Dissy

Now that Mr Andrew Mwenda is done issuing a groveling, much needed apology to President @KagutaMuseveni; as well as telling us how he personally knows Bill Gates, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, can we try and understand that DEI Pharma thing using basic common sense? First off; it appears that there’s general agreement that if Uganda wants to have regional industry leaders across different sectors, the state must have a hand and that this can’t be shrouded in mystery, backdoor dealings and corruption. This is not up for debate. With the foregoing, I’ll invite you to scrutinize these investments dispassionately. I’ll start with DEI Pharma coz I’ve spent 20 years building in this space. I know it quite well. From available information, the @GovUganda has invested 1 trillion shillings in the Matugga based pharmaceutical greenfield for a 9% stake. This figure isn’t easily verifiable because a lot of the documents underpinning these public investments are nearly impossible to get. Even the LOP didn’t seem to know . A clear red flag. (See video in frame 1) We rely on parliamentary committee clips and statements from people like @DrWakida who is the board chairman of that entity from which he solicits “friendly loans” in millions of dollars. But that’s a story for another day. Going with the UGX 1 trillion shilling investment, Uganda is valuing this entity-by a guy whose entire experience in pharma manufacturing doesn’t go beyond failing at running a flour mill-at just under 3 Billion dollars. For African comparison; Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Ltd, the South African conglomerate that’s the largest manufacturer in Africa, has a market cap of 3.6 Billion Dollars (see frame 2). By local comparison, CIPLA-Quality Chemicals has a market cap of UGX 511 Billion or 132 million dollars (see frame 3). At the time the government made that investment in DEI, the market cap of Cipla-QC was less than UGX 250 Billion. In fact, back in 2023, an investment firm from Mauritius bought controlling stake for under $30 million (here: monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/na…) Basically, the government values this DEI entity more than 25 times higher than a proven pharmaceutical manufacturer of global repute; one backed by the third largest pharmaceutical manufacturer in India; with a history going back nearly 100 years! This is an entity run by a guy who lied to the country that he had found a cure for covid and embarrassed us to no end; a guy who seems to essentially buy publications and slaps his name on them; a guy severally accused of conning people in mineral deals (see frame 4 and other sources on request). You don’t have to be a CFA, CPA, MBA or a finance genius to know that this is theft by valuation. Mr Magoola, you might recall, said upon receipt of the first government investment that the company didn’t even need government money but nonetheless, it was going to pay it back in no time. Same company at the time that had its assets on auction for failure to service debt. Same guy is said to be back for an additional 1.6 trillion shillings in government investment. For this, he has piles of cassava in Kamuli and badly pronounced monoclonal antibody brands to show for our investment. (@ntvuganda did a recent piece on this. You can find it here: youtu.be/w3pYTG-Crek?si…) If indeed the government was serious about growing the pharmaceutical industry, they could have spread this investment around into already existing industries and put in place some market protection measures. Putting all this cash in the hands of a man with at best, a dubious history of financial management and no discernible pharmaceutical manufacturing success is a risk at proportions that are hard to describe. We have the example of Malta to show how smart investment in pharmaceutical technology/industry can actually drive economic growth. Why don’t we take those examples instead of betting on snake-oil vendors? How are these promoters chosen? #DEIPharmaHeist