By Andrew Green

9^th Jan 2012: Like most Ugandan towns, Gulu’s storefronts double as its billboards. All that the town has to offer is painted in attention-grabbing sans-serif fonts. Lists of goods and services crowd windows and doorframes, promising everything from driving lessons to “Famous Pork” – usually with an illustration, just in case there’s any confusion.

Many of the signs are Fred Oyem’s design. He launched his sign-painting business ten years ago, when the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) was still terrorising Uganda’s Acholi sub-region, of which Gulu is the heart. For nearly 20 years, the LRA carried out raids on Gulu and other areas in the north. They killed and kidnapped thousands in a conflict with the military that caused nearly two million people across northern Uganda to leave their homes for the internally displaced persons (IDP) camps that used to circle downtown Gulu.

After a spate of on-and-off peace negotiations and continued pursuit by the Uganda army, the LRA was driven out of the country and peace has returned to Acholi-land. That was the cue for people to start resettling and for NGOs to begin their slow exit – including the US$14 million, three-year USAID-sponsored Northern Uganda Transition Initiative, which wrapped up last year. The gradual departure has underscored the need for a rapid local economic transformation – from NGO dependence to local development. And that is exactly what is happening in Gulu.

Business time

“The transition has been in one way: the exit of NGOs and the onslaught of companies,” said Arthur Owor, the programme manager for one of the city’s major radio stations, Choice FM. “More business-oriented entities are coming into place”, he said. “That shows you the terrain has changed.”

A gleaming new Uchumi supermarket opened on the outskirts of downtown Gulu and the central outdoor market has been razed to make way for a new three-story version with a roof, which will open in two years. Uganda hosted its 2010 World Tourism Day activities in the city – national recognition of Gulu’s potential to become the hub of a wildlife and culture-focused tourism circuit. And there are rumours that Toyota is coming to town.

Gulu is at the beginning of a boom. Whether it will last is dependent on how quickly the city can patch up its war-marred infrastructure and generate some local tax revenue.

Investors are eager to take advantage of the area’s untapped potential, rich farmland and – most importantly – the road that runs directly from Gulu to the new markets of Juba and the rest of South Sudan. The new businesses have made Oyem a busy man, painting the town red, yellow and turquoise. He estimates that as long as paint is in stock, he produces as many as 20 signs a week.

“Gulu is picking up,” he said as he waited for the letters advertising a peanut-grinding business to dry. “I used to be dealing just with the NGOs, but most of those have left. Businesses, schools, hospitals – those are the people now.”

Old scars

What the fresh coats of paint don’t cover, though, is the infrastructural damage that 20 years of war did to Gulu. The lack of consistent clean water, inconsistent healthcare service and too-few schools could become impediments to Gulu’s on-going development, according to Martin Ojara Mapenduzi, the chairman of Gulu District.

“There are places where we are still not yet able to provide services”, he told Think Africa Press. “It’s not going to be easy to fully recover within a short period of time, because what the conflict of 20 years can cause takes time to bring back to shape.”

At 32, Mapenduzi is the youngest of the country’s 111 district chairman. He is boundlessly energetic as he travels the region, assuring investors that “as much as we had an insurgency, Gulu is [now] in the best position to actually produce what is unbelievable”. But he is also realistic about the challenges he faces in trying to spur development and maintain the town’s economic momentum.

Right now he’s using the district’s 33 billion shilling budget – about US$14 million – to focus on the basics: schools, health centres, agricultural development, water and roads – in that order. In a few years, he hopes to have met the area’s infrastructural needs.

A local place

But sticking to that timeline will require some local revenue. The kind that comes, not from regional or international investors who take their profits out of the community, but from home-grown businesses and local farms that push money back into the local economy – both as taxes and through spending at other local businesses. Only 1% of this year’s fiscal budget comes from local revenue, Mapenduzi said.

While some of Gulu’s residents, like Oyem, have found careers that have positioned them to take advantage of and contribute to the boom, there’s still huge local unemployment, especially among the area’s youth. And the government is not, yet, in a position to help.

“Right now, as a district, [we need] to make sure there are hospitals, there are good roads,” Mapenduzi said. “And someone is telling us they also want work. We can only give you work if you want to go and help in maintaining the roads… We cannot do more than that as a local government, yet.”

Open for business

So, just as he does with international investors, he preaches development to Gulu’s population. Instead of selling off their resources – especially land – he encourages them to use it to make money. Specifically, on-going food shortages in South Sudan provide a ready market for local farmers who are able to up their production and transport their produce to Juba.

“The message we give to people is that there are a number of business opportunities,” he said.  Sam Nazzal thinks so, too. Though Lebanese by birth, Nazzal has been bouncing around Africa for decades looking for business opportunities. A year ago he was running a business transporting goods to South Sudan when one of his trucks got in an accident outside Gulu.

He came to the town to sort out the situation and has decided to stay, possibly for good. He’s running a Lebanese restaurant in the centre of town and looking to open another West African-themed restaurant soon. And much of his extended family is scheduled to move to town before the end of the year.

“Business people like where there is business”, he said. “And I think it’s starting here.”  END:  Please login to www.ugandacorrespondent.com every Monday to read our top stories and anytime mid-week for our news updates.

This story was first published by Think Africa Press under the title Gulu: Healing and Growing