Showing off by business persons is too much in Uganda according to research findings. A Ugandan businessman gets a loan to buy let say a car. Some Ugandans use their hardly earned capital to live a flashy lifestyle, imagine someone staying in a house worth five billion Ugandan shilling!

Five billion shillings is enough to set up a coffee processing plant or model farm employing hundreds of people. Whereas the home does not generate any revenue but holds up money, that is what the rich Ugandans don’t know – don’t tie up money, invest it in value addition chain-and keep improving.

It’s just the way society is run. We are taught right from the day we are born to go to school, study hard, get good grades and get good jobs and hoodwinked that then our livelihood will be secure. Instead of being taught financial freedom.

Many people hope their wealth will be judged by the beauty of the bungalows and or mansions they build.

Recently I read in the new vision newspaper that Kampala business tycoon Godfrey Kirumira built his other wife a new house in Muyenga. The perimeter wall on the house and surveillance cameras alone can build 50 double self contained rental houses room.

Let’s not forget what one white man once said that ‘if you want to hide anything from a black man, hide it in a book’. As Ugandans our reading culture is very poor. An example is the Danish school curriculum kids start reading novels from an early age. They are mentally trained to read and try to acquire knowledge. If we had a reading culture people would know these simple things. They would know how to invest in assets like real estate and not building homes of 5 billion.

Many traders in Kisekka market and Kikuubo build mansions that in most cases are more valuable than their busi­nesses. Instead of thinking of expanding their business empire one opts to making two perimeter walls on his house, even fencing the 1acre banana plantation in the 9×9 perimeter wall. Some businesses like that of Sebaggala and sons reportedly started fading because some of its managers turned its capital into luxury.

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