Allen K. Baguma
Recently, Uganda was ranked as the world’s top most entrepreneurial country. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), where 28 per cent of Ugandan adults own or co-own a new business.
This survey reflects the entrepreneurial spirit flowing in the veins of most Ugandans. We can all attest to having tried to start businesses at one time or another.
Unfortunately, Uganda also has the highest rate of dying businesses.
Some of the reasons for the failure are not related to orthodox business factors, but quite a disquieting challenge has taken root — the scarcity of reliable, dependable and ethical individuals.
Running enterprises in Uganda, from service providers to household helpers, has become a tightrope walk crushing entrepreneurs’ dreams.
This is largely due to the unethical behaviour of some employees, sometimes even suppliers and partners.
This decadence is not traditionally African or Ugandan. African values abhor dishonesty and related vices.
Honesty, integrity and truthfulness were valued much more than material wealth. This is reflected in our proverbs and other forms of wisdom.
These values were deeply rooted in spirituality, that acted as a shield against social decadence and moral erosion.
Yet, with the winds of change blowing, the old virtues have been traded for new, often misunderstood practices.
Ethical dysfunction
This cultural syncretism has grown through migration, a complex interplay of cultural disintegration, cultural assimilation conforming to ‘globalisation’ trends and moral suppression over rights adoration.
The result is what we see in the loss of fundamental ethical foundations leading to a deviation from our unique civilization path.
The outcome is a society that has not evolved for the better, but unfortunately, more cunning than the serpent, driven by human greed and the pursuit of pleasure and self-interest.
This has given rise to a new dilemma — what I term ‘ethical dysfunction or ethical amnesia’.
The manifestation of this dysfunction is summed up in the phrase: ‘How do I benefit?’ a syndrome that is a norm across our life dimensions.
The vice has bred a culture of self-seeking quick money-making ventures, infecting public service, politics, and even religious circles.
The daily search for reliability and dependability is becoming more shocking as ethical values that once thrived in our norms, traditions, and customs are eroded by the insatiable pursuit of power, money, and self-actualisation.
We also witness this vice in our smallest unit of society, the family.
This disintegration mirrors the broader societal challenges and ethical fractures within homes, marked by disloyalty, dishonesty, selfish attitudes, apathy, financial mismanagement, and abuse tearing families apart.
The very centre that should be held has become fragile, leading to a continued societal breakdown.
Society is at stake
It is a known fact that societies thrive on ethical behaviour, and the erosion of ethical values leaves dents in the societal fabric.
This seeps into every level of service delivery and way of life. We are a generation and a people under siege.
The collective to which we all should seek answers is: ’How can we reintroduce ethical values into our society?’
This is a question for individuals, families, churches, states, businesses, cultural institutions etc.
We must address the systemic decay plaguing our inter-connected society.
For example, land grabbing and evictions, hospitals with neither facilities nor drugs due to corruption, greed, and mismanagement, schools grappling with impoverishment, businesses collapsing from workers draining them dry and roads witnessing carnage.
These and more are challenges that we must confront, and we need to each do a soul-searching not only as victims but also as perpetrators of ethical decay in our land.
What we need to do
Proverbs 11:3 whispers: “The integrity of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them.”
This biblical wisdom reminds us to flame up the once-illuminated civilisation that holds us together.
We need a collective commitment to ethical revival. Change will not just happen. It will take personal and collective responsibility and commitment to live an ethical, principled life.
Mahatma Gandhi says: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world”, especially from the state.
Draconian measures and intentional measures to curb the vice must be enforced especially by leadership.
Systems and structures must be upheld, of course without being cynical ‘’without fear or favour”. This is the journey we wish and implore on our land and the future of this land.
In this new year, when you read this article, let us revisit our ethical values, let us ask “What went wrong and how do we righten the journey?”
Who will do what, where, when and how? I will share more series on this topic as we soul-search for posterity. Stay alert and Happy New Year 2024.
The writer is a leadership trainer and enthusiast
info@allenbaguma.com
