The Akamai Global Money Page

There is a lot of gloom around, courtesy of the roaring inflation that hit 11% during the period February to March 2011. The cost of living is going up as households lose purchasing power. A litre of petrol is costing Shs 500 more now than what it cost at the beginning of the year. The cost of food and other things such as transport has gone up too. A story is told that one day mother bed bug and her children were resting in a mattress when they were suddenly hit by scalding hot water. A young bed bug was so scared by the water attack and cried out to mother bed bug who gave it this assurance, "every hot thing will eventually become cold." We can also take heart that the inflationary pressure will eventually ease of. Economic challenges are like cold winds blowing into a room. An Arab proverb provides useful wisdom in response to this, "Close the door from which the wind blows and relax." Let us take encouragement from the current economically difficult times an...

Creating Wealth Using Investment Groups * Are you a member of an investment group, a SACCO or Merry Go Round (Circle)? * Is your group thriving or striving? * Do you have questions on how an investment group should operate? * Do you want to improve your individual financial security? Come listen to and interact with Tony Wainaina, an investments guru from Nairobi, Kenya with over 21 years experience in the investment industry. Tony is the former CEO of Trans-Century Ltd, which started as an Investment Group with 29 members and is now a major investment and equity firm operating in several African countries including Uganda. Tony’s passion for group investment and wealth creation led him to found Origins IGA a firm that is committed to transforming the ENERGY of Investment Groups into sustainable wealth creation. Date: Saturday March 12, 2011 Time: 7:30 am—11:30 am Venue: Imperial Royale Hotel, Kampala Fee: Shs 50,000 per person Booking: Akamai Global, B209, 2nd Floor, Amber House Tel.0...

It is an open secret that, 4 years after the 2006 election, the idea of prosperity for all Ugandans has had anything but questionable impact on the wellbeing of poor Ugandans. Now poverty is a serious problem in Uganda, no wonder the people in government thought of the idea of prosperity for all. According to a recent poverty study, one out of every three households in Uganda is absolutely poor meaning they live on less than Shs 60,000 per month. The politicians have been telling us for several months now, that one practical approach the government has taken to make prosperity for all a reality is to choose a model farmer from each village and fund their enterprise to the tune of Shs 6 million and then use the success of this farmer to spur the rest of the village to climb out of poverty. When I visited my village a year ago, I found that the area still did not have a model farmer who had benefited from the prosperity for all money. That is the time I held a discussion with an aunt w...

Uganda’s largest insurance firm, National Insurance Corporation Limited, is offering close to 40 percent of its shares to the public at a cost of Shs 45 per share. The IPO which opened on December 31 is closing on February 5 but with hardly two weeks to the close there isn’t the usual interest and excitement that marked east African IPOs of 2008 and 2009. There are four factors that could account for the cool public reception to the IPO, namely: i. Slow publicity. Although the IPO officially opened on December 31, 2009 the prospectus was not available to the public until about January 6, 2010. This meant investors did not have any information to base their decision on for a whole week. It was again another week after the prospectus came out before any brokerage firm issued its analysis of the IPO. In the meantime the only publicity some of us saw was the newspaper articles from the privatisation unit. ii. The MUASA factor. The Makerere University Academic Staff Association (MUASA) has ...

Everybody, well many people, are talking about the financial crisis. To some the financial crisis and the credit crunch are one and the same thing. This blogger thinks there is a clear difference between the two. In Uganda people love to give excuses for instance a person who is late for an appointment will blame it on the weather - it was raining or on the traffic - I am caught up in a jam. The financial crisis has become the new favorite excuse - everything is blamed by everybody on the financial crisis. A friend of mine is so sick of the mention of the financial crisis that he does not want to read or hear about it. My friend prefers hearing people talking about opportunities rather than mourning about the crisis. What is your view? James Abola

$uccess $eries Breakfast Power of PERSISTENCE Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) · Have doors closed in your face before? · How do you create opportunities and open doors where none are readily available? · Does the taxman make you feel like throwing in the towel? · Or is employee turnover in your firm driving you insane? · How do you refuse to give up in the face of great obstacles? As James Whitcomb Riley says 'The most essential factor is persistence - the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened by the discouragement that must inevitably come.' Come and listen to an individual who turned a bag of mishaps into sacks of success. Andrew Rugasira is a self made man who needs no introduction. His entry onto the International Coffee business scene has not gone unnoticed from the streets of Johannesbu...

Did you achieve all you had set out to do in 2007? How can you make 2008 an even better year? Are you able to balance your family and career? Success is not an accident and there is no such thing as ‘falling into things!’ Come be inspired and learn to set personal goals and reap the benefits. Listen to the personal testimony of Patrick Bitature CEO/Chairman of Simba Group and Business Leader of the Future, as he shares on the astonishing power of goal setting. Work with Dorothy Kisaka, an Advocate of the High Court and renowned Leadership Coach and Counselor to evaluate your 2007 performance and set SMARTER goals for 2008! Date: February 2, 2008 Time: 7:30 am—11:00 am Venue: Hotel Protea, Kololo, Kampala (Along Acacia Avenue) Fee: Shs 30,000 per person Booking: Akamai Global, Room 304, 3rd Floor, Diamond Trust Building Tel.0414573506/0751516118/754472109 Email: akamai.uganda@gmail.com ...

There is a sense in which being self employed or owning your own business can be more challenging than being employed. A self employed person who looks at the business as a place to work in will in most cases find that the business is like a wheelbarrow which only moves whenever she pushes it. At the beginning the business provides great goods or services to clients but as sales and clients grow quality begins to decline, timelines get missed and clients either grumble or vote with their pockets and opt to spend elsewhere. You need to realise that your business is not your life. The purpose of a business is to serve the life of its owner(s). If you are caught up in the rut of working in your business and things are not moving very well you will need to change tact and start to work on your business instead. In the following portion of this article we discuss the first two rules for working on a business. 1. The business should provide consistent value to clients, employees, suppli...

T hey were seated at the back of the commuter bus, commenting on anything they sighted. Then one of them saw a taxi on Kampala road and told his colleague, “Say how about if we went to Dubai and bought ourselves a taxi to operate?” Without missing a beat the colleague responded “With my high level of education I cannot stoop so low as becoming a taxi operator, I will get a well paying job.” His confident and almost arrogant response set me wondering whether he had ever come across the notion of financial freedom. The second man was certainly well schooled in the concept of exchanging time for money, the thing we call a job. His colleague on the other was trying to break into a new realm of thinking, a situation where instead of time for money one can have both the time and the money. The common definition of financial freedom is the state where an individual or household have sufficient assets or investments to meet their financial needs for the rest of their lives, without any ...

By James Abola The person or people who came up with the slogan "Uganda, gifted by nature" could not have come up with a better phrase. How else could you describe a country that has oil deposits, is home to a variety of animals and plants - some so rare that they can only be viewed from Uganda? Then there natural gifts like Uganda being the source of the River Nile, the wonderful climate that spans most of the country, the fertile soils and many other attributes. The renowned author and speaker, Brian Tracy says that humans are by nature lazy, greedy, ambitious, selfish, ignorant and vain. It is testament to human nature that despite the incredible gifts that nature has bestowed upon the country, many Ugandans continue in an existence of deprivation characterised by illiteracy, hunger, sickness and insecurity. Abundance of natural resources or sound macroeconomic policies and stable political and legal institutions are not sufficient for a nation to become prosperous. A nati...

In Uganda there is a term which is very common with the employed, "trying to make ends meet." During the first 2 or 3 months of employment, the employee is usually able to live on their salary until the next pay day. As the months go on the employee's cost of living increases and the money there are earning is no longer sufficient to cover the cost of living until the next pay day. This creates a situation where there is more month at the end of the money, hence the effort to make ends meet i.e. to have the salary cover expenses until the next pay day. This predicament is explained by Parkinson’s principle which is one of the best known and the most important Principles of money and wealth accumulation. It was developed by English writer C. Northcote Parkinson many years ago and it explains why most people retire poor. This principle says that, no matter how much money people earn, they tend to spend the entire amount and a little bit more besides. Their expenses rise i...

Uganda Cranes came back from a goal down at the end of the first half to beat Nigeria's Super Eagles by 2 goals to 1 in Nambole Stadium Kampala. Both goals for Uganda came from penalities won by Geoffrey Massa.

One book has asked this question, ‘what will it profit a man to gain the whole world and yet loose his own soul?’ I might ask, ‘what will it benefit you to gain so much wealth and not have the health to enjoy it?’ Am deeply moved by the rate at which people’s health is failing these days age not withstanding. Reading I came across this comment, ‘ As many as half of cancer deaths could be prevented if more people made lifestyle changes such as avoiding smoking and excessive sun exposure, eating nutritiously and getting regular exercise and recommended health screenings…’ Its takes falling ill to appreciate ones health, that you can actually loose control of everything and be at risk of actually loosing your life. When you are sick it costs money to recover but what’s even worse maybe the ability to enjoy what you have worked so hard to achieve. We need to be healthy to be able to make the money but also to enjoy it. Below are some tips that could help improve our health, giving ...

By Gordon Wavamunno (Wavah Books, 331 pages) (Aristoc Ug. Shs. 15,000/=) I have always believed that business in Africa faced special challenges that the best schools in the West could teach us nothing about. How does business in Africa cope with a poor skill base, high costs of production, corruption, and downright anarchy? How do you pick yourself up after your merchandise has been looted or destroyed by war? How do you work in an environment where a dissatisfied customer can put a gun to your head? How does one rise from a humble village of Rugaaga , Bukanga Sub-county , tearing his shorts, sliding downhill on a banana stem to the commanding heights of our economy? How does one earn the title Professor and conduct lectures at the best business schools, not having attended any? Put aside Kiyosaki and hear it from our very own. Gordon Babala Kasibante Wavamunno tells a riveting, compelling and truly inspirational story of the challenges to doing business in Uganda . ...

Many years ago, when I was being introduced to computers there was a common phrase that said “what you see is what you get”. Being computer talk, it would not be incomplete without an abbreviation which is stated as “WYSIWYG”. What you see is what you get is a fairly accurate description of vision. Whether you are moderately or extremely successful, the key to that success can usually be traced to a vision that you had earlier life. One excellent illustration of the power of vision is the story of Venus Williams and Serena Williams, two women who have become legends even before they become 30 years old. Before Venus was born, the story goes, her father, Richard Williams, was flipping through the channels, and spotted a tennis match on TV. He began watching it, and when he saw Virginia Ruzico win the tournament, he decided that he loved the sport and wanted to teach his next daughter how to play tennis. He hoped she would become a professional. While she was still young, Richard wou...

Sticky and Slick are long time colleagues but with opposing money habits. Sticky has an amazing ability to refrain from spending money unless it is absolutely necessary. For instance although Sticky owns a car he only uses it during emergencies like when it rains and it is not possible for him to get to office in time or when his son falls sick in the night and he has to rush him to a medical facility. Slick on the other hand is a happy go lucky fellow who spends so freely that you would be forgiven for thinking that he holds the title deed to a piece of land in the Albertine rift that has proven oil reserves. Now psychologists have found that the possible cause of the difference between the two characters is a result of their money personalities; which is also referred to as their unconscious money mind. A person’s money personality is those tendencies that can drive their financial behaviour with regard to income, expenditure and investments. Four different money personalities ha...

Since the advent of independence, many African countries have explored various ways to encourage and promote savings and investments by especially low earners. These efforts have ranged from cooperative societies, microfinance initiatives and the more recent merry go rounds and investment groups. The cooperative society whether it is for producing, marketing, saving or credit is intended to create synergy for the members. The cooperative system has been around since the 1950s and 1960s. Merry-go-rounds Throughout many African countries a concept has been growing in the last 10 or so years, it is called the ‘merry-go-round’. The ‘merry-go- round’ is a rotating savings group. Members collect money daily, weekly or monthly and at the end of the week or month the money goes to one member. ‘Merry-go-rounds’ do not charge interest to members and members use the money received from the group as they see fit. Some use the money for consumption or investment purpose. The main advantages of ‘mer...

BOOK REVIEW By Phillip Karugaba The Richest Man in Babylon : by George S. Clason (Signet, 144 pages) (Aristoc Ug. Shs. 18,800/=) As Uganda , struggles to break the shackles of a peasant economy and take its place among capitalist nations, we as individuals necessarily get swept up into the world of personal finance. Gone as the days when food came from the ‘ lusuku ’ at the back of the house! Today you sell your sweat hopefully to the highest bidder, and spend that income on meeting you needs. Special loan offers seem to multiply in competition with the mobile phone and car latest offerings. It is this severe contest on spending decisions that dominates the subject of personal finance. In his classic, The Richest Man in Babylon, George S. Clason gives basic home truths on personal finance. Clason offers those ambitious for financial success insights to acquire money, keep money and make their surpluses earn more money. Clason takes us to the days of the ancient wealthy city ...

Someone once said, ‘If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you get lost?’ It has been said many times over that many businesses especially in Africa today rarely survive to their 5 th birthday. The reasons for this failure include; having the wrong reason for starting the business, poor management; insufficient capital, and lack of planning. I have noticed the great reluctance by many to go through the planning process. We tend to imagine we have it all set in our mind and normally feel like a business planner is ripping us off for doing something we assume is easy to do. Contrary to common belief, developing a business plan is an opportunity to achieve your business goals as it helps you focus business activities giving you more control over your finances, marketing, daily operations and helps you raise the capital you need. A business plan is essentially a map to your targeted destination. It gives you a clear idea of the obstacles that lie ahead and ...