James Owona

@wekesa_amos @nyamadon Congs bwana. You are an inspiration

Breaking News ACCRA- GHANA / AWARD NIGHT Receiving infront of this audience, former Presidents, top CEOs from across Africa can only be God! Of course family has played a role, so has the people I work with across different businesses, most of you reading this too has supported things I do. My message was simple, the world earned 11 trillions dollars in 2025 from tourism, Africa earned only 7% of that. 40% of Africas tourism is brought in by European carriers, 25% Middle East carriers and only 20% by Africa carriers. The above situation can only be changed by us Africans, we must take the risk over and over again

@wekesa_amos @cobbo3 All countries will try to protect thir interests. Its just the way it is. Humans are tribal. Let's also advocate for building strong businesses and systems internally, then we will have the strength to struggle better externally.

A MUST READ SOUTH AFRICAN VISAS / TRADE Thank you guys for sharing my post yesterday, it went to the highest office in South Africa. Got many phone calls! MODJADJI MAHLANGU returned last evening from South Africa and went to office at 3am today morning to start working on peoples applications. MODJADJI MAHLANGU last issued a visa on 25th of March 2026 yet Ugandan apply for visas daily. Paying for accommodations, tickets and visa fees that is never refunded. SHE HAD LOCKED PEOPLES PASSPORTS IN HER OFFICE. That money is earned by South African businesses hence their economy becomes bigger. The visa money is what keeps these foreign embassies operating here if you don’t know. BUT THATS NOT A LASTING SOLUTION. South Africa has more than 78 businesses in Uganda taking away about 1bn dollars annually from our already struggling economy. The last I read Uganda only earned about usd 48m( DO YOU GUYS GET THE COMMON SENSE?) from South Africa. We earn less than 5% of what they earn from us. HOW? Their business people wake up in the morning and decide they are heading to Uganda for business and get a visa from the airport on arrival. They on the other hand block Ugandan business people from accessing opportunities in South Africa, claiming Ugandan won’t leave their country. The amount of money earned by the few Ugandans in South Africa can’t be compared to the amount of money South Africa earns from Uganda. If the one billion dollars taken out of our economy annually stayed in Uganda, those few Ugandans there would have opportunities here. The alternative is make it easy for our business people to access opportunities in South Africa so we also earn there and bring opportunities back to Uganda. The 1bn dollars taken or earned here by South Africans strengthens their job market, cripples our job market as Uganda reason a small number want to remain in South Africa. They simply following the opportunities that have left Uganda for South Africa through the 1bn dollars annually? Are we together? The internal challenge for common citizens like me and you reading is that ‘ our leaders have green and red passports’ they care less and don’t know the above economics( both opposition and government leaders have those passports). This week or this month, Uganda borrowed usd 450m from world bank and that will be earned by South African countries and Ugandans will be paying the loans. The South African owned banks here will keep the money, they telcos will earn bit of it, insurance will also want, South African contractors etc. Business interests for countries and individuals are fought for, you don’t sit back and think the world wishes you well, you will be silly to think so. The above thought should apply to all other embassies! Enough said!

@nbstv @JustineNameere The irony- can one give what one does not have? If in elections we practice corruption, how can we be taken serious in calling it out. Let's practice what we preach. Who you are speaks louder than what you say

VIDEO: Your Excellence, we don't know where the medicine in government health centers disappears from, Ugandans have to buy medicine in government hospitals apart from Panadol. - @JustineNameere #NBSUpdates

@SamsonMKasumba And the conflict is then framed as a religious conflict, not Jewish nationalism vs Arab nationalism. Israel, which is a secular nation!.

Imagine someone came here next week and said God 6000 years ago gave this land to their forefathers and because of that we all have to leave it. We are then pushed into a small part of Karamoja and we have to ask permission to go back to a last that was just last week ours. There are Christians who find such an arrangement fair and Biblical. You resist and insist you want to go back to where you lived, you are shot dead. All you have to do is accept the new arrangement. Later on even that strip given to you is also slowly chopped when the new group needs more land.

@NadaAndersen they are all 'jaundiced'

Wait. Isn't jaundice when your eyes and skin turn yellow? #JustAsking

@benmwine You are right about the characterisation, but it is an adaptation to the environment we have created knowingly or unknowingly. We need to create a different kind of environment, and that starts with leaders at all levels.

Was I being too harsh or misguided in saying that we are myopic? Do we have a culture and/or identity as a people? If we do what would you say it is...?

@jamesonen Wonder why we can't get act together. We create the conditions for the outsiders to take advantage of, yet if we were stronger internally, we could then face off the outsiders. We need to create a stronger sense of one people. - Fairness and justice

You are free to hate Natif but on this particular issue he's correct. Let's not let his bedroom (mis)adventures detract from his geopolitical analysis. It's definitely worth a discussion. These so called Color Revolutions operate as an international racket financed and coordinated by western intelligence agencies through NGO proxies and international influence brokers. This well documented. Of course, you are free to be in support of such activities but be warned it aways comes back to bite your country. Tomorrow you'll be the same ones crying that your countries' resources are being stolen by the West. They never orchestrate these revolutions or political unrest for free. Ask Venezuelans and Iranians. Don't get me wrong. This doesn't mean I'm saying those countries' governments are good and therefore should not be removed - I'm not saying that at all - they mostly stink. However they'll replace your 'dictator' with a 'reformist' western puppet, who will also obviously become a dictator but this time in service of the West and enjoy their protection. It's a case of deciding which is the better poison, I guess. Hahaha. It's fun to watch!

@wekesa_amos @RwenzoriMarathn True, only weeds grow on their own. Like John Maxwell says- everything worthwhile is uphill

Back in Kampala and had great weather for today’s morning jog which is nice, arrived my bed 4.30am tired from airport yesterday so couldn’t run. In kasese during the @RwenzoriMarathn last year, a young man walks to me after the marathon and says, I stayed up last night to observe you. He hardly slept, I saw you pacing around, engaging people, I saw your son too doing stuff. I thought if I was you, I would have just slept. I tell him, the whole team hardly sleeps, reason Uganda has a @RwenzoriMarathn which attracts people from more than 30 countries. If we sleep the 1000 Kenyans both runners and those who came for fun wouldn’t have come to Uganda. That means the food they ate wouldn’t have been eaten. The cars they hired from Ugandans wouldn’t have been hired, the accommodations they slept in wouldn’t have worked. If each Kenyan spent usd 600, Uganda would have miss the usd 60k earnings from team Kenya. We need 10,000 Ugandans out of 45.9m to do things that can bring in 1000 Kenyans for example and the country would earn usd 6,000,000 Another 10k bringing in 1000 Americans each spending 2k and figures would be crazy, jobs would never be a problem, critical mass issues. Nothing good just happens

Uganda is about 60 years old. One man has ruled it for about 40 of those years. That is not a small detail in our national story. It is the central fact that shapes how our politics behaves, how our institutions learn, and how citizens calculate risk. So when we hear people say our elections are tense, institutions are weak, voters are trapped in survival politics, the military has been normalized in governance, and political maturity is low, we must stop treating these as neutral background conditions. They are not fog. They are not weather. They are products. A system trained for four decades around one center of power will naturally reproduce that power, even when the constitution and the language of democracy remain intact. This is why Gödel’s insight about rule-based systems matters. Any system that is complex enough will always have truths it cannot prove from within its own rules. Elections are rule-based exercises. But an election cannot fully prove its own fairness by simply pointing to procedure. A legal victory does not automatically equal legitimacy. A clean tally does not automatically mean a free choice. Where fear exists, where poverty turns politics into a survival transaction, where information is controlled or distorted, and where state machinery is not neutral, “process” becomes an insufficient witness. In such an environment, voters do not choose as free citizens. They choose as people managing danger, hunger, and uncertainty. Opposition becomes a high-risk career. Silence starts to look like consent. Institutions stop behaving like referees and start behaving like loyal staff. Even well-meaning public servants quickly learn what is rewarded and what is punished, and the system becomes self-reinforcing. If Uganda wants elections that feel legitimate, the work is not cosmetic. It is structural. The current trajectory we are on as a country has many examples in history, and they rarely end well when societies postpone correction until frustration hardens into rupture. You do not repair a 40-year system with slogans and applause. You repair it by rebuilding the conditions that allow truth, choice, and accountability to exist outside the power center, and by making peaceful transfer of power normal, not terrifying. If you want a deeper, African-rooted framework for thinking about systems, power, and why our “development” often serves extraction more than citizens, I unpack these questions in my book, Decolonising Africa’s Infrastructure: Why Roads Still Lead to Ports, Not to People. It is a manifesto for sovereign development, written for Africans who are tired of symptoms and ready to debate causes and fixes. Copies are available in all leading bookshops in Uganda and on Amazon.

@jamesonen I think the real fear is that the processions are formed by people who already have grievances with the system. What if herd mentality takes over? What level of destruction can happen?. The violence is trying to put a lid on a boiling pot. Unfortunately this only raises the temp.

Question for everyone capable of intellectual discussion (ie debate without emotions and without attacking the person making the argument). We can all agree what we see here is ugly. The government side claims they did this because of people trying to form a procession around a presidential candidate, and that such processions are not allowed. I'm going to assume most opposition supporters reject the denial of the right to processions. First of all, many will argue, correctly, that it is their constitutional right. They will also probably argue, correctly, that there are plenty of instances of pro regime candidates having processions with no problem. Enforcement seems selective and one sided. So, is the strategy to defy the rules on the processions? And if so, how is the government supposed to prevent them, or disperse them once the processions have began forming even after announcing they are not permitted? For now they are going with water cannons and sticks as a control measure. You've seen the videos. I feel like we should be discussing two things but focusing on one. We are reacting to the government response to processions (which is obviously heavy handed), rather than also debating the government decree against processions (and selective enforcement). I wonder, if the regime were to fire water cannons at processions for pro regime candidates, would you then not have a problem with restricting processions? There are indeed valid arguments for restricting processions (creating traffic congestion, disrupting businesses, etc) but if the rules are being selectively enforced, expect pushback. Unfortunately, the pushback comes with collateral damage in terms of innocent bystanders such as the street vendors whose goods we saw getting destroyed. It's a messy situation. To be honest I think the best solution is for the government to just allow processions to happen. You cannot fight people's instinct to want to follow their candidates around and show support. If it leads to traffic jam and disruption of business, I guess we'll just have to deal with it. We are a chaotic society, afterall. We can handle it 😄

@airtelmoneyug my airtel money account is blocked. Your call center agent was even rude. Says it's because of money I deposited on my phone and I need to physically come to a call center. Really, where is the convenience in your services?.

@newvisionwire Hopefully, his excellency gets to see the state of the Amolatar Dokolo road. There are many priorities, but the government can at the very least maintain it in a motorable state

Amolatar Update | #UgandaDecides2026 📸 NRM Secretary General Richard Todwong sharing a light moment with religious leaders at Amolatar Secondary School, where President Yoweri Museveni is expected to hold his first campaign rally of the day. The President will later head to Dokolo district for another campaign rally. 📸 Simon Peter Tumwine | #ProtectingtheGains | #VisionUpdates

@Winnie_Byanyima The Express penalty scheme showed us how this usually pans out. If this could affect the elite, like the EPS did, we would see how many would still be cheering not following due process.

Uganda cannot be governed by presidential letters. The Nakivubo Channel saga shows what happens when one man’s directive replaces law, expertise & institutions. Contracting without competition undermines accountability, breeds corruption & erodes trust. Development needs professional planning, not personal whim. Institutions with technical capacity exist to solve such challenges. When the President usurps their role, he weakens governance itself. Power has limits; Uganda’s future depends on restoring them.

@aitajoel @Jkrkaliisa Using criteria to frustrate development for personal gain is one of the biggest killers. NOT following rules, as M7 is doing, is also one of the biggest killers, as it only serves short-term gains and personal interests

@Jkrkaliisa That word criteria, following the rules etc are one of the biggest killers of development in Uganda I can tell you.

Lord Mayor Lukwago is an Opposition to his own City Council Government

@wekesa_amos You are right, but I again ask myself—what does Singapore have? What are the outcomes for Singapore vs. Ug?. What is the differentiator?. Until we get our governance issues right, we won't exploit what we have. And it has to be leaders at all levels, not just M7/Bobi

Guys, I didn’t talk about only 2 planting seasons and 165 lakes, I talked about many unique stuff about Uganda. Repost! Naye Mwe! Uganda’s Uniqueness! Oh what Uganda has, every country in the world has, even some class seemingly educated Ugandans say! Does every country in the world have the following? Just examples! 1- The source to the longest river in the world? 2- the best rafting opportunities in terms of 2 to 3 days? 3- the most powerful water falls in the world, where the whole of the passes through a canyon 7m wide, falling 43m deep, rumbling on a length of 120m long? 4- The world capital primates, Kibale! 795 Sq kilometers with highest concentration of primates in the world. 13 species? 5- Bwindi and mgahinga host 54% of the world mountain gorillas? 6- world largest mountain caldera( on Mountain Elgon) 7 - how many other countries on the continent have 165 lakes and rivers? 8- how many countries in the world have 2 planting seasons? Which means 2 rain seasons even in the region? 9- how many countries in the world have 85% of its land arable? 10- how many countries in the world with a buffet like that of uganda? 11- how many countries have as sweet fruits like those of uganda? 12- how many countries have as friendly people as Ugandans ? 13- How many countries have Rwenzori ranges( 16 mountains on one range, 5 of them of amongst the highest 10 points in Africa, google and learn). Guys with permanent snow on the equator) 13- how many countries have a big portion of the worlds largest tropical lake with 84 islands called ssese islands, 53 called the buvuma and so many others? 14- how many countries can claim 11% of the world species of birds like Uganda? 15- how many countries can claim to have an average 28 degrees of weather in the world? This is the biggest tourism attraction in the world. 15- uganda has the most inland freshwater in Africa, probably the world size against fresh water. 16 how many countries in the world can claim to have as many tradition dances like those of uganda? Even in the neighborhood? I can write about uganda the whole day! Our problem is our bad education system that teaches us about everywhere else and almost nothing about uganda. So we have educate people who aren’t educated about Uganda, their education can’t help us help develop because it has nothing to do with understanding uganda. We also mix our sentiments about politics with what uganda is! I don’t like M7 or Bobi therefore, I don’t like Uganda, really? With all the above, does uganda need aid? Can’t we debate what financial value each of the above can bring to uganda? Yes we have infrastructural issues, but emotions won’t change that at all, we can position the above so we can earn to work on our needs, be it hospitals, schools, roads etc. This is what our economist should be discussing, our politicians should be discussing. It’s the real politics?

@rkalyes1 I think the New Vision reporting is sensationalist bmjopen.bmj.com/content/15/7/e…

🔥 Which study is this? Matooke has always been here, why now?

@hrmauofficial Very unfortunate and sad, may his soul rest in peace

The Human Resource Managers' Association of Uganda mourns the loss of our dear colleague and friend, Daniel Tugume Kakabiro, a pillar of our governing Council and the Head of Human Resources - Bank of Africa, Uganda.

@TimKalyegira Simple, money is not needed for its own sake, but for the things it gets you. Once you have it, it ceases to matter

A poor upbringing, a lack of class, a poverty of mind and culture, and lack of innovation -- all this is what we see in the endless discussion of money by men and women of Sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, the countries with real wealth and money don't even think much about it.

@shaaka777 @TimKalyegira The central dogma is the belief that there are no deities. I call it a belief because one can't objectively say that they know there are no deities.

@TimKalyegira Atheism isn’t a belief system, it has no central doctrine or dogma. So you can’t pin individual opinions on all atheists. The word outlier exists for a reason.

According to the Economic Complexity Index, Japan is the world's most complex economy, in terms of sophistication of skills, services, and manufactured products. According to Google data, Japan is the country least interested in money, ranking 229 out of 229 countries.

@SabrinaKitaka Very well said. And when you do what you love... if money is what you want. It will eventually come.

Money vs. Meaning: What Should Guide Your Career Choice? Last Updated: 10 July 2025 at 3:09:17 pm EAT Let’s be honest, in today’s world, money matters. In a money-driven economy like ours, financial pressure touches every part of life. From healthcare to education, transport to basic nutrition, those who have money often access better services and more opportunities. It’s no surprise, then, that young people, especially students, feel an immense weight when choosing a career. The question looms large: “Should I follow the money, or my passion?” The truth is, we all need money to survive. To live with dignity, to provide for our families, and to enjoy a level of comfort, we need a stable income. So yes, money is important. But let’s not confuse necessity with fulfillment. Because beyond just paying the bills, most of us are searching for something more, purpose, satisfaction, a reason to get out of bed every morning. Many students today are torn between chasing high-paying careers and choosing fields that genuinely excite them. It’s a real struggle. But here's something I want every young person to hear clearly: A job that pays well but drains you emotionally can cost you far more than it gives. Why Enjoying Your Work Matters 1Happiness and Fulfillment A job you love isn’t just a way to earn it’s a way to live. Passion-driven work gives a sense of meaning that money alone can’t provide. When your career aligns with your interests and values, your days feel less like a grind and more like a mission. 2Mental and Physical Health We underestimate how much our jobs affect our health. High-stress environments and emotionally draining work can lead to anxiety, burnout, and even physical illness. On the other hand, doing work you enjoy can reduce stress, improve your mood, and support your overall well-being. 3Productivity and Performance People who love their work tend to give their best not because they’re forced to, but because they care. They’re engaged, motivated, and more likely to grow. That often leads to better performance, which can open doors to future success (and sometimes, better pay down the road). 4Long-Term Satisfaction It’s not just about the first paycheck. Over time, job satisfaction leads to a more positive outlook on life, deeper relationships at work, and a stronger sense of self. That’s hard to measure in shillings or dollars, but it’s priceless. Finding the Balance Ideally, we’d all find work that both pays the bills and feeds the soul. But life isn’t always ideal. Sometimes you may have to start in one direction before you can pivot. Just remember: if you’re lucky enough to have a choice, choose what brings you joy. Because when you're doing something that excites you, that challenges you in a good way, that connects to who you are, you don’t just work, you thrive. To quote Eleanor Roosevelt, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” So, as you think about your future, ask yourself: What kind of life do I want to live? What kind of impact do I want to make? Then build your path around that. The money will matter, but the meaning will keep you going. By Dr. Sabrina Kitaka, MD, PhD