By John V Sserwaniko
Last Friday at exactly 6: 20 pm, Prof Wilberforce Kisamba Mugerwa ceased to be the head of National Planning Authority (NPA), an institution he served as Executive Chairman for 10 years (2008-2018). Last Friday, NPA management organized a formal send-off ceremony at Sheraton Hotel where close to 400 stakeholders gathered to reflect on the accomplishments in Kisamba’s 47 years of public service. In this serialized special report we reflect on how the former Minister and ex-Bamunanika MP will be remembered in terms of where he found and left NPA.
THE DETAILS:
Even when the entity started in 2002 via an Act of Parliament, Kisamba had so synonymous with NPA that many thought it started with him. So hopeless was the pre-Kisamba situation (2002-2008) the five eminent intellectuals that constituted its pioneer executive board had no money allocated to them (to execute their mandate) beyond what was just enough for staff salaries. In fact in that period, no single implementable decision was taken because the board lacked the legally required Coram to perform any function. This inability to execute any development planning as mandated by the Act caused some sense of guilt and frustration which forced 4 of the 5 board members to quit. Sylivia Tereka, the only board member who remained, could in effect do nothing without mandatory Coram. With her were a few ill-trained employees who, because of zero funding, couldn’t do anything apart from drawing salaries every end of month! The few consultants that had been hired too fled the hopelessness at NPA. There was an Executive Director Saul Kaye (an equivalent of Dr. Joseph Muvawala) but he was crippled by Finance Ministry’s refusal to fund his work plans and operations. This lukewarmness was because the Finance Ministry initially perceived NPA as an entity coming to compete, encroach on their (especially planning) mandate and diminish their relevancy. This is why Kaye suffered a lot of intrigue from would-be supervisors at Finance. Some were calling for restructuring at Finance Ministry so that the development planning function totally goes to NPA. Naturally, this caused nervousness. Then finance minister Gerald Sendawula epitomized the attitude of Finance, the mother ministry when he publicly said his expectation was of a lean NPA. Consequently, the Authority was designed in a way that didn’t comply with minimum corporate governance expectations including having a non-executive board that does only oversight as opposed to participating in the entity’s day to day running.
NEW C/MAN SWINGS;
Kisamba resolved to do something to cause institutional reforms and neutralize this anomalous situation. Through frequent informal interactions, he arrayed Finance ministry fears by repeatedly stressing NPA was here to play a complimentary role regarding the development planning function by actively building onto what the Finance Ministry was doing already. He specifically reached out to then PSST Chris Kasami and his deputy Keith Muhakanizi who were the most influential actors at Finance. He impressed it on themthat, to properly streamline development planning and reap the related benefits, Uganda needed to shift from short-medium to long term strategic planning. And to expedite this paradigm shift, NPA needed to be institutionally supported to make its mandated professional input. Senior as he was (had been senior Minister, MP since the 1980s & international civil servant at FAO), Kisamba who also had a lot of access to the President humbled himself and willingly agreed to be supervised by the State Minister for Planning who at some point was Ephraim Kamuntu. All this humility eased the fears guys at Finance ministry had about such a prolific Museveni confidante coming to head NPA. Many times abandoning his car to walk on foot (to beat jam and also achieve physical fitness), Kisamba frequented Kasami and Muhakanizi’s office at the Finance Ministry and always came with able deputy NPA Chairperson Abel Rwandeire. He now prefers to call this “benching.” These regular interfaces gradually made Finance officials see that the Kisamba-led NPA was a potential ally and not foe. NPA activities gradually began to be funded beyond mere wage bill. In his new book (titled Kisamba Mugerwa’s Focused Journey: A tale of courageous strides), Kisamba says it for long remained inadequate funding but an improvement from what he inherited. When work was beginning to be implemented, Kisamba was directed to restructure NPA staff which meant all the employees he inherited had to go and new ones recruited. He hesitated and secured Museveni’s backing to re-tool and retain them with better skills mix. Many were funded to take remedial courses which increased their employability and retention at the new NPA. In the end some became so good that some organizations lured them with higher remuneration. Some of these were at the Friday Sheraton send off and nostalgically recalled those Kisamba pioneering days at NPA. To manage emotional distress resulting from the stalled restructuring, Kisamba commenced counseling sessions to revive and motivate their positive attitude towards work. Upon getting better qualifications many were redeployed within NPA each according to what was most suitable for them.
GETTING M7 ON BOARD;
Kisamba always had the old political relationship to fall back to whenever he needed the President’s endorsement (having been among the pioneer DP group that embraced Sevo in 1986). This exactly is what he did to get the Finance Ministry to agree to increase his wage bill to enable him recruit more qualified staffers on top of the old guard that he retained upon retooling. On seeing the high caliber cadreship Kisamba had built at NPA, the President began inviting them to high level State House meetings whenever stuff to be discussed related to development planning. This increased the entity’s visibility and outspokenness at high level meetings. With this enhanced profile, Museveni began praising Kisamba and NPA during cabinet meetings and this was good for the new chairman’s self-esteem. On realizing the extent to which many in cabinet were beginning to take NPA seriously, Museveni directed Kisamba to expeditiously revive the all-important Presidential Economic Council (PEC), an economic think tank that regularly meets and advises the President on the urgently needed economic interventions. PEC had existed as early as 1986 when the Samson Kisekkas were very powerful but it somehow lost clout and Museveni allowed it to sink into obscurity. The Kisamba-revamped PEC generated many ideas which Museveni fine-tuned, owned and publicly popularized as his own. This gave Kisamba increased relevancy and Museveni tasked Head Public Service John Mitala to originate an instrument inviting Kisamba to join and sit in cabinet as an ex-officio. This is the status the man from Kikonda village in Bamunanika has unprecedentedly enjoyed for the last 10 years (2008-2018). He would talk in cabinet on many things and even when he chose to remain silent, Museveni always prompted him to say something. This indicated to the Ministers the extent to which Museveni was fond of Kisamba. Ministers desiring to influence Museveni on a matter started lobbying Kisamba to weigh in marketing their position ahead of crucial cabinet sessions.
UGANDA VISION 2040;
By 2007, Museveni had politically been articulating his desire to transform Uganda from “a predominantly peasant society to an integrated self-sustaining economy” within the next 30 years. This became Uganda’s national vision statement under the NRM governance but it was easily dismissed by CSOs and government critics as mere sloganeering without any comprehensive thinking and strategy going into it. Ironically, this vision statement was rooted or deriving from the National Comprehensive Development Planning Framework (NCDF), a very nice ambitious economic transformation document that cabinet had voted upon and adopted in 2006. Theoretically it was billed to be the transformation tool that would guide development planning in Uganda. It stipulated that Uganda would prioritize development planning through 6 national development plans (NDPs) that would each last 5 years-spreading over a 30 year period. There were to be 6 NDPs, covering the 30 years, at the conclusion of which the middle income (integrated self-sustaining) status would be achieved. Kisamba’s task now was to fine tune things to ensure the NDPs became aligned with the budgeting process. The respective budgets for all MDAs had to be tuned in a way that contributes to the realization of the NDP. Focus was at that time largely on realization of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that put emphasis on short term interventions seeking to improve human development indicators like access to primary health, food & nutrition, security, water & sanitation, universal education and streamlining gender and environmental issues. There was no emphasis on the country’s long term development planning needs. Muhakanizi and Kasami quickly understood Kisamba’s concerns on why this wasn’t good for the country-and the trio now concentrated on impressing as much on Museveni. Specifically Kasami insisted in all meetings with Museveni that for any long term interventions to succeed, the NDPs had to inform annual budgeting. This meant each MDA’s performance at the end of a given FY had to be measured in terms of how much its outputs contributed to the realization of development priorities as enshrined in Vision 2040: which was also encompassing the six 5-year development plans (covering 2010-2040). NPA guided MDAs’ accounting officers to ensure they budgeted in a way that was consistent with Vision 2040 by highlighting for them (MDAs) what constituted the national development planning priorities for Uganda in the 30 year period. The MDAs’ budgeting also had to be reflective of the ruling NRM election manifesto promises. Each MDA now had to have a 5 year strategic development plan from which that entity’s annual budget would derive. In the end, NPA processed and transformed what critics dismissed as Museveni’s mere sloganeering (enshrined in national vision statement) into a “very technical measurable and internationally acceptable” document. This came to be known as Uganda Vision 2040 that was an outcome of comprehensive research and compilation of irrefutable data on which Vision 2040 was anchored. Museveni was impressed that in 2010 (only 2 years after taking charge at NPA), Kisamba would come up with such a fine product without reliance on the very expensive foreign consultants. Neither did NPA demand additional funding. Indeed in the last 10 years, the Kisamba-led NPA has been able to come up with NDP I (2010-2015) & NDP II (2015-2020). NDP III, which commences in 2021, is work in progress. Yes the middle income status remains a distant dream but some districts around the Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area have achieved it (per capital income of $1,000 according to a report by USAID) as well as Mbarara. Kisamba says Mbale and Lyantonde (currently doing the per capita of $720) are almost there. At Museveni’s prompting, NPA also spearheaded revival of Presidential Advisory Council under which 15 strategic institutions (BoU inclusive) utilize NPA technical input to regularly advise the President on emerging national development planning priorities. NPA has also been very outspoken during National Development Policy Forum meetings. Sitting in cabinet meant Kisamba got to know which policies have been approved by cabinet and also always advised to ensure cabinet decisions were consistent with national development priorities enshrined in the NDPs and Uganda Vision 2040. It also enabled him to lobby for phased increase in NPA’s funding though the situation remains far from ideal. Kisamba harnessed the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) which he found NPA hosting by creating the Department of Governance & Public Sector which specifically concentrated on integrating APRM into NPA mainstream activities.
M7 ENDORSES KISAMBA;
On the day the FY2015/16 budget was read, Museveni bolstered NPA by publicly praising Kisamba’s hard work that had resulted into NDP II (2015-2020) being launched on that budget day. At that same ceremony, the development partners’ Country Assistance Plan (CAP) was launched. CAP sought to ensure that all the assistance the UNDP-coordinated development agencies offered Uganda focused on enhancing the realization of NDP II as well as Vision 2040. In almost the same period, Museveni supported the enactment of the Public Finance Management Act 2015 which empowered NPA to annually issue the Certificate of Compliance (CoC) which Kisamba used as a tool to enforce the MDAs’ compliance with the national priorities enshrined in NDP II. Empowered by these legal provisions, Kisamba has been using the CoC tool to ensure Parliament doesn’t appropriate money for MDAs whose accounting officers didn’t spend in a manner that promotes the realization of Uganda Vision 2040 and the applicable NDP. Every year, NPA names and shames least-compliant government Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs). These days CoC is one of the many documents Museveni relies on to crack the whip on perceived floppy Ministers and technocrats. Using his cabinet position, Kisamba has also been very critical of any cabinet paper that was presented for discussion without its authors making adequate reference to Vision 2040. Kisamba has also generously extended technical expertise to guide MDAs and local governments to ensure their strategic plans are synchronized with the Vision 2040 and the applicable NDP. Nevertheless he is leaving a bit disappointed that his proposal that PSST employs a sanctions system and withhold quarterly releases for MDAs that didn’t adequately implement the NDP/Vision 2040 in the preceding quarter wasn’t heeded. To be continued. For feedback, reach us on 0703164755.
