The pioneer diplomatic representative of the Aga Khan Development Network in Uganda concluded his tour of duty last month. He spoke on the organisation’s mission, investments and impact in the country.

------------------------------------

You served as the diplomatic representative of the AKDN in Uganda for a decade. That is not a short time. What did your work entail?

At the time I took up the role, AKDN did not have a diplomatic office in Uganda; I needed the time to establish a presence. In a nutshell, I was the principal contact of AKDN with the government.

The job entails liaising with and maintaining cordial relationships with AKDN’s partners and cultivating new partnerships.

Such collaborations help us leverage skills, expertise and resources, allowing AKDN to do more, more efficiently. The arrangement also has a catalysing effect — our partners gain confidence in the country, bring in new investments and sometimes initiate independent projects.

AKDN partners include the World Bank, the African Development Bank as well as governments and international aid agencies from countries such as Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom as well as the Scandinavian countries.

AKDN also works with private international agencies such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Rotary International as well as private companies like Johnson and Johnson and Sithe Global.

What are AKDN’s successes in Uganda?

Although in recent times the focus has been on economic development, historically and globally AKDN’s strength has been in the education and health sectors, that is social development. Think of the Aga Khan Schools, or the Aga Khan University School of Nursing and Midwifery. We had also been working on how to strengthen educational systems. We trained almost 1,000 head teachers of secondary schools.

For more than 25 years, AKDN has been involved in early childhood development. This is perhaps the project that has had the most impact. We established a government accredited early childhood development training centre, which offers opportunities for both in-service and pre-service ECD teachers.

Another significant social development milestone is the acquisition of land for the establishment of a university teaching hospital in Kampala.

In more recent times, key projects include the Kampala Serena Hotel, a world class five-star facility that opened in November 2006. The project demonstrates that excellence in Uganda, operated by Ugandans, is not only possible, but that it can be sustained. In December 2006, we launched NTV, an independent television station, staffed and operated by Ugandans.

The foundation stone for the Bujagali Power Station was laid in August 2007 and the plant was completed and inaugurated in 2012. Today, it supplies almost 50 per cent of the country’s electricity.

In November 2007, at President Yoweri Museveni’s request, we launched Air Uganda as the national carrier. Air Uganda functioned well and even received the highest available international safety accreditation, until it was grounded and subsequently ceased operations in 2014... but that was no fault of ours.

The West Nile rural electrification project, a 3.5MW mini hydro facility on river Nyagak in northern Uganda, inaugurated in early 2012, has transformed the economy of that area and improved people’s lives. For example, small industries like welding units, shops, Internet cafes, restaurants and hotels, schools and medical facilities have sprung up as a result of the project, providing jobs to the local people.

Speaking of the university teaching hospital, why should it be located in an already congested city when there are open chunks of land upcountry?

A teaching hospital is an educational facility, and ideally, it should be close to or within a large concentration of people. This allows students to gain experience and the needed skills through exposure to a variety of cases. It should also be easily accessible to similar teaching institutions so they can support each other.

We are grateful to the government for providing 60 acres of land in Nakawa, an area that is a learning and teaching hub, being home to Makerere University’s Business School and the Institute of Computer and Information Technology.

We also hope that the government will allocate a further 40 acres because we were actually looking for 100 acres. The hospital will be developed in phases. The first phase is expected to be completed and start operations by 2022.

We aim to attract back talented Ugandan medical diaspora through world class facilities. That is quite an ambition, but it is not unrealistic. The facility could become a regional centre for medical tourism, attracting people from the East African Community and from Somalia and eastern DRC. Hopefully AKDN will also achieve what the Aga Khan University Hospital has in Nairobi — that is the Joint Commission International accreditation, one of the world’s most prestigious certification standards for medical care.

How does AKDN relate with regional blocs like the East African Community?

The AKDN has a joint liaison committee with the EAC, which serves both as a framework for information exchange as well as a forum for the identification and development of collaborative opportunities.
As envoy, I interacted with the EAC Secretariat, the Legislative Assembly, the Court of Justice and other organs of the EAC.

Why does AKDN have diplomatic status in East Africa?

AKDN agencies engage in development projects and as such signs treaties with governments some of which have provisions for diplomatic representation as is the case in Uganda. The reasons for engaging in these projects are multiple, one of which, as His Highness the Aga Khan has explained, is that he sees it as part of his ancestral institutional responsibility to uplift the conditions of humanity.

Currently, the AKDN is working in 30 countries in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Central Asia to fulfil that mandate.

What do you mean by institutional responsibility?

In order to understand the concept we need to go back in history to the time of the Holy Prophet [may peace be upon him].

In the 7th century, Prophet Muhammad advocated the care of the handicapped, orphans, the poor, marginalised and underprivileged of society, by those who had the means to do this. This principle was part of his message on the inherent dignity of human life. According to the Shia interpretation of history, the Prophet’s mission was passed on through the generations.

This ancient office is known as the Ismaili Imamat and His Highness the Aga Khan is the 49th descendant in this line of succession — a 1,400-year tradition of institutional effort to uplift the condition of humanity irrespective of religion, ethnicity, colour, or gender. The AKDN is in effect the modern-day instrumentation of the Ismaili Imamat towards fulfilling this mandate.

Over the centuries, the Imamat has appointed emissaries, envoys, people negotiating treaties or carrying messages from the Imamat to others and back to the Imamat. In the modern age this practice of the Imamat to engage with countries has been expressed through treaties entered into with governments, as in Uganda. That was the post I held, before handing it over to my successor, Amin Mawji.

There are countries the AKDN operates in but does not have a diplomatic representative. Why is that the case?

The status is attached only to the AKDN diplomatic office and not the various agencies. For example, we have significant projects in Rwanda and Burundi, but no diplomatic representative. The same goes for Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast in West Africa; we also have AKDN projects in the UK, Pakistan and India with no diplomatic office.

AKDN is a big organisation, and quite often, the public doesn’t know which of its agencies are for-profit. Has this been well explained?

We’ve successfully explained the difference to various parliamentary committees. I also worked closely with policy and law makers explaining this distinction.

The reason AKDN has fiscal privileges for its not-for-profit agencies is because they plough everything back and deliver “public goods,” typically as I said, in health and education.

Bujagali Energy Ltd, one of the biggest AKDN investments in Uganda has experienced a backlash with Ugandans terming it unnecessarily expensive. Are Ugandans simply being unduly critical?

I certainly don’t think Ugandans are unduly critical; it’s wonderful that Ugandans are asking questions. The cost of Bujagali, say about $800 million, was determined after careful negotiations. When the foundation stone was laid in 2007, the global market for infrastructure projects was not in favour of Bujagali. There was a lot of work worldwide with opportunities for big infrastructure companies, particularly in rebuilding Iraq, and other easier, more profitable projects. Additionally, the cost of raw materials and interest rates for borrowing were considerably higher then.

If we had a crystal ball in 2006, and we were then able to foresee that in three or four years’ time global interest rates and commodity prices would have come down, and that infrastructure companies’ interest in Bujagali would have been much more vigorous, we would have gone to the government and said, “Look, why don’t we delay Bujagali for three-four years because it will be built much more cheaply?”

Second, delaying Bujagali for a few more years was politically unacceptable. The country needed electricity urgently — there was extensive load shedding, and much supply was extremely expensive thermally generated power, which was also bad for the environment. Delaying the project for several years would have had significant financial and environmental costs, which would have been borne by the people of Uganda.

Were there aspects of Bujagali that were unnecessarily costly? I don’t have sufficient technical knowledge to answer that, but I do know that usually, in order to reduce costs, you would probably have to compromise on quality. And commitment to quality is embedded in the DNA of AKDN. If we compromised on those standards, it would not have been fair on the Ugandan people, because come 20 or 50 years, problems would have surfaced. People then would have asked, what happened?

Any lessons you take with you from your experience as the diplomatic representative?

If you want to invest in Uganda, bring in only that which is of global best standards — both in terms of technology and best practices. Bring the world’s best here and not the world’s second or third best. That attitude has served us well in AKDN and I hope it can serve others well too.