On June 4, His Highness the Aga Khan addressed a key development conference in Kabul, Afghanistan (See full speech Page 12-13) where he drew attention to the fact that public-private partnerships are one way through which many good things can be done for the general benefit of society.
Available evidence of what private companies here in Uganda have managed to achieve in line with their respective corporate social responsibility policies bears this out. The world has changed in such dramatic ways in the last decade to the extent that no single entity can thrive in isolation any more.
We need to build networks and cross linkages between businesses, communities and people’s as we all work towards achieving a better standard of life. Countries have led the way in this respect by increasingly recognising the key role played by integration and benefits to be had from such partnerships. Our fledgling attempts at federating in East Africa is one such example.
But above all, what does this new thinking mean for countries like Uganda where we have a budding middle class. It means in the first instance that the one commodity that remains at a premium is political stability. The neo-entrepreneurial class needs the confidence in order to invest in our economy that has began showing signs of real growth in the last decade.
That reassurance will come from the fact that they are irrevocably tied with the public or government sectors in ensuring that the public good is served. His Highness noted that when partnerships are entered into one benefit of the emerging relationship is that the parties can learn from each other.
Uganda’s private sector has shown that it can complement the government’s delivery of key social services like education and quality health care delivery. The expertise and efficiency found in private health facilities spread around the country is mirrored in almost equal measure at quite a few private institutions of learning.
Working together, the two sides have been able to move Uganda to a level where expertise is transferrable and exchanged in the public interest. A case in point was the co-operation witnessed when doctors and health personnel from several hospitals converged at the private International Hospital Kampala to perform the first ever open heart surgery in Uganda this year.
But how will that be achieved? As the theme of the conference, ‘Enabling Environment’ suggested, it is about putting the right conditions in place that will facilitate interraction.
Ismailimail 