African despots and life presidents like President Museveni are going to increasingly find it difficult to
hold on to power in this new age of information. Information nowadays travels
so fast that if you blink, you miss it. With the internet and its available social
networks, Its possible for a person in Kampala to alert a relative in Texas USA
that something has gone wrong in their neighborhood even before those
relatives know anything about it.
Youths around the globe are not any longer drawing inspiration from mediocrities within their local setup but rather from a global pool of top brains.
On May 6th, the world witnessed the first ever 3D printed handgun fire its first shots. The gun is called the Liberator. Behind this innovation stands the genius brain of a 25 year old University of Texas Law student Cody Wilson who took just 8 months to deliver the weapon to the world.
According to Fox News, the gun is made from a tough, heat-resistant plastic used in products such as musical instruments, kitchen appliances and vehicle bumper bars. In effect, it can be printed at the back of your home given the fact that 3D printer machines are available in most places and are cheap and legal to possess (check with Nice Plastics).
By Thursday 9th, Defense Distributed, a non profit organisation founded by Cody Wilson and behind the production of the Liberator was taking down files it had uploaded on its website Defcad that would enable anyone in the World to download and print the gun. This was due to interference from Pentagon. But as it happened, another website, the Pirate Bay was uploading similar files.
In response to the request by Pentagon to take down the files from their website, Defense Distributed wrote, "Files are being removed from public access at the request of the U.S. Department of Defense Trade Controls. Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information.”
Information access is and should continue to be a universal right. In Uganda and of course in most of the African continent people have lagged behind largely due to lack of information but this trend is fast disappearing and this claim is supported by events not so long ago in Cairo.
In Uganda, President Museveni has been in power for nearly three decades. The last time he indicated retiring he asked the country to allow him just one more term in office but he would later change the constitution that allowed for term limits. Today, there is no end of his rule in sight as the country waits to witness its first democratic and peaceful transfer of power from one regime to another since its 1962 Independence from Britain 51 years ago.
Besides running a corrupt government, President Museveni and his NRM government have produced the highest number of unemployables than any regime before them. The government has no strategic interventions in place to cater for the ever growing population and its education system is in shambles. Recent revelations by government itself that a battalion deserts the army every year have a lot to tell about the regime. The plan for modernisation of agriculture in the country has failed, not because it is a bad plan, but due to sheer incompetence of the regime to implement good plans.
In short, if Uganda was a Real Estate Company, President Museveni who started off as a relatively right candidate for the job (even though as a rebel and just like Idi Amin did), has proved to be the worst contractor Ugandans could ever hire.
We gave him a plot of land and he came up with a house plan. Although the plan is of a storied building, he has been able to give us the ground floor which has cracks in the walls, poorly painted, burglars are there but the windows and doors are not, the wiring has been done in just two of the rooms. Although there is a community water tank that connects up to the house, a few rooms have water in them and those that have, the pipes are leaking. Some of the iron bars and cement have been stolen by the workers he supervises and are being used on the neighbors plot.
Give me another contractor and I will accept him!!
