By Mulengera Reporters
The UBOS Executive Director Dr. Chris N Mukiza on Thursday implored religious and cultural leaders to work together and become more deliberate about using the enormous influence they have on millions of their followers, to amplify the President’s message of universal household income generation and wealth creation across the country.
Speaking immediately after the Presiding Apostle of Born Again Federation Dr. Joseph Sserwadda had just bragged about having 26,730 churches under his federation across Uganda, Dr. Mukiza (renowned for telling it as it is) demanded that such influence be leveraged to mobilize and sensitize ordinary Ugandans on the need to balance between endless prayer sessions and work because exclusively depending on the former alone won’t end poverty in Uganda.
Mukiza spoke as follows: “You can’t be rich by praying only. You need to tell our people to balance work and prayers because there is no way God is suddenly going to just make you rich simply because you prayed a lot for the entire day and entire week without being productive doing something. Pastor Sserwadda please go and help us to sensitize our people to realize that besides praying, they must get involved in work and be productive because that is the only way to improve their welfare. It won’t be achieved through prayers only. Equally true, people worship their kings a lot and I implore all cultural institutions’ representatives here present to emulate the leadership of Buganda Kingdom who have chosen to use their influence to rally people into development initiatives like emwanyi terimba [aimed at enlarging coffee farming] which is making wonders helping our people to overcome poverty.”
Mukiza was speaking at UBOS headquarters in Kampala where he presided over the handing over of more than 4,050 tablets and computers to the Sserwadda-represented Inter-Religious Council of Uganda (IRCU) and representatives from the Umukhuka, Bunyoro Kitara and Rwenzururu cultural institutions. These officials were here to receive donations of tablets extended to them by UBOS to support and strengthen the collection of administrative data in their respective geographical regions. It was clarified that, much as these were used for census work in 2024, the tablets are still in very good condition.
A larger fraction of the donated tablets went to IRCU which received 3,500 tablets which Sserwadda said was going to be used to accelerate collection, production, processing, analysis, storage and dissemination of data relating to services like education, health and others by the seven different religious affiliations coalescing under the IRCU. Comprising of all the major religions of Uganda, the IRCU has in place a statistics committee whose members Mukiza said UBOS would continue helping to train and build their capacity to effectively carry out qualitative data collection while adhering to data collection ethical principles such as confidentiality when entrusted with people’s private information.
Dr. Sserwadda, who is a co-chair at IRCU, observed that if this collaboration with UBOS had been commenced earlier, sharp disagreements that resulted after the 2024 Population and Housing Census results were released would have been avoided. Several religious groups protested claiming that their actual number had been under declared. Sserwadda appreciated the ongoing relationship between ICRU and UBOS whose officials expect that the Council’s member religious denominations will now be able to generate and have in place data that is more credible and authentic, as a result of close collaboration with the Bureau.
Dr. Mukiza said that once the collection of administrative data, which religious and cultural institutions have the leverage to effectively engage in, becomes adequately modernized in Uganda, data collection for future census exercises will become much easier because such data can effectively and safely be relied upon to reduce on the work enumerators have to do in the field during census exercise. He said this is already happening in countries where administrative data collection is well advanced. He gave the example of accurate records being kept on the number of births and deaths plus immigration and emigration-related statistics and made it clear that once Uganda gets to that level, UBOS will in future require much less resources to carry out the census.
He challenged institutions which received the tablets and computers to always involve and work with UBOS to ensure quality assurance and ethical compliance for the administrative data they collect. He commended Buganda Kingdom for being a model partner for UBOS and implored the other cultural institutions to emulate what the Mengo-based leadership is doing. He demonstrated how Buganda Kingdom has been able to utilize the hundreds of the donated tablets UBOS gave them months earlier to leverage the Bureau’s data to compile and produce a high quality publication titled ‘Manya e Ssaza/know your county,’ whose second edition he said had just been released.
He suggested that every cultural institution does the same to disseminate information profiling the respective administrative units thereunder. He also called on cultural institutions to make use of the UBOS regional centers, such as the one in Mbale, to access capacity building opportunities for their staffers concerned with data collection, processing, analyzing, dissemination and storage-leveraging the newly donated tablets and computers.
These were procured by the GoU and availed to UBOS to conduct the 2024 census exercise which was the first time the exercise was being done in a digital form. Mukiza explained that UBOS’s decision to continue donating and transferring the tablets and computers (to religious/cultural institutions and government MDAs) is consistent with the post-census utilization of the same gadgets as was planned by the GoU at the time of procuring these devices.
At the Thursday event, apart from the cultural institutions and the IRCU, other recipients of tablets and computers included National Planning Authority, Presidential CEO Forum and Makerere-based EPRC each of whom received 50 tablets. Mukisa clarified that what was received by IRCU and cultural institutions was a donation and yet what was received by the government MDAs like NPA was merely transferring of government assets from UBOS to other government MDAs.
Indeed, other prior recipients included major public Universities. Mukiza implored the recipient institutions to strictly use the gadgets for the intended purpose of improving collection of administrative data while ensuring that their staff don’t resort to using the tablets to make phone calls and generally engage in personal usage of the same.
Speaking on behalf of the recipient institutions, Dr. Aisha Kasolo (of the Presidential CEO Forum), Dr. Rogers Mate of NPA, Dr. Sserwadda of IRCU, Benson T Kule (the Prime Minister for Rwenzururu), EPRC’s Swaibu Mbowa and Umukhuka’s Wanduyi Masiga (Deputy Prime Minister) unanimously thanked UBOS for capacitating them towards the performance of data collection functions.
There was laughter when Dr. Sserwadda casually refused to translate his hilarious speech into Luganda after fellow speakers casually demanded that he does so. He demanded to know why the Umukhuka representative, who spoke earlier, was never required to translate his speech in Lugisu. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
