Culture, Commitment and Development - Who will caste the first pebble?

Back in 2014, I set foot at the City of Manchester in the United Kingdom – the home of Manchester United FC, and one of the oldest and finest universities in the UK, the University of Manchester. I had travelled from my village home somewhere in the north eastern part of Uganda called Alira, in pursuit of knowledge, a postgraduate study in pollution and environment control. On my way to winning this study opportunity, I had assured my sponsors that I would partake in cultural exchange and learning among my colleagues, and perhaps shape my own perspectives of the world and return home to make some change happen. Definitely a 12 month stay in Europe is a lot of time for one not to learn anything at all, you would have to be dead in the mind.

I quickly realized that there is something about the people of Manchester, or for that matter, the United Kingdom. They are very quick to apologize and say sorry when they are wrong, very quick to say thankyou as a sign of appreciation for the support they receive, and are respectful enough and considerate when it comes to seeking for services – you will often see orderliness and lines in the banks, the payment counter of supermarkets, or passengers entering the bus.

There is order in some of these foreign lands that is not seen in my part of the world, something different must have happened there to keep some of the human instincts in check, I wondered. This doesn’t happen overnight; it must be a culture developed over time that citizens are now committed to following. Culture is what defines any society or a people, and the loss of which makes us directionless, sometimes unmanageable or just uncouth.

My African brother and serial entrepreneur, Fred Swaniker – the co-founder of Africa Leadership Academies and the Africa Leadership University in Rwanda, recently wrote a thought-provoking piece on the development of South Korea, a country that is now with a GDP 15 times more than that of its counterparts like Kenya back in 1965. He talks about a time when the South Koreans came together to save their economy and donated gold items to raise the country’s gold reserves and resuscitate its economy. They also painstakingly engaged in developing various technologies that are now brand names across the world – the Samsung Franchise, LG electronics and other global brands.

Some of these brands define the heart beat of South Koreas economy and are engrained in the psyche of the citizens as their own – you should read Swanikers’ article, “would you donate your gold?” to understand this a little more, as he gives examples of these well shaped attitudes of South Koreans. I quickly drew some comparisons of South Korea with the UK, and my very own motherland, and it led towards more challenging questions – trying to understand what defines us in one of the most ethnically diverse country, full of religious people with various beliefs and practices, borrowed from across the world or inherited from our very long past – Lucy, the oldest human skull was discovered in Africa, remember?

While reflecting on this theme with some Ugandan friends, we asked each other if we could donate our gold items to the Government of Uganda to improve its economic muscle. One of us was quick to highlight the whereabouts of the recently collected COVID-19 funds that, somehow despite that scary and deadly emergency, found their way in to the pockets of some Ugandan officials. And another friend acknowledged that it is the right thing to do, to be patriotic, except that those who lead us must be willing to keep their itchy fingers inside their long pockets.

As Martin Luther King once said that we must always ask ourselves what we can do for our country and not the other way around. But in our world, some questions surely have to be asked of those that control our resources, or borrow huge sums of money from international money lenders on our behalf - after-all, it is the citizens that get to pay back the loans through taxes passed on to last consumer of different goods and service. We should also ask our country what it can do for us or what it will give back to us before we give away such valuables – our right to vote leaders in to power, our mineral wealth, our labor to serve our country in all forms, and our willingness to co-exist with each other for the sake of our country.

The culture of giving is quickly fading away as social responsibility is put aside in favor of individual engagements. It has reached the levels of pull and push between promoting country and self, with the two taking the place of unlike poles of a magnet. Bottom line is, we may find ourselves undefined, without common aspirations and shared cultures if we do not quickly define our vision, our values and our shared paths to prosperity. Meanwhile, this should be accompanied with the basics; universal application of the law to tame societal deviants, laser focus towards promoting innovation and invention as a precursor to spur economic growth and spread wealth to all those engaged in such industries, and most importantly, developing a sense of urgency to do things differently, while meeting the immediate and long term needs of the most vulnerable groups among us. Let’s caste the first pebble and let its ripples bring enlightenment to all of us.

?We may be required to ask ourselves what we can do for our country. But our country must clearly define what it will do for us!

Moses Ariong

@ariongm