FRANCIS KATANA is the chief executive officer of the Uganda Council of Foreign Relations, a think-tank on international relations and also a member on the advisory sectoral committee on infrastructure. However, he is best known in diplomatic circles as Uganda’s former ambassador to Washington and Denmark.
He told Jerome Kule Bitswande of the extremes he went through to promote Ugandan culture and heritage.
FRANCIS KATANA is the chief executive officer of the Uganda Council of Foreign Relations, a think-tank on international relations and also a member on the advisory sectoral committee on infrastructure.
However, he is best known in diplomatic circles as Uganda’s former ambassador to Washington and Denmark. He told Jerome Kule Bitswande of the extremes he went through to promote Ugandan culture and heritage.
I was born on June 18, 1944 to Erisa Kappa of Ruharo, Mbarara. I attended Mbarara Junior School where I finished my primary education in 1957.
Thereafter, I studied at Kigezi High School before joining Ntare School for O and A-level in 1965. I joined Makerere University where I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1969.
JOINING FOREIGN SERVICE
After finishing my studies in Makerere, I was retained as a research assistant to Prof Ali Mazrui. But earlier on, while I was still studying, I had done interviews at the ministry of Foreign Affairs. So, one day I was called to report for work in the ministry of Foreign Affairs.
I turned down the offer since I was already committed to working with the university. But with time, I found working at the university a bit boring; so, I decided to join Foreign Service.
At first, I was tasked to do normal service work, but since I had been doing research work at Makerere, I felt like I was supposed to do graduate work. There were also some people, especially my former lecturers, who thought my full potential was not being utilized in Foreign Service.
ACADEMIA
On secondment from my permanent secretary, Sam Baingana, I joined the ministry of Public Service. Those days the Institute of Public Administration [IPA], which is present-day Uganda Management Institute [UMI], had been established. So, around October 1969, I joined it as an assistant lecturer in international relations and diplomatic studies.
Our core duty was to train civil servants. Eventually, in collaboration with Makerere University, we started awarding postgraduate diplomas in public administration and business management.
I worked there briefly before I got a scholarship to the University of Southern California, USA, where I pursued a master’s degree in public administration.
But of course my interest was in international relations and diplomacy; so, even during my internship, I was attached to United Nations Institute for Training and Research [UNITAR] in New York where I worked for three months. My main focus there was to develop training for Foreign Service officials. So, I was involved a lot with ambassadors.
After graduating in 1971, I returned to Uganda and developed a three-month module induction training for graduates who wanted to join Foreign Service.
Around 1974, the Carnegie Endowment for Peace promised to fund the programme. But at that time, Idi Amin was the president and surely he never appreciated the need for trained and professional Foreign Service officials; he was appointing military men to head diplomatic missions.
So, somehow government lost interest in it; actually, even the entire management of IPA was affected, and many things that were in the pipeline never materialized.
In 1980, I decided to take leave from IPA. During my leave, I stayed in Kenya where I decided to teach international relations at the United States International University. Later on, I think in 1983, I went to Canada where I also got a job as a tutor of African international relations at Carleton University.
Well, I continued working there until I really thought it was time to come back to Uganda and offer service to my country. I felt I was uncomfortable offering my knowledge to a country that did not need it yet my country needed my expertise most.
DIPLOMAT IN WASHINGTON
Around 1986, I came back to Uganda and sought to rejoin the ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1987, I was posted as a minister counsellor to Washington, USA. I was working under Princess Elizabeth Bagaaya.
You see, considering my experience and knowledge in international relations, the rank of counsellor was too low; but I still did my work. So, I was in Washington for about five years until 1993; and by that time, I had been promoted from just being head of chancery to heading the mission [ambassador] after my boss [Bagaaya] left.
In Washington, we had a challenge of inadequate human resource because we had a very huge mandate; without a doubt, the United States was not a simple appointment, it was a busy place. However, as head of administration, I ensured that we covered all the areas.
This was the time for me to put into practice what I had not only studied but also taught for a very long period of time; it was not really the hardest of things to do because I was well-equipped.
Well, one of the challenges we faced in Washington was the image of the NRM and its leaders. It had just ascended to power and generally, especially in the US, it was considered a guerrilla outfit that had captured power. Museveni’s reputation even made matters worse; he was considered a [communist] because of what he used to articulate.
That was not the only bottleneck; Uganda was also considered to be buddies with Gaddafi [Muammar, former Libyan leader]. As you may be aware, Gaddafi was not in good books with the Americans. This coupled with the previous image of Idi Amin as the dictatorial president of Uganda, we really faced challenges in our efforts to improve the image of this country.
Ugandans in the diaspora didn’t make the situation any better; in fact, they worsened it. They talked ill of Uganda; they despised the embassy. They argued that the NRM government had killed very many people during the struggle; of course some of them were sympathisers and employees of former governments who just wanted asylum in the USA; they really made our work difficult.
The United States has many departments such as State, White House, Congress and Senate, and if you wanted anything to be done in your country, you would have to engage all these departments. But all these people whose decisions mattered used to be fed by staffers. So, with the negative impression we had, we decided to shift our energies from the key actors; in other words, from the senators and congressmen to their staffers.
We made deliberate efforts to make relationships with the staffers. We created cordial relationships which were not just formal but also informal. They would let us know if a negative action was being plotted against Uganda, and then we would devise means on how to mitigate it. And of course that also meant that staffers who became friends with us did not feed their bosses with bad information unless they had verified it. They would first crosscheck with us.
The relationship with staffers also helped us in making and getting audience with the various groups. Some senators or congressmen even became our friends; they would invite us for lunch or a cup of tea. We also decided to make efforts to handle the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund [IMF] because the two institutions had a lot of impact on how and what financial support goes to your country.
We decided to put in place an official in charge of World Bank and IMF; he constantly fed them with whatever information they needed. On a number of occasions, they made visits to our offices and our office became the bridge between them and the Finance ministry back in Uganda.
The other action was to improve our efficiency at the embassy; when I was posted to Washington, people who wanted to come to Uganda would take up to a week waiting for a visa. I found it irregular. I made sure it only takes two days to process a visa for whoever wanted to come to Uganda.
The coming of the president [Museveni] also helped us a lot. He [president] made constant visits to Washington; with the relationship that we had built with the staffers, it was a bit easier for us to get him audience with high-ranking government officials. So, some officials who had initially thought the president was a [communist] started changing their mindset.
In fact, Museveni made constant visits to the White House and he even became friends with President [Ronald] Reagan. Actually one of Reagan’s daughters, Maureen, even adopted a Ugandan needy child; you can say one of Reagan’s grandchildren is a Ugandan.
I worked in in the United States until December 1993 when I was posted back to Kampala as State House comptroller, a job I assumed in January 1994.
TRANSFER TO COPENHAGEN
Having worked in State House for about four years, I was transferred back to Foreign Affairs and I was posted to Copenhagen, Denmark as deputy ambassador. Of course Denmark was a smaller country and mission compared to United States although the job was the same – to improve the image of Uganda.
By the way, there are many ways of improving the image of the country; in Copenhagen, we cared a lot about how we looked. We also cared about how and what presentations we made at national days, one of them was June 18 in Oslo, Norway; we would use these days to engage different government officials, non-governmental organisations, business entities, donor agencies and so forth.
Sometimes diplomacy is done informally. On such occasions, you would bump into somebody you had been struggling to meet; so, you would make sure you exchange contacts and start a conversation from there. We were accredited to five countries: Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Finland and Sweden.
We moved throughout the different countries talking about the different opportunities that existed in Uganda. I think the Scandinavians really understood and believed in our message because you can really see the kind of relationship we enjoy with them today.
Actually, sometimes we did things that diplomats were not expected to do; because the time I was in Denmark, Ugandan foreign affairs was beginning to shift from merely politics to commerce; so, we would also go to trade exhibitions, buy and man stalls to portray products from Uganda.
I remember one time I was in Guttenberg manning a stall; actually, I was selling our locally-made liquor [Waragi], and the Scandinavians liked it so much. Quite often, we exhibited Uganda’s tourism potential to encourage many of them to tour Uganda.
So, when I hear some people talk of diplomats only as a people who only do partying, drinking, and hobnobbing with others; I understand that it is simply because they are not aware of the kind of work that we do. Cocktails are simply part of our work.
Anyway, we also used to attend African days where all African countries would exhibit special items in their respective countries. For example, we also used to exhibit food a lot; we would prepare luwombo [of chicken wrapped in banana leaves] and matooke and so forth and give to our friends, dance to our traditional dances. Those days played a big role in doing public relations for us.
There was also one other thing I loved in Copenhagen, the engagement of spouses of ambassadors. There were deliberate efforts to engage wives and husbands of diplomats. You know, the truth is, a spouse to a Foreign Service official can really feel lonely; however, in Denmark, there were NGOs and religious leaders who involved them in different things in order to occupy them.
CHALLENGES
Resources were always a huge challenge. In Copenhagen, for example, we were supposed to have our presence felt in all the five countries; but it was not easy because our resource envelope was small. Whichever trade fair we wanted to be part of, we would pay for a stall; so, what happens when you don’t have money?
And actually the other challenge was that even the little money which used to be sent to us would first be sent to the ministry of Foreign Affairs by the ministry of Finance. That complicated our work.
We engaged the ministry of Finance and I think then the permanent secretary was Chris Kassami and argued that the money should be sent to us directly. He agreed. That, of course, didn’t make the money any bigger but at least it became predictable; we knew how much money we would receive and when; so, it eased planning.
The other challenge was our failure to meet market demands; as Foreign Service officials, we were also charged with ensuring that we look for markets for Ugandan products. But you would go to some market and you tell them we can supply matooke, coffee, etc, and they would ask you: “How many tonnes can you supply weekly?” When you posed the same question back home; people had issues with quality or consistence.
DIPLOMATIC OUTLOOK
Sometime back, the United Nations Development Programme [UNDP] financed a group of us to review and write a Uganda Foreign Policy Framework for the next 50 years. What we found out is that many countries have an element of politics when appointing ambassadors.
The only problem with Uganda is the issue of numbers; the percentage of political appointees is too high vis-à-vis the career diplomats. There are two major issues rotating around there: that career diplomats who joined the service with hopes of ever becoming ambassadors get frustrated when they stay long without being appointed to top positions; of course, that means such officers do not give excellent service to the country.
The other is the fact that the appointing authority is using the service to cushion political failures; the argument is that sometimes these appointees are not up to the task. Otherwise, what we just have to do is to reduce the number of political appointees and ensure that the few who are appointed are competent enough to do service work.
jeromekulbits@gmail.com
Look out for another engaging interview in this series next Friday