A green and yellow melancholy

It's always a wrench, coming to the end of a play. This will be my last post about Twelfth Night, by some distance my most successful production so far. And while I couldn't have asked for a better cast, the real star was the English language, in Shakespeare's incomparable hands. Here are just a few of my favourites quotes from the play:-

This fellow is wise enough to play the fool.

You are now sailed into the north of my lady's opinion, where you will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman's beard.

You are all idle, shallow things. I am not of your element.

Let us draw the curtain and show you the picture.

Madam, I will.

A very dishonest paltry boy.

And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenge.

Get him to say his prayers Sir Toby, get him to pray.

She sat like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief.

Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil ... are empty trunks o'erflourish'd by the Devil

And it is with a green and yellow melancholy that I say goodbye to the characters and the words. Plays are labours of love: maybe one day I'll be brave enough to choose the wonderfully-named Love's Labour's Lost.

Or what you will

To be performed at The National Theatre in Kampala in early April. "'Twill be admirable".

Banana Republic

Uganda is a true "banana republic", not in the disparaging meaning of the expression, first coined to describe the United Fruit empire in central America in the 1950s and 1960s, but in the significance of bananas as the preferred staple crop. Most Ugandans consume huge quantities every year - some estimates put daily consumption about 1 kg per day - mostly of matooke (cooking bananas) but also of the delicious sweet "apple" bananas pictured, and many other varieties.

Quite apart from their taste, bananas have been a great crop for Ugandan farmers, because they are incredibly easy to grow. Plant a sucker and, provided it rains, the sucker will grow rapidly and produce a truss - perhaps weighing 15 kg or more - within a year of planting. It needs little or no inputs and maintenance: nature does all the work. And indeed, once the banana plant is established, it will throw out further suckers which, left alone, will in turn grow and produce within a year. As with the potato in pre-blight Ireland, it is the easiest option for the farmer.

But, just as potato blight ravaged the Irish potato crop in the mid-19th century, causing a disastrous famine, so Uganda is falling victim to banana bacterial wilt disease. Bacterial wilt kills the banana plant and infects the soil. It spreads rapidly, mainly because transplanted suckers are the normal method of propagation. Experts estimate that crop losses may be in the region of $500 million per annum. This in itself is very significant, of course, but the slight reduction in supply of matooke to urban markets also results in substantial food price inflation.

Ugandan researchers have, with local and international support, been working on solutions to banana bacterial wilt. Indeed, my colleagues at the Kilimo Trust provided a grant to Uganda's National Banana Research Programme for this very purpose. And progress is being made: disease-free tissue-culture banana plantlets are available in Uganda; improved farming practices can restrict the spread of bacterial wilt. But perhaps the most promising solution is the most controversial: the incorporation of a sweet pepper gene into the banana to inhibit the transmission and spread of bacterial wilt.

There is a great deal of international hostility to GMOs - most of which, in my opinion, is based on emotion rather than fact - and this hostility presents itself among many in the donor community who finance national agricultural research and development bodies in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa. But they tend to overlook one very important fact of life in low-income countries; namely, that opposition to GMOs is driven by the wealthy, by people who have choices in the food that they eat. For the poor, the simple availability and affordability of food is infinitely more important than the manner in which it is produced.

Valentine's Day

Any excuse for a party! Kampala has taken Valentine's Day to its heart. Last night, the streets around the redlight district of Kabalagala were heaving with red-and-black-clad young people in search of one other. Indeed, a few, presumably unfortunate, stragglers could still be seen adorning the infamous Al's Bar as I drove to work this morning. Not bad for a Monday night.

What should be a charming celebration of love and affection has been transformed into a marketing feeding frenzy. First commercialised by the American greetings card industry as a much-needed shot in the arm after Christmas, Valentine's Day has spread throughout the world.

Kampala florists peddle overpriced bouquets of red "sweetheart" roses, bred for productivity alone at the cost of size and fragrance. Gift shops sell heart-shaped boxes of chocolates alongside red satin lingerie. Restaurants and Hotels compete to lure couples for Valentine's day dinners and overnight stays. And yesterday, in a piece of stunning marketing, I saw Lifeguard condoms getting in on the act. In the midst of all this tawdry marketing, it's a wonder that the banks have so far failed to push short term unsecured loans out to the amorous to finance the celebrations. I can see it now: "the Lovers' Loan" repayable over six months.

Still, I shouldn't be such a killjoy. After all, the global demand for roses always leads to a spike in prices in the first two weeks in February, providing East African growers with a much-needed contribution towards their profitability. The floriculture industry is a huge employer of unskilled and semi-skilled labour in rural areas and generates considerable foreign exchange inflows to the regional economy.

Pearl of Africa

The expression "Pearl of Africa" to describe Uganda is popularly attributed to Winston Churchill. In his book My African Journey, published in 1908, Churchill described Uganda as, "...from end to end a beautiful garden..... the exuberance of vegetation...scarcely describable" Churchill was especially complimentary about the kingdom of Buganda: "endowed with unique environmental attributes, with a remarkably and unexpectedly vibrant, structured and cordial social and political system nestled out of reach of the outside world." Such a positive view of African society was, both then and even now, unusual: the Zeitgeist of the time was more of the Heart of Darkness school of thought, describing Africans as primitive and savage, and in need of proselytising and civilizing. Elsewhere, Churchill does indeed describe Uganda as "the Pearl" but the description had, in fact, been earlier used by both Speke and Stanley. Given his voracious appetite for reading, it is unlikely that the young Churchill had not been aware of this view.

Regardless of its origin, what is not in dispute is its accuracy. Uganda still has the most wonderful environment. Over the Christmas holidays, my two sons and I visited Queen Elizabeth National Park in SW Uganda and enjoyed chimpanzee tracking in the Kyambura Gorge, a boat trip along the Kazinga Channel and several drives through the northern sector of the park. Our journey took us past crater lakes and the foothills of the Rwenzori (pictured above) between Fort Portal and Kasese, the Ankole tea extates at Bushenyi and through the savannah lands between Mbarara and Masaka. A delight! The following week, we also made a short visit to Jinja, for a day's whitewater rafting on the Nile, a day both thrilling and terrifying in equal measure. For once, the tourism slogan chosen by Uganda - Gifted by Nature - is no exaggeration.

Ugandans are justifiably proud of the name 'Pearl of Africa". As evidence, many Ugandan organizations have chosen “Pearl” in their names. My own favourite, until recently, was the superb Pearl range of sauces, jams and pickles manufactured in Kasese - the chilli and garlic sauce is second to none. But now there is a new Pearl, Pearl Capital Partners, formed last year to be the fund management business for AAC’s successor funds, the African Seed Investment Fund and the AAC Fund (in formation). My colleagues and I are proud of being one of the very few venture capital / private equity fund managers resident in Uganda, and what better name to choose to assert our Ugandan connection?

True, Pearl lacks originality, but then again, imagination and originality are not usually associated with the focus on facts, figures and empirical analysis required by successful venture capital and private equity investment managers.

Twelfth Night

After a full year off from Kampala Amateur Dramatics (during which time I am compelled to admit that KADS standards have risen considerably), I will be doing the March production, William Shakespeare's comedy Twelfth Night at the National Theatre in Kampala. Early last year I completed an adaptation of Euripides The Bacchae, but, probably wisely, have decided that Twelfth Night will be much more of an audience-pleaser, with its blend of farce, mistaken identity, cross-dressing and wit. Auditions will be at the National Theatre on 17 & 18th January, with the main challenge being the identification of a credible pair of twins.....

Blog block

It's been quite a while since my last completed blog: too much to do, too little time, but at last the block is lifted.

Kampala has been more than usually pleasant over the past 10 days or so. This is almost entirely due to the relative emptiness of the streets since the Ugandan schools reached the end of the teaching year. Better still, the schools will not resume until after the presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for February 18th.

I was fortunate enough, recently, to visit Cairo for the Super Return private equity Africa conference. My journey to Cairo, via Nairobi and Khartoum, was long - about 6 hours of flying time, from the source of the Nile (Lake Victoria) to the beginning of the Nile delta and its tiny discharge into the Mediterranean sea. The conference was illuminated by the presence of Bob Geldof, who made a refreshingly personal and frank speech to the assembled investor throng: essentially his journey from the poverty of his childhood and the many influences which ignited his passion for Africa - which most of us will always associate with Michael Buerk's broadcasts from Ethiopia and the Boomtown Rats lead singer's single-minded determination to organise the Live Aid concert at Wembley stadium in London in 1984. That determination burns as bright as ever, but it now encompasses advocacy and, interestingly investment, through the proposed Eight Miles private equity fund (of which he is a sponsor). Only during his speech did I appreciate the significance of "Eight Miles" as a name: it is the distance between the closest points of Europe and Africa.

It was both an inspiring and fitting end to a relentlessly positive conference, in which it was universally agreed that Africa was the market with the greatest potential for economic growth and investment returns, bar none. Speakers vied with each other to talk up their latest deals - from consumer goods to infrastructure, from financial services to mining. Risks are diminishing; markets are growing; and the tired economies of the G8 have little to offer. Don't get me wrong, I am very much in the van of this particular Weltanschauung, but Africa retains an extraordinary ability to surprise. And the sad fact of life is that what happens in one part of this most diverse of continents affects the external view of the entire continent. So it was that the very next day, Laurent Gbagbo overturned the results of the Ivorian electoral commission and, through adroit use of the constitutional court, was declared the duly elected President of Cote d'Ivoire. His rival, Alassane Ouattara, meanwhile claims his internationally recognised election victory, with the result that Cote d'Ivoire is in the unenviable position of having two presidents, two prime ministers and two governments and - sadly - tarnishes Africa's image to the world.

There are times (especially for investors) when the attractions of stability outweigh democratic ideals.

Of course, as we approach Uganda's own election process in February, uncertainty breeds some anxiety, but at least at the moment, other news stories form the main topics of discussion. Yesterday, en route to the office, I was entertained by a radio phone-in show (Radio One's Talkback) where the debate concerned road safety over the festive season. Astonishing though it may seem, the high level of accidents involving taxis (minibuses) was publicly attributed - not to poorly maintained vehicles, to speeding, to inexperienced and poorly trained drivers, to overloading, to poor road conditions, or to weak traffic act enforcement...... but instead to ........ women sitting in the front seats. Yes, women sitting in the front seats. Apparently, women (or more accurately, their thighs) distract drivers' attention from the road, and therefore women should only be permitted to sit in the back seats.

Opinion was fairly evenly divided. Interesting, isn't it?