5 business lessons from trying to build something in Uganda for 11 years...
1) Respect money. People might save you once (i.e. write a big cheque) but our markets are not deep enough to bail you out on "unfinished potential"...Ask the folks at Rocket Health...You can only burn cash once so make sure you don't...
2) Liquidity is your North Star (not sales, not even profits, liquid cash). In Africa you need to stay liquid and create a money printing machine. It's "that simple". Liquidity is the best way to seize opportunities or manage volatility...Overstretch yourself and you will be hit by an el'ninio level thunderstorm with no life jacket...
3) "Your market is too small" is often VC garbage. If what you do is working (in other words, you have capital R real product-market-fit and you know where to find clients) by the time you have tapped out "your market" you will probably be rich. You can build your way out of a dominant position in a "small market" (cross-sell, up-sell, go down or up-market, go to a new country, etc.), going for the masses from the get go is hard...
4) Make sure the person who sells is not the person who collects...That sounds basic but "charmers" make for bad "debt collectors" and vice-versa...
5) Mukwano means "Friendship" and it's the richest guy in Uganda. You can sue your way to business success in the US (hello Trump) but in Uganda, the mukwano route is more advisable...
Bonus: I can't tell if "paying your staff before the sweat on their forehead has dried" has been accretive to my business; in other words, what if I didn't follow this verse? Who knows? but at least, I can sleep at night...
TODAY I BRING YOU 5 MAIN REASONS WHY A CVT FAILS!
1~Excessive torque and vehicle weight overload which strains mechanical and thermal limits of belts and pulleys.
2~Degraded,low or contaminated fluids;Using wrong fluid type,letting levels go low or neglecting fluid changes causes loss of hydraulic pressure and massive internal damages
3~Overheating;When a vehicle operates in heavy stop-go traffic ,hot climates or towing loads without adequate cooling the fluid breaks down thermally triggering belt slippage
4~Worn push belts and metal chains; A CVT transfers all engine power through a single steel chain across variable width cones and over time the chain slips,grooves or even snaps due to a drop in fluid pressure caused by chain physical wear or high torque pressure.
5~Pulley surface damage and wear;Small metal debris (from initial break in or component wear) circulate in the fluid and score pulley surfaces making the chain barely gripping properly leading to severe juddering and transmission failure.
Good morning my people
According to @mtnug ...from today midday to 8pm I Bava depleted 11gb of data.
@sylmulinge I don't know what you guys are doing but trust me you're thugging us.
And for me I will always fight for value.
Kati we are going to get to the bottom of this nonsense
A lot of people think they are failing at life.
Sometimes they are just doing things they are bad at.
Know yourself.
Know what you’re good at.
Know what you’re bad at.
Take responsibility for what fits you.
Delegate what doesn’t.
You’ll get more done and spend less time thinking there’s something wrong with you.
The day I decided to close my shop, I felt like I had lost a big part of myself. I felt defeated, because the Mwiza I know doesn’t give up easily.
But a part of me had already died before that. It started when URA held my goods for four months. I felt utterly helpless. Eventually, I stopped going to the shop. I could go months without stepping inside.
Now, the physical shop is gone, and it still hurts. But I sleep better at night knowing I no longer have to deal with URA holding the only capital I have for months. 🙌🏾
We truly survived this charlatan.
There is a difference between a safe house & a torture chamber.A safe house protects state assets from danger, persecution & surveillance from internal/external threats by providing humanitarian,legal & law enforcement support not maiming people.
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WHY MBAGUTA GAVE MUHA TWENTY-FOUR STROKES.
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There is a common saying in Western Uganda: “I will give you the twenty-four strokes Mbaguta gave Muha.” Muha is the Runyankole name for a fox. But why would a powerful chief summon an entire wild animal for punishment?
As the story is told, Mbaguta, a former chief in the Ankole Kingdom, would hear a fox crying at particular hours of the night. The fox was somewhere in the wilderness, conducting its natural business, but its cries irritated the chief.
One night, Mbaguta decided that he had endured enough. He ordered his men to pursue the fox, capture it and bring it before him. The men went out, chased Muha, trapped it and returned with the animal tied up.
Mbaguta then gave the fox twenty-four strokes of the cane and released it. Presumably, he believed that Muha would return to the wilderness having learnt some manners. The fox, meanwhile, left without understanding the charge against it, the trial it had attended or the behaviour it was expected to correct.
So why did Mbaguta cane Muha?
Because Mbaguta was a fool.
His foolishness was not merely in catching a wild animal. It was in mistaking instinct for misconduct. Muha was not being disrespectful, disorderly or disobedient. It was simply being a fox. To punish it as though it had consciously violated a chief’s instructions was to imagine that a fox could understand authority, guilt and correction as a human being does.
We repeat Mbaguta’s foolishness whenever we beat a goat for entering somebody’s garden or cane a cow for wandering away. A goat does not understand land boundaries. It has never seen a title deed. The intelligent creature is expected to provide proper fencing, tethering or herding.
Animals may be trained through consistent signals, but they cannot be morally lectured with a cane. When a human being treats an animal’s instinct as deliberate misconduct, it is not the animal that has failed to rise to the human level. It is the human being who has lowered his reasoning to the level of the animal.
Muha behaved like a fox. Mbaguta reasoned like one.
The twenty-four strokes did not civilise Muha. They merely immortalised the foolishness of Mbaguta.
Congratulations Dr. Agaba Gift. @agabagift2. Thank you @NakaseroHosp. You won't be dissapointed. If he misbehaves, I will still prunn him otherwise, he is a great Doctor.
Glory To God 🥳🥳🙏🙏✍️✍️
It’s an insult to doctors to reduce their worth to their finances or make unnecessary comparisons about who earns what. For generations, doctors have been one of the most important pillars of society… dedicating their lives to saving lives, serving communities, and carrying responsibilities most of us can only imagine. This is hardly how we should choose to honor a profession that has given so much to society. We ought to do better as a society.
Read This Before You Rewrite Your 20th CV.
People are just hiring their friends and families,they have connections and you don’t.I know that stings.
The problem was never your CV nor your skills nor you nor your experience.
It is that 70% of roles are filled through people, referrals, networks, conversations, long before they are ever posted.
While you polish your CV, someone with fewer skills is getting hired because a friend forwarded their name.
Here is the good news though:
Connections are not something you are born with,they are something you build on purpose starting now.
You do not need to know the right people,you need to start reaching the right people, the right way.
Stop fixing your CV and start building your network.
Mama Solar i need to occupy my house naye silina masanyalaze....here we go with our 2.56kwh solar system at 6,500,000Ugx.
With this you can light up to 25 bulbs (5-10w)
Television
Sound bar
Fan
CCTV cameras
Wifi router
Phone charging
Call me on 0754164744.
Tjaša: Rukirabachwezi, sometimes you think too much. Not everything in life needs analysis, sometimes you just need to feel.
Me: And that, dear Tjaša, is how human beings wake up one morning wondering how beauty and emotion jointly defrauded them.
Tjaša: How is beauty now fraudulent?
Me: Beauty is innocent but the problem starts when you appoint it a minister of decision-making. Beauty can introduce somebody to your eyes but it has no qualifications to tell you whether that person deserves access to your life.
Tjaša: You married me because I was white, young and beautiful.
Me: Precisely and that is why I am speaking as both a lecturer and former victim of such gigantic fraud.
Tjaša: You fool! Why don’t you go to hell? I should have sent you to hell!
Me: Look at you insulting and cursing instead of taking notes. By the time my brain arrived to investigate what the eyes and heart had approved, the transaction had been completed--we were both in bed tummies slapping pya-pya-pya. Your beauty had collected the deposit, emotion had signed the contract, and my reason arrived LATE like a lawyer instructed after judgment. My ancestors were slow!
Tjaša: So now you regret ever marrying me?
Me: No, I am saying beauty alone is insufficient to make such an important decision. I have dealt with many beautiful people, and I have dealt with profoundly emotional people. I have learnt that neither category should be permitted to make important decisions unsupervised.
Tjaša: And what is wrong with emotional people?
Me: Nothing is wrong with having emotions by the way. I have them too, in plenty. Emotion is information, it is just anger telling you something has disturbed you. Attraction tells you somebody has excited you. Fear warns you about danger, but none of those feelings automatically tells you what is true or what you should do.
Tjaša: Looks like you want people to become robots?
Me: Nope, I did not say that. I want the heart to submit its recommendations to the brain before implementation.
Tjaša: There you go again, Rukirabachwezi, turning love into bureaucracy.
Me: Listen. Whatever you are doing, particularly when you are angry, excited, frightened or hopelessly attracted to somebody, sit down. Think. Interrogate the excitement. Cross-examine the anger. Put the beauty in the witness box. Ask what remains when the butterflies have finished flying around your stomach and gone to disturb somebody else.
Tjaša: You really have become a philosopher.
Me: Bad marriages/relationships have produced more philosophers than universities. Have you no knowledge of history?
Tjaša: You are impossible.
Me: And another thing, be suspicious of anyone who deliberately uses beauty or emotion to gather crowds, sympathy or obedience. That is manipulation. Once somebody insists that you must feel before you are allowed to think, intellectual pickpocketing has begun.
Tjaša: So what jurisdiction does beauty have, Professor Rukirabachwezi?
Me: Beauty deserves admiration, emotion deserves acknowledgment but neither deserves jurisdiction over your brain.
Tjaša: Yet you still think I am beautiful.
Me: Extremely.
Mr Andrew Mwenda is being truly callous and disingenuous here.
In 2015, he wrote that QM single-handedly took charge of that Kingdom, mobilized resources and built it to where it is today. (See link here: https://t.co/vbRinRpEYT)
He said that thanks to his political brinkmanship (or “cunning”) President @KagutaMuseveni criticized PM Milton Obote for banning Kingdoms but when he returned them, he stripped them of their true power; both political and economic.
Mr Mwenda actually went further to show that King Oyo’s grandfather, Rukidi IV, whose will the Babiito are prioritizing over King Oyo’s, “used to earn royalties from Katwe Salt Lake, Kilembe Mines, Hima Cement, Queen Elizabeth National Park, Semliki National Park and other treasures that make Toro Kingdom the tourist capital of Uganda. Indeed, Rukidi IV owned shares in Katwe and Kilembe and earned dividends.”
What Mr Mwenda forgot to tell his readers is that all those assets he listed were in present day Rwenzururu Kingdom, which the Babiito elite lost due to the same arrogance, sense of superiority and refusal to devolve power that they demonstrate to this day.
Anyway, when King Oyo’s father took over the throne upon return of Kingdoms by the aforementioned Museveni, he inherited a shell.
It helps to know that “Tooro” was so skint that their King, Omukama Patrick David Matthew Kaboyo Rwamuhokya Olimi III had to work as Uganda’s Ambassador to Cuba from 1990 to 1993. Oyo took over in 1995, upon his father’s early demise.
So, here’s a recently widowed 20-some year old woman, who was always treated as an outsider by the Babiito, taking over ruins of a Kingdom and somehow turning it around and making it relevant again.
Andrew himself acknowledges that the Babiito shunned the Kingdom and they offered no help.
That help he says came from President Museveni, Sudhir, Gaddafi etc, thanks to what he referred to as Best Kemigisa’s “excellent social networking skills”.
Anyway, that was, I suppose, when Mr Mwenda was in good books with QM.
Now he says of her -at a time when she has lost a son she raised through sheer grit to become one of the most recognizable Monarchs IN THE WORLD-that her grief is fake.
He writes: “please, don’t falsely accuse Best Kemigisa of grieving. If she did, it was not necessarily grief of losing a son. That was secondary. Her primary grief was loss of power.”
That’s callous, in the extreme.
But even if it were true, the power that Mr Mwenda alludes to, comes from a Kingdom that he himself acknowledges she built from the ashes.
This is the same Andrew who will defend NRM/NRA’s right to rule in perpetuity because “they hunted their animal”.
The cynical Republican in me thinks that if hunting animals is to guarantee rule in perpetuity, the best place to see that is in Kingdoms.
After all, aren’t they by nature ruled by lineages of strongmen and women who “hunted their animal”?
If that wasn’t the case, Kasagama’s descendants would have made way for other Batooro to take turns at it.
That the QM might have been involved in some dubious dealings or even murder as Mr Mwenda accuses her of (which decision to conceal, he actually says he pragmatically defended and understood) should really be immaterial…by his logic.
In the past, Kings would kill thousands.
The Tooro that Mwenda, QM and co are jostling over isn’t any different. It’s built on skulls of thousands.
So, what’s a bad QM orchestrated property deal here and there? And it’s not like Mr Mwenda and his buddy Bob Kasango (MJRIP) didn’t play any role; is it?
But I digress
To casual observers, especially some of us from republican societies like Bugisu, all this noise and name calling seems rather hypocritical and shows a lack of understanding of the history of the very entity they’re fighting over.
But also, it is so on brand for Mr Mwenda. When an association serves his interests, he will go in hard for it. When it stops, he calls them murderers. See Obote family, Kizza Besigye etc
Hey @samuel_leeds I am a Ugandan living in Dubai. I am Digital Marketer, AI enthusiast and I have a BSc. Finance Degree with hands on experience in Logistics and Warehouse.
I am looking for an opportunity to work with you and I am also interested in learning the Real Estate Marketing Business.
I look forward to your reply.