Paddy Kinyera and Martin Doevenspeck: "COVID-19 and the politics of (im)mobility in Uganda"

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Speaker 1: On the go sprint lectures on African mobilities podcast by Africa Multiple.

Speaker 2: Okay, welcome everyone to the third sprint lecture on African mobilities this term. My name is Uli Beisel. I am a professor of culture and technology in Africa at the University of Bayreuth and I am very pleased to welcome you all and especially our speakers today, Doctor Paddy Kenyera and Professor Martin Dörnemannspeck. I will very briefly introduce both of them to you and then we're directly swiftly moving on to our twenty minute lecture talk and then twenty minute debate. All right. Paddy Kenyera is a postdoc at the cluster of excellence Africa Multiple at the University of Bayreuth and he is working in the Oil Movements Project on the production and government of petro immobilities in East Africa and he is joining us from Uganda today. Welcome Paddy. And Martin Dörnenspeck is a professor of political geography at the University of Bayreuth and works in the same research project as Paddy and we are really pleased to have you both here today. The floor is yours.

Speaker 3: Okay, thank you Uli. I will give a short introduction and then hand over to Paddy. First of all, I must apologise in advance for having to leave a little earlier today because I have to go to a doctoral thesis defence at two. But Paddy will be with you and since it was him who did the empirical work, you will definitely not miss me. What we are presenting today is let's say a summary of a text that we wrote for the edited volume of the cluster on Covid nineteen and Africa or Covid nineteen and Africa, I don't know actually. When Paddy was under the Ugandan lockdown from March twenty twenty on, we discussed among other things how to proceed with our cluster project on oil movements when fieldwork is no longer possible in the way we thought it would be. We quickly realised again, as we all did of course wherever we are or were, that certain movements are restricted or forbidden while others are still allowed. That certain people and groups are allowed to move or have the right and the privilege to move or the privilege not to move and others not. Mobility of course is a resource that due to different and uneven options can be accessed to varying degrees. Mobility as a context specific constellation of movement, physical movement, representations of this movement and concrete mobile practices is political. So we can ask who moves first, who moves furthest, faster, the most often and who does not move and for what reasons. When does immobility become a privilege? What constitutes mobility and immobility for various groups and why? Are immobility or mobility forced or voluntary? The significance of these issues was and still is globally redefined by the government imposed lockdowns with quarantines, stay home orders, bans on entering public spaces, travel restrictions and border closures. The identification and separation of sick and potential sick and healthy bodies controlled through spatial closures and the blockage of potentially dangerous flows and movements are of course centuries old methods of infection containment now called biosecurity. And with Covid nineteen restricting and controlling mobility to contain the spread of the virus reemerged as a global model to respond to the pandemic. But different modes of immobilisation affect the lives of individuals in highly specific ways depending not only on their social and legal statuses but also on their gender, on age, on race. These various factors determine how immobilisation measures are embodied differently within the given population and consequently how effective government interventions are. Mobility is therefore more than physical movement and immobilisation more than the reduction of physical movement across space. Mobility includes social and affective potentials of movement and its active restriction renders visible existing inequalities within and across societies. And in this book chapter

Speaker 1: We hope to bring together two dimensions of the pandemic, the politics of immobility and mobility and the political instrumentalization of the pandemic. We know in general relatively little about how people in Africa experienced the restrictions or privileges of the new mobility or immobility regimes. And we know little about how the politics of the pandemic play out in very concrete places and how people actively deal with them. For example, how they creatively navigate them or even subvert them. And we follow a subaltern approach, Paddy did it actually, a more sustained engagement with those sites and actors and voices that are usually marginalized by critical geopolitics. So mobility regimes, usually this concept of mobility regime summarizes the governance of international migration that is characterized by the sharp contrast of free movement in and from the global north and on the other and on the one hand and set interest imaginations relating to global south where movement is controlled, sanctioned and generally undesired, especially if these movements target the north. The concept of mobility regimes explores, and now quote Klick and Schiller and Salazar, the relationships between the privileged movements of some and the co-dependent but stigmatized and forbidden movements, migration and interconnection of the poor, powerless and exploited. So we deploy mobility or immobility regimes on a national level to understand them as constituted by a specific set of actors, of networks, of communication, of institutions, technologies, powers, knowledge through which movement is contained within national borders or more generally through which immobilities are governed in the pandemic and the ways the targeted population, the targeted subject responds. So thinking of the relations of mobility and stasis as both an outcome of and the shaping of a regime means to reveal the entangled power relations at work in these very concrete, specific, also place-specific state society relations. And what Paddy will present now underlines that ethnographic research, if possible, highlights the importance of studying the subjective accounts of embodied differences to better understand the outcomes of immobilization. So that's what we are doing in this text, we critically engage with how knowledge comes into being and how it informs immobilization measures in order to understand also the responses. Okay, please Paddy.

Speaker 2: Thank you very much Martin and thanks all for attending this spring lecture. Like Martin already pointed out, this is a book chapter that is hopefully going to be published in a cluster volume on COVID nineteen and Africa. And we decided to prompt ourselves to try and engage with the deprivations that we had in terms of doing research. So we didn't want to feel sorry for ourselves and sit home and say research is impossible. So we had to actually conduct research on that which makes research impossible. And we had to think of a paper on COVID nineteen and mobility regimes in Uganda. Whereupon we based our analysis on microfields of movement that were constrained by institutional forces of government that was coming down to the population to try and contain the spread of COVID nineteen. This research was conducted in my own home region. That's why you have certain names like maybe you may not have read the paper yet, but when you read you realize there are certain names of places that I've been mentioning in that paper. These are real time places that are there. And some of the things that appear there are actually...

Speaker 1: Real conversations with people who were engaging with these restrictions and trying to navigate their ways through different mobility restrictions. Now, I begin with the timeline for COVID nineteen in Uganda. I was in Kenya when COVID became a serious issue in the region, Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya. And it started emerging in Uganda that there could be closure of borders. So I had to rush through Turkana and go via Karamoja and get out of my home district from the Pokot region. I didn't even have to go all the way to Busia Malaba. I just had to cross through Moroto and cross over to my home. And immediately I reached home, they started announcing the very first instances of lockdown. And other like for example border closures came into force and that was around mid March. Effectively, on the eighteenth of March is when there was a clear picture of where we were heading. And the first case of COVID nineteen came on the twenty fifth. A traveler, businessman coming back home from Dubai registered the first case. And that was three days after the first pronouncement by the president on what should take place in Uganda in order to contain the spread of the virus. Eventually Entebbe airport was closed. And it came in into series of what we call presidential pronouncements that came in every other week, every Tuesday. I remember one of the nursery kids around me asked why is it that it's President Museveni announcing reading news these days. Because he was the one who was always on TV telling people what to do and what not to do. And that actually became one of the basis of our analysis of the power structure of how mobility is supposed to be governed. Then later on, we came to a point where there were supposed to be political processes going on in Uganda. Nominations for candidates that are standing in for political positions like members of parliament and the president and district leaders. All these came within the debate of how do we go about this. And then it came to closure of schools and everybody came to lock down for two weeks. Then the two weeks came another two weeks and another twenty-one days and another until I think it went up to about a hundred and twenty something days up to around August. That's when the lockdown began to be eased. Now, within Uganda, as part of the pandemic anxiety, as part of the pandemic response team, it's normally legal that the ministry responsible for health takes precedence and pronounces the measures that a country should take, that a country should go through in order to contain an outbreak of and continued outbreak of the spread of a dangerous virus like COVID nineteen. We had these cases with Ebola for example, and that also was pronounced by the Ministry of Health. The Ministry of Health is governed by an act of Parliament, that is the Public Health Act of nineteen thirty five. That was even way before independence. But in the real sense of COVID nineteen, that now draws our attention is that COVID nineteen came to a point where it was not the doctors, it was not the health workers, it was not the Ministry of Health particularly, the experts in the Ministry of Health, but it was the political leadership that was trying to give the scientific reasoning behind COVID nineteen. So this is an irony somewhere that made us begin to think about who then has really the power to determine sick bodies and isolate them. Now, we did not want to take this out of context. Wanted to keep it within the context of the political situation at play. That is why...

Speaker 1: In the document, we have something we call a power structure managing COVID nineteen, which is topped by the president. And then the president formed something called the National COVID nineteen Task Force, which is also managed by the Office of the Prime Minister. And the Office of the Prime Minister is directly appointed by the President. And then there are sub-national wings. And the sub-national wings, below the sub-national wings, then we have security officials. The head of security is the Inspector General of Police. And then the district police commanders and then district commissioners who chair the security bodies. Now, the district health officers, who are actually the technical people to identify who is sick and who is not sick, have to get orders from the political appointees, political appointed officials who are the RDCs and the rest. And then, the implementation of these orders are undertaken by armed forces. That diagram where which is part of this chapter, you find there are something we call foot soldiers. These foot soldiers are actually LDUs, Local Defence Units, who are trained. And what do they do? Their work is to hold guns around and stop people, pick them up, or if they're trying to abrogate what they call presidential pronouncements. And all that came in the name of trying to keep people safe. Now, there are so many ironies here that of course twenty minutes we cannot make presentations on. Now, in identifying all this, we realize this sort of containment of mobility produced what we call three moments. And the three moments, of course, we could not isolate it with the situation that was at play, the political situation, the need to canvas the population to vote for the president. By the way, the president won the election on the fourteenth of this month. But I think I was offline for five days, I couldn't access internet. And because such information about how he's winning and how things are going on was not supposed to be shared by the international public like yourselves. So I missed some conversation that I was supposed to be doing. So, the three moments we looked at are moments of partisan politics. And this we target directly to elections. That is the first moment. Then the second moment is what we call contradictory state visibility. Then the other moment is structural mistrust and corruption. Under the moment of partisan politics, we identified a clear pattern of containment of the COVID nineteen. The pattern was, if someone was supposed to be able to move, then they should be linked to with the establishment. They should be linked with the political party that is in power. That is, you are either supposed to carry the national resistance movement flag along with your vehicle as you go along so they know that is one of us. So you are able to move as far as you can. Or you are supposed to go and carry a letter from the RDC that allows you to move. Now, the contradiction here is, the RDC does not check you whether you are sick or not sick. So whether you have a virus or you don't have a virus, as long as you belong to the party, they don't check you. All they give you is a piece of paper that allows you to go wherever you want. You can as well go and spread the virus wherever you want to spread it, as long as you are part of the establishment. So that is, so it was like identifying who has the power at this material time to move. Now, the incentive to move in that way is that you will not only be publicizing the party, you will also be trying to show that there is still bit of love for national resistance movement. Then the second moment that we consider is contradictory state visibility. Now, why do we call it contradictory? It's contradictory in the sense that, first, the state comes in with the narrative that we need to protect the population. What? Now, protecting the population means keeping them at bay of the virus, but also keeping their lives continuing, keeping them alive. That was the narrative. But within the fight for COVID nineteen, the state actually...

Speaker 1: killed, killed in quotes, indirectly killed people by not allowing people to access certain amenities. I know of a young man in my village who we buried, I think a few days after this lockdown started. He was supposed to be taken to the hospital. He had something within his stomach that needed urgent medical attention. So we drove him, we reached a roadblock and the authorities were there and they stopped him. They said where are you going because the people carrying him were using a motorcycle. So they said no, no, you are not allowed to carry people, you are not allowed to move around, it's locked down and it's everything. So what you do, put your things there and wait to go to prison. Meanwhile, the health of this young man was deteriorating every single minute. Then after about thirty five minutes, the police officer saw the young man losing energy every other time and then decided now you can proceed. But before the doctors could even start making their examinations, the young man was pronounced dead and we had to bring him back. So in the event of trying to contain someone from getting a virus, someone has actually lost a life. So this was very contradictory for us. And then the other thing is, the state has got so many departments. There is the Department of Health, there is the Department of Security and the rest. But within the fight for COVID nineteen and the containment of mobility in Uganda, the state, the Department of Health was passive. There was much of the military than, the military was actually more visible. So the state was on the scene when you see a gun, when you see soldiers, when you see, not when you see a technical expert, a doctor or a medical superintendent of a hospital coming to explain to you what is happening. So these are moments where you really think okay, the state to us in Uganda means the soldiers. It doesn't mean the economists, it doesn't mean the doctors, it doesn't mean. So this is for us a moment that we saw that was part of the containment of the coronavirus in Uganda. Then there is the element of structural mistrust. It reached a point where it comes to that point where people actually decided to say no, enough is enough. You cannot contain us. For ninety days you give us six kilograms of posho and four kilograms of beans and we have to eat that for sixty days? No, it can't happen. People started actually violating some of these rules, bypassing them, using some very, very clear techniques. And these are the techniques that we call alternate approaches to managing and navigating through the COVID nineteen restrictions. That was, they started bribing the security officials and the security officials actually at the stake, we are no longer concerned about COVID nineteen but we are concerned about how much they can gain from people who want to move. And how much they can gain when they try to lock down people and make their mobility difficult. And then when they try to navigate the mobility, they get into a point of transaction where they exchange money and benefits like that. So the structural mistrust came in a point where it was quarantine and enrichment. I remember Jochen and Cyrus were supposed to come to Uganda. But where, if you were to come at that point, where you were going to be quarantined belonged to a government official. And you would be charged, I think a hundred dollars a day, fourteen days. In Ugandan shillings, that's about five point two million shillings for fourteen days. For a moderate Ugandan, that is a lot of money. And the quarantine processes were compulsory for everyone and everyone had to pay that money. Wherever the money went was to a government official who owned some of these structures. Now I go to the strategies. The strategies came in three ways also. One is pay for your way. You organize yourself, you put some money in your pocket. I experienced that. Actually I did that as part of my observation, participant observation. I put some money in my pocket, got a friend's vehicle, I drove and went to the roadblock and they blocked me. So when they blocked me, I also respected. I stood there, not because I wanted to go very fast but because I want to see what else happens to the other people who are coming. So I observed everything and then later, they walked towards me and they realized look, I am very patient. They said so where are you going? I said I am going to the hospital.

Speaker 1: What am I going to do? Of course, when you go to hospital, you know what you're going to do. So they said, 'But you are taking too long to behave.' That was the question. You're taking too long to behave. And to behave means I should put some money in my pocket and give it to them. And then I picked five thousand shillings. Of course, I behaved and they allowed me to go. Now, the cost of abrogating the presidential directive was as low as five thousand shillings. Five thousand is like one point one euro twenty cents. So that alone could spread the virus. So you can see what the nature of power that allows you to move and the nature of power that could actually contain you is just as good as minus five thousand shillings. So that became, that's why pay or pay for your way actually instrumentalized the entire process of COVID nineteen being regulation of COVID nineteen being some sort of a marketplace, marketplace for security officers and for those authorities that were always at the roadblocks. Then the other strategy was structural defiance and alliance. Even the police and the soldiers who were containing people were also contained because most of them do not have vehicles. So if one wanted to move, for example, four hundred kilometers from Gulu to Kampala, you just pick a police officer, put him in your vehicle and you become their driver. And that was enough. You go wherever you want. That's the strategy. So you defy the law but you ally with the law. So that's why we call it structural defiance and alliance as a strategy. And then the other strategy would be rerouting. People create different feeder roads around, navigate where there is a block, roadblock, you avoid that and even take another detour, you reach to where you want to go. Now, all these points us towards one thing, that one mobility, within mobility has got a mechanism of power that it operates with. That if you have certain kinds of power, you're able to move either faster or farther or without any kind of impediment. And in this paper, we actually realized that actually we needed to update this paper because what we wrote was we anticipate that immediately after general elections, COVID nineteen will phase out. And indeed, there is no roadblock now. You can go wherever you want to go because elections are done. COVID nineteen has actually spread even more. People have died even more. But the state has just abandoned the population. So for us, we think the entire containment was because of the politics that was going on. So the biopolitical interventions that the state was trying to put forth to try and manage the population was not specifically for the health and the wealth of the population, but for the good of the political situation that the outcome was supposed to be much better. And in fact, it came out much better for the president Yoweri Museveni and that is how the paper actually concludes. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2: Thank you so much Paddy Kenyara for this wonderful talk. Martin has left us, but thank you also to Martin. I would like to invite you all to pose your questions to Paddy now. While you're all thinking of questions, I actually have a question of clarification to start us off with. And that is to invite you, Paddy, to tell us a little bit more about what lockdown actually meant in Uganda in terms of the mobility restrictions.

Speaker 1: Yes, thank you. I think that is something that I missed saying. Lockdown was interpreted differently. Everyone interpreted lockdown in a very different way. And I think the functional and operational interpretation was that which the security officials offered you, not even that which the president pronounced. Do not move. And lockdown was actually fused with a certain practice called curfew. I just learned about it recently, of staying home and not moving. And curfew in Uganda, okay, first of all, lockdown meant do not move. And if you have to move, walk. It meant moving, I think it stopped people from moving with vessels like vehicles and motorcycles. But you could walk, you could jog to Gulu if you can. So that was, there was no lockdown actually. For me, I think there was, as long as you are able to walk between a certain period of time, at least from six am until seven pm, that was our lockdown. Our lockdown began at night, that you are not supposed to move. But it also determined how you moved. So that means privileged, you have a vehicle. And this time with lockdown, you are actually underprivileged. Those who used to move with bicycles and had their bicycles moving, with lockdown, they were actually more privileged because you are free to ride. If you have fit enough to ride two hundred kilometers, it's okay. So there was no lockdown in that case. And then it came to a point where lockdown was actually interpreted, fused with curfew. That in the evenings, the soldiers came and interpreted lockdown in terms of where you stay.

Speaker 1: Uh, the president pronounced and said, from seven, be at home. So the security officials interpreted it from seven, be in the house. So when they find you seated outside, they push you inside and lock the door. So remain inside. And that's that's lockdown to them. So at every single phase, we find a different interpretation of lockdown.

Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Paddy. This was very illuminating and really interesting to get to sort of also the different kinds of patterns of, you know, movements and possibilities of restricting. So I have a few questions that uh have come in now on the chat. Um, the first question is from Andrea Behren who says, thank you, Paddy, for your talk. And the question is, in how far the restrictions or the three movements that you described in relation to the COVID nineteen pandemic are different from other situations that could be termed states of emergency in Uganda?

Speaker 2: I meant the three moments um that you described um not movements.

Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry. It should be the three moments. The three moments actually, I think the it's it's not any different from different uh domains of social practice like political practice in Uganda. You go to an office where some you need you need the favor, someone would want you to fast behave. Um, you go to the hospital, the doctor would want you to fast try to rush you through the procedures. They want you to put some kitokitobo in your pocket. So it's it's a normal thing. But for the COVID nineteen, we are thinking of a new marketplace that was created. A new a new poten... The state of emergency actually came as something that is reasonable. Reasonable. Someone could reason and say, well, if I stay home, I actually contain myself. I call I I create a barrier of not contracting the virus. But where the state comes and brings in this, for us is very interesting. That instead of focusing, that's why I call it contradictory state visibility. Instead of focusing on trying to maintain a healthy population, you're actually trying to create a zone where people can actually bribe their ways out, conduct go go through all these sorts of mischief to jump the hurdle. That is actually that is actually meant to protect the population. So the ideal biopolitical intervention into the lives of the population and trying to contain them in order to safeguard them from getting sick and potentially dying is filled with the with the with with the routine state practices. It's actually been imported into the COVID nineteen management system. Which actually for us, it does not even push the president aside because I know Ugandan collected millions of money. But what did he do with the money later? Now we are hearing um the the vaccines have come but the country has no money to buy vaccine because the the president and his uh political allies decided to buy vehicles to move around during during campaign. So all I mean all this is part of actually it draws on the the exact character of the state that we are living in, but it has been pushed into the the COVID nineteen. So that's why for the population became defiant at some point and decided look at this as a big joke and continued with their business and everyone is up to their business right now.

Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Paddy. Grace Akisa has a question that I think follows actually quite nicely on from what you were just saying also about the role of expertise and credibility. She asks if public health institutions challenged some of the containment strategies that were self-serving for the ruling government. So a question about visibility as well of the experts.

Speaker 1: Thank you, Grace. Not at all. The public health operatives actually became absorbed into the state system. Actually, when the president said at one point that Ugandans with money, they can accept to die. Yes. And uh actually the Kenyan put a version that money kills Ugandans and the Kenyans say money actually develops Kenyans. I think there is a bit of some some play play there. Um, the public health officials were actually silenced. One of the reasons for silencing them was the head of the public health system in Uganda.

Speaker 1: He's a personal doctor to the president. So, I think when when the stories come from above and say, you know, uh you have to do A B C D, they have to do it the way it's done. Otherwise, you're fired. Because I know the doctor who was ahead of the doctors fraternity is called President of Health Workers in Uganda, called Doctor Ekwaro. Doctor Ekwaro was actually suspended for trying to challenge some of the procedures that were being brought up. And one other thing was the state actually limited the point of discussion of COVID nineteen. Someone had the right to identify you as sick or not sick. And that person was simply supposed to come, put their hands on your chin and realize the temperature is high and they pronounce you sick and then you are taken for quarantine. A special vehicle is provided for you to be taken for quarantine. When when you are at quarantine, you have no mobile phone, you would have no contact with anybody, you take the porridge that the government will give you. And yeah, that's how it was. So, it was really a very swift process if they identified you as someone who was sick. So, uh and it was purely managed by security forces and the doctors would only examine you when you're already in quarantine. So, the medical practitioners, the experts, I think they were contained by the powers of the state, the other the other powers of the state, power of security and they also got they got afraid and they couldn't much engage much with the COVID nineteen situation and they left it for for the state to conduct it the way it was done.

Speaker 2: Thank you very much Paddy. Lee is curious about to learn more about the research question and hypothesis you used in the chapter and I read that more as a comment and as a request that you guys share the paper, the written paper with us when it's ready. So, we're all looking forward to the circulation of the written piece. Meanwhile, Joel Glasman asks, can you tell us about the impact of the election on the COVID nineteen strategy or in other terms, would the lockdown have looked differently without the election happening?

Speaker 1: Thank you Joel. I think we wouldn't have a lockdown if there was no politics playing. Because I actually started looking at it right from the time of declaration of potential candidates for presidency and what have you. We would not have a lockdown that would have lasted much longer after the period when the primaries of different political parties were being conducted. That is what I think. Uh the clear example is now, we have I think in the range of about five hundred deaths out of COVID nineteen. When the lockdown was imposed, nobody had died. And the number of sick people were only twenty-one. Now we have about seven thousand if not eleven thousand people who are sick. And the state has actually failed to control it. And the management system, the health workers, they have no protective mechanisms. There is no way you you can now stop anyone from doing anything if if you are a state in terms of of the spread of the virus. So, and it is now that everything is free. Movement is free. Yet when everything was still at the at the infancy, everything was still starting, the lockdown was imposed. So the idea was, I think, there was there was a need to demobilize political opposition by using the narrative of protecting the population. Now, what happened, if you try to push your way through, there was a draconian charge that was put by the president that in case you are caught breaching any of these rules, you are charged with attempted murder. Attempted murder takes you for many years in jail. So, at least nobody wanted to be charged with attempted murder. But Joel, right now as I speak, I can go anywhere I want. Yet the virus is on the rise and I think it shows you what exactly was was at play. Immediately after the elections, the roadblocks were all removed. There is no security forces anymore. Curfew, you can play music at anytime you want, you can go and dance if you want, you can move at night if you want. Curfew has also ended and nobody pronounced it ended, but it just phased out. So I think it would look differently. Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1: Thank you very much Paddy. This is really interesting. And Franca, I'm just curious about what happens to people who refuse to behave. Are they detained or left? If you can tell us a little bit more, if you know about the people who weren't able to or not willing to bribe or behave, as you called it.

Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you very much Franca. I will answer this with a story. Two ladies came from Dubai. They landed in Kenya and they moved the same route I used. They entered my village. And the local council identified them as people who came from outside because coming from outside means you're potentially sick. So what happened, they called the district health official. The district health officials came. The population gathered including myself to see what they're going to do. They bundled these two ladies into one vehicle, drove them as though they were taking them for quarantine. They refused to give out any money. They drove them 270 kilometers away from here. And then they didn't know where they were being taken. And all of a sudden, they tried to take them to the hospital and the hospital officials said, no, you don't bring us COVID cases here. Every hospital refused, do not bring COVID cases here. So they just left those people by the roadside and said, you go back to where you came from. That was it. They just stopped somewhere and said, I think we are heading nowhere and we came from nowhere. I think let's just part ways. Get out of the vehicle and find your way back. And that's what happened. But if you are arrested at the roadblock, a severe scenario is to be taken to prison. And in prison, nobody knows what will happen to you there. Nobody knows who will come and rescue you from there. And then nobody knows what situation you'll be in because first of all, you will not be allowed to go there. Because they are trying to contain people coming together. So the best would be to try and behave. Even if you can't behave immediately, you can promise that you will behave next time in order to avoid being going into all these fracases of containment and the rest.

Speaker 1: Thank you very much Paddy. I have two more questions and a comment and I would like to close the questions for now. One is from Omar Egesa. Omar asks if there are any benefits of the lockdown that occur to you that are realistic and could have health safety benefits against COVID nineteen. Do you also go into some of these in your paper, Paddy?

Speaker 2: Yes. Briefly, we go into this in the paper. One of the benefits that we would have got, which we didn't get, was the public will to donate money for health activities. And this was madly squandered by the state. I think it was in the tune of about 1.5, 150 billion Uganda shillings that was donated by well-wishers and governments, I mean, and companies within Uganda. And this money, if I put myself down to try and calculate what this money should have been used for, one, they said they are going to buy 1000 four-wheel drive pickups to help the health workers run around. Now, 1000, each four-wheel drive truck could train five doctors in a period of five years. So if you got this money and you put them into the 1000 trucks vehicles, you multiply by five, you have about 5000 doctors you would have trained without the state spending a coin because the money would have come from the public directly, not taxation, no nothing. But what did the president do? He decided that they would rather buy vehicles with a lifespan of four years and the vehicles are dead. And yet you could have trained 25 year olds to become doctors and their lifespan would be 25 years. So you'd have maintained this money for about 25 years. This did not work. That would have been a very good benefit, but it didn't work. Now, the other benefit back home in my village is that people were locked down and the president allowed them to go to their farms. So we tried to use that to fight hunger. Food security became, I mean, that's something we can say the lockdown produced for us. We were in the garden. Myself, I was also partly in the garden sometimes. So I avoided the market to buy food and people had a lot to eat.

Speaker 1: Thank you very much. That's a really intriguing side effect or benefit, if you like, that would certainly be worth going into a lot more. But for today, I would like to close with one last question and one short observation by our brilliant speaker from the last sprint series, Nadine Machiku, who says that it's quite remarkable that the case of Cameroon is very similar and that the micro arrangements of both the state agents and the population to not follow the rules were very comparable. Kamal Donkor asks, could you talk a little bit more about the impact of the mobility restrictions on the economy and how do people react against these restrictions, I think when it pertains to the economy in particular?

Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Kamal. The economy, the economy here becomes, this becomes a national issue. And our analysis was actually mainly on a micro issue. So if I talk about the economy, I'll talk about mainly the household economy. If I talk about the national economy, it would be, I don't, I didn't have really, really clear data on what happened if you stop all the planes entering and Kavi from coming in, if you stop, you try and put a chain of lockdown, a chain of measures to truck drivers coming from Kenya. Remember there was a time when they had like eleven kilometers of jam, truck jam along Busia Malaba road because the test kit would take two days for every driver to be, to be, for every driver's result to come. And later there was also, and this disturbed the economy somehow. The markets were not working. People were not doing business as they used to do. There are certain places that were closed like saloons, small enterprises, small and mini enterprises of the population were really, really severely affected. Restaurants, you would only do takeaway if you don't have potentials to do takeaway, you cannot, and this made people actually poorer, I think. And from the local economy, like I said, for us, we live in an economy where all you need to do is grow food, sell if you can. People actually grew more food crops. And now it's a season for harvesting. The cash crops are not there. The effect of the pandemic is going to come in the next year, actually during this year because people are not selling anything because they didn't grow any cash crops. Yeah. So because they were not anticipating that lockdown would be, so people grew more of the food. So you have what to eat, but you don't have what to send your child to school with. I mean, you cannot sell anything. So I think from the state perspective, the economy did not suffer much because the World Bank was heavily involved in funding lockdown. Lock your population down for a certain number of days, we give you this much money. We also talked about that slightly in our paper. Then the comment on whether we dealt with some of these benefits in our paper, I think it's there. The research questions, Lee, the research questions are there, there are three. Maybe I think with time we will share this paper after the review.

Speaker 1: Thank you ever so much, Doctor Paddy Kenyara speaking about his research on COVID nineteen mobility immobility restrictions in Uganda. We hope you tune in for the next time.

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Speaker 1: On the go, Sprint lectures on African mobilities, podcast by Africa Multiple.

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