The value of a Ugandan life: How do we move from ‘kitalo nnyo’ to ‘never again’?

If we were to cost the value of the average Ugandan, how much are you worth?

Did you know that the average Ugandan, based on population statistics, is a vulnerable 17-year-old girl living in rural Uganda with great prospects in perpetual poverty, illiteracy, early teenage pregnancy and HIV?

Would the potbellied Ugandan or the soft life baddie attract better prices? Or would it be a Chinatown galore for that 17-year-old girl: buy one, get all free? Hurry while stock lasts. I asked Google AI mode to estimate how much the government spends annually on each Ugandan, based on the latest budget figures.

Google AI responded quickly (too quickly for my worth) that the government spends about Shs 1.5 million per citizen annually or Shs 125,000 monthly. Such unlikeable figures, or is it my terribly mundane AI prompts?

It is somewhat disturbing to monetize a person, but what if our environment already tells us the value of the everyday Ugandan? Have you seen our obligatory security checks at entry points of Kampala’s malls and other buildings?

The sunburnt, tired-looking guard opens the door and smiles, asks for a ‘soda’, causally checks the vehicle glove box because that’s absolutely where terrorists hide their bombs, and waves you in. When disaster strikes, we quickly rush to the aid of the bereft; in Buganda, we mouth ‘kitalo nnyo’ because indeed whatever has befallen them is so devastating.

In several past articles, I have written about the abhorrent laxity and lack of accountability when Ugandans die from preventable causes. No one resigns in shame, no one is fired unless the public cries too loudly, no national days of mourning, no reverent monuments to commemorate the loss.

Instead, we count ourselves fortunate when the responsible authorities share a lackluster statement days later. Children die in boarding school fires, in dormitory death traps – kitalo nnyo; children hacked to death in a community daycare centre – kitalo nnyo plus a consolation open-air court to assuage our collective agony; brains and limbs splattered, grinded into our roads thanks to the speedy merchants of death – boda bodas – kitalo nnyo; 15 people dying every day in road accident (RADs) – kitalo nnyo nnyo nnyo until it sounds like nio nio nio.

So, the value of one Ugandan life = not that serious; nothing unrestrained kitalo nnyos cannot absolve and if you’re lucky enough that your death attracts the capricious attention span of the government, your death attracts the customary Shs 5 million to your grieving family.

Our attitudes to safety are especially clarified in the aftermath of tragedies – how we pick apart why they happened, whether we learn from them and say ‘never again’ or let things keep sliding because change seems unattainable.

How do we move from ‘kitalo nnyo’ to ‘never again’? The aviation industry offers a useful example of what such a shift in mindset looks like. When TV still had a stranglehold on me (someday I will also vanquish this beastly mobile phone habit), I enjoyed watching investigative shows about plane crashes – how crash investigators painstakingly pick apart the various events and processes that coalesce into a plane crash.

The investigation is methodical and unapologetic. Nothing is off limits, not even the secret tryst a pilot may engage in that would impair their need for rest before flying. In aviation, safety is non-negotiable; the industry is not content with fatalism, the placid passivity that causes accidents.

On why air travel is significantly safer than driving a car, aviation expert and former Boeing executive Nick Yale notes, “Because of all the training that everybody has to have, all the certifications, everybody has to have, all the inspections and maintenance requirements, those airplanes have to have… anything that fails gets pulled out of the system and investigated. Every accident, every close call, everything gets investigated. So, the inherent safety built into the system is tremendous.”

Thus, every aviation disaster is embraced as a ‘never again’ opportunity, ensuring that consequent flights are safer than ever. It does not mean that accidents do not happen or that aviation will someday fly beyond the grasp of death, but the dogged attitude to safety ensures that aviation is increasingly safer.

My fervent prayer and desire is for us to demand such standards of accountability that even the death of one Ugandan from a preventable cause will be one death too many. Uganda has one of the world’s youngest populations; therafa, we have an abundance of children.

It’s almost like this abundance has us nonchalant about keeping them safe – since we have proven our proclivity in ‘go forth and multiply.’ In the recent RADs involving children, we are bewildered over this road safety epidemic!

Children are dying needlessly on our watch. The government, lethargic and moribund when it comes to service delivery, acted as fast as lethargy allows and put a temporary stop to school trips. Several people angrily questioned why the children were going all the way to beautiful Kapchorwa.

Yes, children have died while on school trips – but what is the core issue? If it is school trips, do we ban school trips? Is it the children? Do we ban children? Is it the schools, do we ban schools?

Or is it the roads, the buses, the daredevil drivers, the traffic police, your cousin third removed from your grandfather’s mother’s aunt – what is IT? In 2018, the first United Nations Road Safety Performance Review for Uganda documented the magnitude of the road safety challenge.

At the time, the review noted that road crash fatalities had risen to 3,503 from 2,597 over the preceding decade, with Uganda losing an average of 10 people a day in road traffic crashes, the highest level in East Africa.

A decade later, the statistics are even more scathing. According to the 2025 Annual Police Crime Report, road traffic deaths rose to 5,383 in 2025 from 5,144 in 2024. The Daily Monitor (still closed three weeks later) distilled the increase thus: from 13-14 people dying daily on Uganda’s roads in 2024, in 2025, we “improved” to 15 people a day. A decade ago, we were losing 10 people a day; today, the toll stands at 15.

This is the context of our roads, roads that children and the rest of us use every day. What will this record register a decade from now? In the same way that airplane crashes do not lead to air travel being banned but opportunities to learn and do better, we must adopt a similar attitude towards safety and come away from the performative antics that do not even attempt to address the core challenge.

Dear reader, this is why we must sink our teeth deep into this – what is the value of a Ugandan life? What will it take to ensure that even the death of one Ugandan due to preventable causes is one too much?

Hopefully, not more deaths. Imagine having such a high standard of safety and accountability. Now that would be revolutionary. Besides, it’s time for another revolution – the current one is withering.

We should look to South Korea for this revolution. A 2015 World Bank article, ‘Want dramatic road safety results? Look to South Korea’ highlighted, “In 1992, 1,566 kids (14 years old and under) were killed in road crashes in South Korea. By 2014, children deaths dramatically decreased to only 53, the equivalent of an almost 97 per cent reduction over that period of time. No other country that we know of has experienced such a remarkable reduction in only 22 years.”

Achieving a 97 per cent reduction is phenomenal! How did South Korea do it? The WB notes South Korea implemented a myriad of initiatives in the areas of enforcement, engineering and education – over a period of years.

It was not a one-night stand – the populist politics that gives us clickbait headlines while deftly passing the buck, posting thoughts and prayers, mouthing ‘kitalo nnyo’. Dear reader, at the heart of it, I suspect, South Korea like the aviation industry decided the death of even one individual is one too much.

smugmountain@gmail.com

The writer is a tayaad muzzukulu

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