Survived the Boba boda mayhem

Sometime last week I found myself in Kampala, Uganda with a couple of other people from Southern Africa and two from East Africa. Our flight arrived after 8pm so I thought the one hour drive from Entebbe to Kampala would be a hectic- and traffic- free one. Wrong! The roads of Kampala were busy and the driving scary. Drivers plied the roads with full beam lights and overtaking was the norm even if another car was approaching from the opposite direction. Then there were the Boda-Boda's, taxi motorcycles that drove anywhere there was space - on the left, on the right (I am more than sure I saw one going under our bus! Joke). Our driver didn't give way at the round about but neither did the others. On a number of occasions one poor lady from Lesotho who was sitting at the rear of the minibus let out little screams after a couple of other cars nearly bumped into us.

Despite pleading with the driver, he paid no attention. He kept on chatting with his front seat passenger. In the midst of all this, our colleague from Kenya kept looking towards us asking what our problem was. "I see nothing wrong with this driving, Nairobi is actually worse". The Tanzanian chap didn't look the least bit bothered either.

Our Mozambican colleague summed it all up by saying "I think I should appreciate Mozambican driving more". I think I should appreciate Malawian drivers more myself after that experience.

Match economic stability with politcal stability

It has been announced that the Reserve Bank of Malawi has reduced the base lending rate by 2.5 percentage points to 15%. Am no economist but I would think this is a good indication of the monetary situation in the country. As a citizen, this is great news as the cost of borrowing gets cheaper despite the fact that commercial banks will normally set their base lending rate 2-3 percentage points above the RBM one then add on another 6 percentage points as their markup. So in effect I will still be paying 23% +/- interest. Nevertheless, economically things are looking up.

I however believe that economic stability can't work without political stability. They work in tandem. Unfortunately statements coming from both sides of the political spectrum don't inspire much confidence. To make things worse, it is the heads of these political institutions who are in the forefront making unwanted statements. I think it's time we all struck a reconciliatory tone, starting from the state president down to the cadres at the grassroots. That way our economic gains will not be wiped away by useless political bickering.