President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has been ranked among the best Presidents in the World, according to a New York University and World Bank experts’ report who ranked the President 12th in terms of influencing economic growth.
The report first released in May 2018 by the World Bank economist Steve Pennings and New York University Economics Professor William Easterly indicates that Museveni is one of the best leaders with a significant positive impact on their countries’ economic growth.
The two experts define the best leaders as any leaders for whom the estimated leader effect is positive and significant at the 95% level and the worst leader are those with negative and insignificant leader effects.
The findings that were entitled “Shrinking dictators: how much economic growth can we attribute to national leaders” ranked Senior General Than Shwe of Burma as number one for being the most influential leader who steered his country’s economic growth at 3.95% and shrinkage of just 0.71%. He was the head of the State of Burma between 1992 and 2011 as chairman of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).
“Leadership requires bold initiatives and President Museveni must be credited for this. It requires stringent and well thought out policies to reverse the decline our country was in and revamp the economy. It is not surprising that Museveni has firmly put this country on steady economic growth,” Stephen Miyingo, the Senior Presidential Advisor on Economic Affairs said of the report. He said the report provides a third-party independent opinion which confirms what the NRM government has been telling Ugandans.
Easterly and Hennings ranked 24 world leaders and President Museveni came in the 12th position, scoring higher than many powerful leaders globally including the former Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew and Park Chung-Hee former President of South Korea between 1963 and 1979. Museveni’s significant contribution to Uganda’s economic growth is said to be a record of 2.42% with shrinkage of only 0.78% since he came to power in 1986.
The report also established that leaders like Yoweri Museveni and Seretse Khama of Botswana rank higher than Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore partly because they did well in relation to the lower average regional growth in Sub Saharan Africa compared to East and South Asia.
While making its assessment on Museveni contribution, the report highlighted the infrastructure development at its peak now with a 5,350km total of paved roads compared to 987km of 1986. The General quality of lives and standard of living has improved tremendously together with an increase in incomes despite the increase in population growth.
Other sectors highlighted include the employment sector with a national employment rate reducing from 11% to 8%, access to electricity grid has increased to 22% in 2017 from 14% in 2013 and access to water has also risen from 68% to78% during the same period. Revenue collections per annum have also increased, for instance in 2005/06 the total revenue collected was Shs 2.23 trillion compared to the estimated Shs 20trillion to be collected next financial year.
The report also highlighted the robust peace and security under Museveni that has been credited for the prevailing economic growth, restoration of freedom of speech, press freedom, freedom of worship relative democracy, effective foreign policy, education, and tourism.