Aggie Patricia Turwomwe
The Basket Isn’t the Ceiling
A few people have been chewing on the conversation I had with Colin Asiimwe, Head of Marketing at MultiChoice Uganda, a brand and marketing strategist with nearly 20 years of experience across the continent.
I can tell you from the very first minute, when he sat down with me, Colin was just… different. The kind of different that makes you listen and internalise what he just said.
So here I am. Writing about it.
We Are Not Comfortable. We Are Unimaginative.
One of the first things that hit me was when Colin pushed back on the popular narrative that Ugandans are “too comfortable” to hustle. He didn’t buy it. And when he explained why, I had to put down my tea.
“People steal the money,” he said, “and then they go build malls. Everyone builds malls.”
He wasn’t being cynical. He was being precise. His point was that the ambition is there, it’s just small. It stops at the familiar. Nobody’s thinking about what happens when the kids in those apartments want to swim on a Saturday. Nobody’s thinking about the entertainment center.
Everyone wants rentals and retail, because that’s what they’ve seen work. That, Colin argues, is not comfort. That is a lack of imagination at scale. The middle-class economy we’re chasing isn’t going to be built on what we’ve always done. It needs a bigger canvas.
The Ankole Cow That Should Be Worth $60,000
Here’s where Colin went from interesting to unforgettable.
He brought up the moment President Museveni gifted Cyril Ramaphosa 51 Ankole cows. Those same cows ended up in South Africa and were being sold for 65 million shillings. That’s roughly $60,000. Let that sit for a second. An Ankole cow. Bred here. Given away. Now fetching the price of a luxury car somewhere else because someone else understood provenance, exclusivity, and how to market to the ultra-wealthy.
“You can have two jets and one Ankole Cow, because you do that, we are out of poverty tomorrow.”
But then the real gut punch “You’re still caught selling the basket because you don’t want to have the knowledge to turn the Ankole cow into a status symbol.”
That line, billboard material. We are sitting on gold and selling straw. And the difference between those two outcomes isn’t resources. It’s knowledge, positioning, and the courage to think bigger.
The Business of Creative vs. The Creative of Business
Colin made a distinction that sounds simple but is actually profound. There’s a difference between being creative in business and understanding the business of creativity. Most young creatives are excellent at the first and terrible at the second.
They can design. They can shoot. They can write. But they don’t invoice properly. They don’t set terms. They don’t take deposits. They get paid late, or not at all, and absorb it as part of the job.
His advise is that we should learn to document. Recap your meetings in writing. Agree on your deliverables. Protect your time like it’s a billable asset, because it is.
“Your growth is seated in the things you don’t want to do.”
Technology Is a Multiplier, Not a Savior
Colin’s take on AI was one of the more honest things I’ve heard in a long time. He used the wheel as his metaphor, it makes the farmer who already knows how to harvest faster. But if you haven’t learned to harvest yet, the wheel means nothing.
“The technology continues to amplify the inequalities and the gaps between the very best and the laggards.” The answer to the creative economy problem is not to wait for better tools. It’s to become excellent enough that when the tools arrive, you know exactly what to do with them.
What Gets Us to the Middle Class?
Three things working that should be doubled down in his opinion are supporting young creatives and startups, continuing to build food and agricultural security, and growing professional services; lawyers, and accountants, because service money is clean and it scales.
Three things that need to stop include the culture of non-confrontation masking itself as politeness, the absence of social accountability, and, well, Colin’s third answer made the whole room laugh, but the point underneath it was serious.
The through-line, what got us here won’t get us there. Uganda has 1.5 million young people turning 18 every year. That is a population dividend the world’s fastest-growing economies would kill for. But to cash in on it, those young people need digital tools, mobile infrastructure, and the permission to find their voice.
Colin wasn’t talking about policy. He was talking about mindset. About the story we tell ourselves about what’s possible. About the Ankole cow sitting in our backyard that we’re too cautious, or too uninformed, to position for the world that’s waiting to pay for it.
The middle-class economy isn’t a government project. It’s a collective imagination project.
The basket isn’t the ceiling. It never was.
What do you think it will take for Uganda to achieve a middle-class economy?
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