Who was the Last King of Scotland?

A fully updated Chapter 27 of Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom

The fully updated edition of Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom will be available on 23 January 2025. Over the coming months, paid subscribers can access (and provide feedback on) some of the updated chapters as I post them here. Chapter 3, Chapter 5, Chapter 11, Chapter 16, Chapter 20 and Chapter 36 are already available. Please consider a paid subscription to access them as well as my twice-weekly content.

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When Milton Obote was inaugurated as Uganda’s first prime minister in 1962, the future of the country that Winston Churchill had called ‘the Pearl of Africa’ looked brighter than ever. Independence from Britain had come with a carefully constructed federal constitution that gave some internal autonomy to the ancient kingdom of Buganda and its king, while Obote and his government could still maintain effective control of a country with diverse ethnic and interest groups.

Independence brought democratic institutions at a time when the economy was booming. The ‘cash crop revolution’ involving cotton and coffee that started with the construction of the railway from Uganda to the Kenyan port at Mombasa in 1901 had spread rapidly during the following half-century. In the first decade of independence, coffee exports more than doubled.¹

But growth was not just a consequence of cotton and coffee. In the more fertile southern region of the country, bananas were the staple crop, providing a decent standard of living to smallholder farmers. Uganda was also producing some of the world’s highest-quality tea. Manufacturing was small but growing; it reached 6 per cent of GDP in 1965 and 7.3 per cent in 1971. The transportation system, including the railways, roads, airports and the steamer services that ran on Lake Victoria and the Nile River, was considered one of the best in sub-Saharan Africa. Copper had been discovered, and the abundant supply of water provided the means for water-powered electricity generation. GDP growth reflected the optimism that Ugandans experienced: real GDP growth averaged 4.8 per cent per year between 1965 and 1970.

The relative prosperity had also allowed for an expansive social-welfare programme. Uganda had an extensive health-care sector and had pioneered nutrition programmes for the poorest. Investment in primary education ensured that school class sizes were substantially below the African average.

Yet the optimism of the years that followed independence, as in many other regions of Africa, soon gave way to pessimism and, sadly, tragedy.