Why I buy Uganda-made tissue and no toothpicks

By David Sseppuuya                                                      

When you walk into a Ugandan supermarket these days you are simply dazzled by the array of choice in front of you. You do not even have to first enter the supermarket - the things are right there on the street.

This does not stop with the supermarkets - it is a similar experience in the boutiques, pharmacies, furniture stores, car depots, butcheries etc. But my beef, so to speak, is principally with the supermarkets.

Choice, as it were, is great for the consumer, with the benefit coming mainly from quality and price. But what is the trade-off in the Ugandan economy, structured as it is today?

The trade-off, or opportunity cost, as I see it from my limited vantage point, is jobs and the lacklustre state of the economy. I will illustrate this with a few basic examples (and I won't talk about futuristic Kiira EV cars).

It infuriates me to no end when, driving on our streets, I am confronted by young men vending Chinese-made toilet paper. The evening drive home is littered with packs and rolls of Piao Piao tissue being shoved, at times aggressively, in your face by youthful Ugandans desperate to make the day's final sale so that they can have a meal that evening. I do not blame them.

For my own meal, if I am to use napkins/serviettes, chances are that the ones I will pick up at the local supermarket are made in the United Arab Emirates or Egypt. And if at all I were given to picking my teeth after supper, the toothpicks on the shelf will almost invariably be Chinese-made. Toothpicks?! From China?!

Five or six years ago, I toured the Uganda Industrial Research Institute at Nakawa, and one of the developments they had going was the making of toothpicks out of bamboo. Half a decade on, it appears like this simple product has not been translated into industrial and commercial production.

This is symptomatic of the malaise afflicting the Ugandan economy. It is a low-productivity, imports-driven economy, and the results are there to show: an unstable currency, because we do not earn enough foreign currency yet most of our imports are dollarized; high unemployment because we do not have sufficient productivity.

How competitive can we be, given that obeisance to the creed of free trade means that we have opened our borders and the economy to all manner of imports that render our own producers uncompetitive?

What is the investment cycle? Entrepreneurs in Uganda, or those with some capital to invest (savings, loans, profits and, I daresay, embezzled monies) tend to put their money in real estate which, as far as the country's international trade goes, is not beneficial. This is because real estate (buildings like malls, schools, apartments) are not ‘tradeables', that is, you cannot sell them abroad to earn dollars. The rest of us have our wealth and investment in the other piece of real estate - land - that, really, is dead capital.

Today, at about $5billion, Uganda's annual import bill is about two and a half times the $2billion we earn from exports. This is not sustainable - it is why economies collapse.

What can we do about it? I have hardly heard the presidential candidates pronounce themselves authoritatively on this most crucial of matters (grasp of economic issues, going by last week's Presidential Debate, is severely wanting). But it should not wait for the candidates alone, nor the occupant of State House and his underlings. It can begin with you and me.

Chinese TP on our streets and in our bathrooms is really an affront to our national and personal dignity. Personally I have made the decision not to buy overseas-made tissue - there is a couple of Ugandan brands, and when these are short, I will plump for Kenyan-made, for that is closer home.


As for toothpicks, it is better not to pick one's teeth (my dentist should be cheering), but in any case most Ugandans do not get to eat meat often as to necessitate the purchase of toothpicks.

How about you?

dsseppuuya@yahoo.com