It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention. It is an obvious saying, perhaps, and maybe even cliché, but nonetheless profound. It is during the most difficult situations that human beings are at their most ingenious best. If proof were needed of this, the current spat between Rwanda and Uganda is it. While not exactly inventing new things, Rwandans have found new ways of doing them as a result of Uganda’s unfriendly actions. They have had to get out of the comfort zone, away from the accustomed way of doing things and started venturing into places and fields new. This is a choice Uganda has forced on them and in the process opened their eyes to other possibilities. In that sense they have come to a new thinking about their existence as a nation and are fashioning new ways to cope with the new reality During the past two decades or so, Uganda has been placing obstacles in Rwanda’s way. The list of those obstacles is long as the current state of relations has revealed. For example, there are instances of reneging on projects agreed upon under the Northern Corridor Projects Initiative (NCPI), such as the extension of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) from Kampala to Kigali, but which Uganda now says it will rather extend to Juba, South Sudan, first and maybe consider the extension to Rwanda later. Another has been the deliberate slowing down of other NCPI projects as to make their implementation impossible, such as with the transmission of electricity from Ethiopia and Kenya through Uganda to Rwanda. To date Uganda has done little or nothing to upgrade transmission lines to carry the higher energy load, and so Rwanda cannot import the power from the other two countries. In the recent past, minerals and milk exports from Rwanda through Uganda were blocked for a time, raising the cost of the former and putting to waste the latter. More recently still, Rwandans have been arrested, tortured and detained in unknown places. The lucky ones have been released and dumped at the border, most barely able to move but thankful to be alive. Those not so lucky still languish in secret torture dungeons. The worst of these acts has been Uganda’s harbouring, working with and abetting the activities of terrorist groups bent on destabilising Rwanda. What is Uganda’s aim in all this? In one word it is subversion through several means. First, by imposing non-tariff barriers and preventing the free movement of people and goods, it is to make it difficult for Rwandans to do business. Second, it is to destabilise Rwanda and make the lives of its citizens insecure, and distract them from development efforts. Third, it is to keep Rwanda dependent on Uganda for practically all its needs. In this way Uganda secures a market for its products. And indeed for a long time easy access to Uganda (due to proximity and historical reasons) had sedated Rwandan business people against looking farther for supplies and markets. They went there to buy stuff Ugandan business people had imported from such places as Dubai, India or China. Some did not even know that some of these products were available locally, from other Rwandans who had imported them. Now they know. It is refreshing to hear local business people say that they are ready to look beyond the immediate neighbourhood and go directly to the source of the merchandise Ugandan business people have been re-exporting to them. According to them, all they need to do is strengthen the logistics industry by developing the transport and warehousing businesses. For this, they are even ready to push government to develop land given to it at ports in Djibouti and Dar es Salaam This is a good moment for the private sector to step in and seize the opportunity to meet the needs previously served by imports from neighbours and fill gap current relations have opened up. It is also enough reason to improve the Made in Rwanda products in quality, quantity and affordability. What has been needed all along is an eye-opener and a mindset change. Sometimes you need a sharp jolt to change your ways. In this sense, the blockade may not be a bad thing after all, which brings to mind the wisdom of another saying: every cloud has a silver lining. The views expressed in this article are of the author.
