA actually have kept a grip on their private sector more so on their locally founded and run companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Sony and many others.
The government of Uganda looking on while the financial sector is going out to the dogs, is such a worst mistake that we shall live to regret. Allowing even telecom companies conniving with mere monetary agencies to collect money from Ugandans that even the central bank has no control over!! This Must stop and Ugandans should work hard to individually secure and revive their financial freedom than waiting for such unguided and selfish schemes that capitalise on reaping from our small earnings.
What’s really MTN and cba aiming at? Empowering the local SACCOS that have tried to help local farmers or there is something else at the back? Personally, I think, MTN MoKash is one of the new schemes that are likely going to kill the already started local financial freedom schemes like SACCOS. It’s quite evident that these big forces have realised how the local farmers have reorganized and have aggressively started restructuring their financial power and now you hear MTN MoKash bringing loans closer to their phones which is directly killing these local and rural SACCOS.
MTN and several other Multinationals have kept Ugandans in this situation where we are in an economy where money is only pulled out from the people and there are no services. As long as the sectors of Health, Education, and financial are liberalized to such a degree, more people are to keep in poverty and the vision that we are to be a Middle Income Economy by 2020 shall indeed remain in dreams.
The government should liberate the Financial sector than continuously leaving it to these greedy Multinationals. I am very disturbed that they are employing such an aggressive tactic of actually robbing from Ugandans to the nerves. Actually the entire concept of MTN MoKash should be recalled and reviewed by the Bank of Uganda before it grows into a bigger financial scam.
I therefore encourage Ugandans to hold on before embracing these unguided developments because they lack the integrity to be trusted as a new move to promoting financial freedom and security.
The writer is an entrepreneur of digital branding company.
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