praying alone won’t end poverty, UBOS ED Reminds Religious leaders
The UBOS Executive Director Dr. Chris N Mukiza on Thursday implored religious and cultural leaders to work together and become more deliberate about using the enormous influence they have on millions of their followers, to amplify the President’s message of universal household income generation and wealth creation across the country.
Speaking immediately after the Presiding Apostle of Born Again Federation Dr. Joseph Sserwadda had just bragged about having 26,730 churches under his federation across Uganda, Dr. Mukiza (renowned for telling it as it is) demanded that such influence be leveraged to mobilize and sensitize ordinary Ugandans on the need to balance between endless prayer sessions and work because exclusively depending on the former alone won’t end poverty in Uganda.
Mukiza spoke as follows: “You can’t be rich by praying only. You need to tell our people to balance work and prayers because there is no way God is suddenly going to just make you rich simply because you prayed a lot for the entire day and entire week without being productive doing something. Pastor Sserwadda please go and help us to sensitize our people to realize that besides praying, they must get involved in work and be productive because that is the only way to improve their welfare. It won’t be achieved through prayers only. Equally true, people worship their kings a lot and I implore all cultural institutions’ representatives here present to emulate the leadership of Buganda Kingdom who have chosen to use their influence to rally people into development initiatives like emwanyi terimba [aimed at enlarging coffee farming] which is making wonders helping our people to overcome poverty.”
Mukiza was speaking at UBOS headquarters in Kampala where he presided over the handing over of more than 4,050 tablets and computers to the Sserwadda-represented Inter-Religious Council of Uganda (IRCU) and representatives from the Umukhuka, Bunyoro Kitara and Rwenzururu cultural institutions. These officials were here to receive donations of tablets extended to them by UBOS to support and strengthen the collection of administrative data in their respective geographical regions. It was clarified that, much as these were used for census work in 2024, the tablets are still in very good condition.
A larger fraction of the donated tablets went to IRCU which received 3,500 tablets which Sserwadda said was going to be used to accelerate collection, production, processing, analysis, storage and dissemination of data relating to services like education, health and others by the seven different religious affiliations coalescing under the IRCU. Comprising of all the major religions of Uganda, the IRCU has in place a statistics committee whose members Mukiza said UBOS would continue helping to train and build their capacity to effectively carry out qualitative data collection while adhering to data collection ethical principles such as confidentiality when entrusted with people’s private information.
These were procured by the GoU and availed to UBOS to conduct the 2024 census exercise which was the first time the exercise was being done in a digital form. Mukiza explained that UBOS’s decision to continue donating and transferring the tablets and computers (to religious/cultural institutions and government MDAs) is consistent with the post-census utilization of the same gadgets as was planned by the GoU at the time of procuring these devices.
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