City Life

The gateway to African economic revival in a place once famous only for a hijacking

Lucy Beresford

21 October 2006

The other problem with handouts is that ‘the Big Men eat all the money’, a reference to high-level corruption heard all over Uganda — earlier this year Britain redirected £15 million of aid away from President Yoweri Museveni’s government and into the humanitarian agencies. And sometimes it’s not just the Big Men eating all the money; the pilot of the light aircraft flying me out of Entebbe to trek for gorillas tells me of a colleague who used to transport payroll cash for workers on the tea plantations. One day, on landing at the airstrip, he was surrounded by heavily armed bandits who forced him to hand over the money. Today the same pilot flies low and drops sacks of money out of the window; he is the proud owner of a certificate, hanging in the private airline’s clubhouse, for ‘retaining sphincter muscle control in the face of automatic gunfire and grenades’.

To most British people over the age of 40, Entebbe is synonymous with hijacking. In July 1976 Israel conducted a daring raid to rescue hostages from an Air France plane which had been hijacked by Palestinians and forced to land at Entebbe. The episode marked the beginning of the end for Idi Amin, who supported the hijackers, and his ruthless regime. As such, ‘Entebbe’ is still a defining moment for many Ugandans today.

Thirty years on, the old airport is home to the UN, which uses it as the logistical base for peacekeeping operations in the Congo, Sudan and Burundi. Across the road is the new airport. With its cluster of duty-free shops well stocked with international liquor and perfume brands, it is the gateway to the industry that

is being groomed to play a major part in

landlocked Uganda’s economic renaissance: tourism. The past year has seen an 18 per cent increase in international passenger numbers through Entebbe compared with roughly

5 per cent growth for the rest of Africa,

with revenues of $22.5 million. President Museveni’s vision is to turn Entebbe into a logistical centre for Africa’s cargo traffic; there is talk of increasing the retail and recreational areas to bring it closer to the standards of modern international airports.

With increased air traffic comes a need

for additional accommodation. Hotels are springing up all along the tarmac road from Entebbe to the capital, Kampala. Part of this construction boom is linked to Uganda’s role as host of the 2007 Commonwealth heads of government meeting, for which the government estimates it needs an additional 3,000 hotel rooms. Some Ugandans remain to be convinced. So adept has Museveni’s government become at selling off land to foreign investors and developers (who can form 100 per cent foreign-owned companies, or joint ventures with local investors with no restrictions) that ordinary people have taken to putting hand-painted signs on their one-storey brick homes saying: This Plot Is Not For Sale.