THE AFRICAN BUSINESS FORTUNE MAGAZINE ISSUE #006 The African Business Fortune Magazine | Page 7

THE AFRICAN BUSINESS FORTUNE - OPINION

Yoweri Museveni won Uganda’s 2016 Presidential Elections

Losers and Winners in Uganda’s March 2016 election
By Alon Mwesigwa

I

t’s now a numbers game for traders as many of them count the
costs and fortunes of an electoral
process that came with mixed feelings.
The election period, which dominated at least the three quarters to March
2016, finally come to a close. If anything,
it was a time for splashing cash.
According to one study by Alliance for
Campaign Finance Monitoring (ACFIM),
a coalition of CSO activists advocating
for increased transparency in the practice of financing political parties and
election campaigns in Uganda, released
in January 2016, between November and
December 2015 alone, the ruling party
NRM spent Sh 27billion, twelve times
more than its competitors.
The Forum for Democratic Change, the
main opposition party, spent Sh 976m.
Independent candidate Amama Mbabazi spent Sh 1.3bn. On the whole, some
analysts estimate that close to Sh 300bn
could have been spent during March
election.

This has left some businesses jubilating while others bleeding. We look at the
winners and losers.
LOSERS
Tourism sector
From the start of the period, it was always going to be hard for the tourism
industry to generate revenues, especially
in a country where the police is always in
running battles with opposition and activists - fodder for the media.
And they were reported and played
world over on BBC and CNN. Outlets like
the Economist, the Guardian, and New
York Times reported extensively what was
happening in the country.
In Kenya, a satirical report called Kinyanjui Ripota’s Perspective on #UgandaDecides 2016 ran on NTV Kenya to mock
Uganda. All this played at the expense of
the country’s image, which portrayed
Uganda as violent, undemocratic and dangerous to visitors.
Speaking to NBS TV days after Museveni was announced Uganda’s president,
Amos Wekesa, the director of Great Lakes
Safaris, said the election period “was bad

for the industry.”
Uganda decides 2016 hash-tag was
the sixth most-trending on Twitter
between February 18 and 20, but for
the wrong reasons. Words like police
brutality, dictator, and tear gas were
mostly used. This scared people that
would have planned to come to the
country.
As per the latest figures at the end
of 2013, tourism earned $1.4bn in foreign exchange. This could have since
dropped to be- low $1bn, according to
analysts.
Downtown shops
The traders in the central business
district were not spared the brunt of
the elections. The whole of the elections week, shops remained closed
as police engaged in running battles
with youths who supported the opposition.
Police said it was protecting business people in town. However, people
never worked. The tensions were high
and the would-be shoppers feared to
go to town.
“We still failed to work because

THE AFRICAN BUSINESS FORTUNE MAY - JUNE 2016

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