Ronald Leonard Egesa

Just the past few days there has been a lot of talk around town about the hair-raising transfers of Christiano Ronaldo (GBP 80M) and Kaka (~GBP 56M) to the spanish capital to ply their trade at the santiago-bernabeu -home of Real Madrid. Based on records and results, Ronaldo stands out as United’s greatest player of all time and no one can argue about it. Man Utd will have to contend with the fact that CR9 is gone and Sir Alex Ferguson will have to try and nurture a new ‘kid’ to replace Ronaldo.

In addition to losing Ronaldo, the guys from Old Trafford will also go to the new season without the services of Argentine goodboy Carlos Tevez. This ofcourse may turn out to be bad news to all United supporters around the globe and it also goes down as good news to us -the Liverpool fans. It is common knowledge that the season of 2008-9 was our best season since the last title in 1990. We pushed the title to the penultimate weekend and in the same season we had a double over Man Utd and Chelsea. That was not all, we defeated United by 4-1 at the theatre of Dreams!

The heart of our team has remained intact - The same players that scored the highest number of goals in England are still at Anfield as I write now. The likes of Steven Gerrard, Fernando Torres, Yossi Benayoun, Dirk Kuyt, Xabi Alonso, Javier Mascherano, Albert Riera, Pepe Reina are all around and they are going to go for a “win and conquer” season. Last season was so painful to these players as they saw the title slip into United’s hands and they wished they had done better against the weaker teams at Anfield.

Apart from the players staying around and carrying their painful experience forward, there is still one Rafa and he is currently at Anfield- the same place he was last season. There will be a few brilliant names showing up on the teamsheets at Anfield . We should prepare to see people like Glenn Johnson, Jay Spearing (from the academy) and Stephen Darby (also from the academy at Melwood).

Will all this in mind and looking at the changes that have been taking place at Chelsea and Man Utd, If I were to put money for who will walk with the Premier League in 2009-10, my money would go on Liverpool. This is not because am a Liverpool fan, but it is naked reality.

Many a time we seek to go to University and other places of higher studies to acquire skills that will make us better managers. It goes without arguement that this training makes people better educated and enables them to pick up some skills that make them better managers in the jobs they take up thereafter of in their own businesses.

Today, I have a burning issue and this is what this whole article is about. Management is about the art of knowing when to say Yes and No. Every single Management decision is preceeded by a person with authority saying Yes or No. “Good/Excellent” Manager are those that have the skill and art to say yes when it is time to say yes and no when it is time to say No. It is as simple as that. If it is as simple as that then why all the problems at the workplace.

The few years I have spent managing my business and seen it grow I have learnt that a good manager needs to follow the following steps before saying yes or no:

1. Quickly decide whether the issue before you is only to be handled by you or requires seeking the opinion of your colleagues
2. If u must consult, then give a straight answer that I need consultation from my colleagues such as fellow Board members of the company
3. Based on what you or the team has decided, go ahead and make the decision and clearly tell the concerned parties what your stand is. Do not leave room for false hope
4. There you have it and you will go down as a good manager.

Ofcourse there is more in management, but as you will learn, it will always trickle down to Yes and No circus!

I have been an admirer of Dr. Besigye but of late, perhaps because of his long stay in the political scene, I am beginning to realise that he has turned into another typical Ugandan politician. Recently, he criticised the re-appointment of Justice Faith Mwondha as the IGG. But let him read the letter Ms Mwondha sent to the Speaker of Parliament in which she stated her case.

Dr. Besigye should also know that there are Ugandans like the President and I who bought the IGG’s interpretation of the supreme law of the land. He should know that the attorney general’s advice is not binding and the President can choose to ignore it.

Published in the letters section of The Daily Monitor of April 20, 2009

Just like many other countrymen and women, including Prof. Joe Oloka-Onyango, I have been following the on-going IGG- Parliament contest with keen interest.

What I find interesting is that the argument of the IGG is crystal clear and shows that she is a true patriot and not just after retaining the job. Even at a time when the President ignored her report on the Nakawa-Naguru estates, she has stood her position.

Despite all the mess caused by our public servants and politicians, there are Ugandans like us who see the truth and cannot succumb to corruption just because everyone says it is the order of the day or “business-as-usual” and it is this lot of Ugandans that Lady Justice Faith Mwondha has done proud!

My prayer is that the almighty God clearly guides President Museveni to look at Article 223(7) of the supreme law of the land like the rest of us and save this “Iron Lady” from politicians who want to spoil the fight against corruption.

Ronald Leonard Egesa
Kampala
leo@ronaldegesa.com

Published in the Letters Section of Daily Monitor of 3rd April 2009

For long, whenever I needed to format my figures (.. am talking of bucks), I had to write a new UDF to handle that. Just today when I was running through the php manual that I came across this neat function. — number_format()
Usage:
Supposing my variable that displays the currency where I need the thousand separator to be commas is $amount,

What I needed to do is to pass the variable as an argument, to the function and here is the code snippet that worked for me.

//other code lines

//other code lines
?>


It did the magic for me and when the amount was One million it was displayed like : 1,000,000

Have fun and enjoy as well!

It was just this normal day and a friend asks me to lend a hand and setup ns2 on his laptop which was running susse linux.

After some 5 attempts, i finally found some post on the web by some guy and it really helped a lot and at the end of the sixth attempt, i had already started simulating networks.

The procedure is shown below:

NS2 Installation for Starters
How to install NS 2 on Linux, The step by Step Procedure

Step 1:Get NS2 All in one package from the below link or by clicking here

Step 11: all done , just type ns at terminal
e.g. #ns
%

and it is ready !
Enjoy simulating networks, protocols whatever you like, All the Best !

I had travelled to Hoima for the first time in December 2008, but due to the pressure that I was under to complete work so fast and get back to Kampala, I actually did not get down to know a lot about Hoima.

On January 24th 2009, I set out of Kampala to Hoima for yet another work trip. I had just gone to setup school software in Central Schools Limited and also train the staff members there. The week before my trip, I had been working round the clock and had managed only 20 hours of sleep in the 7 days leading to my trip - I was slowly becoming a Japanese in black skin: so I decided to set off on Saturday (work was meant to start on Monday). So in the early hours of the afternoon I had already set foot in the “oil city” of Uganda and had already started touring the place so that I would get acquainted with it.

The weather in Hoima town was really great. It is a bit hot during the day and extremely cold in the night (remember - land and sea breeze in physics classes!). I have not in the past and present been forced to put on a sweater or jacket. Much as Hoima town was proving to be cooler than Kampala, I was not about to put on a jacket let alone wear a sweater - the worse part of it is that I had not travelled with any of them.

On my walks around the town, I came across very hospitable people from the Banyoro tribe. They seem not to be bothered about what tomorrow holds for them -remember the economists talking about ‘the curse of plenty’. They are so lazy when it comes to work- this is also seen from the pace of speech in lunyoro. Ofcourse am not stereotyping here, but am simply bringing you my side of the story and my perception of the society in the oil city.

Talking is one thing that really takes up much of their time at the work place; what I did not go ahead to establish is what exactly they talk about the most, but believe me it is idle talk. However, there were a few folks that I came across in Hoima that really mean business and when it comes to work, they do not joke. One of my clients that I had gone to work for was one of a kind. He means business and never jokes around when it comes to working.
I installed the software Magezi Harvest, Magezi Finpro and Magezi Apex successfully and conducted the training for 4 days and after that I set out on my return journey to Kampala.

Ofcourse, I have to mention that Hoima is one good place to go and relax your minds after the hectic work pressures in Kampala coupled with the mess in downtown Kampala. I would definately recommend Hoima to a friend who is going on holiday.

Enjoy

I would like to thank Mr Mwambutsya Ndebesa for his analysis of the Mengo-Central government ties that appeared in the Sunday Monitor. It was well founded and educative.

Mr Ndebesa pointed out that the problem between the kingdom and the central will exist until such a time when the two stop ‘cutting the deal behind closed doors’ and address the issue using institutions. He also said the government should address the issue as a national matter which also applies to the relationship between the central government and other regions.

I commend Mr Ndebesa for the thorough analysis and I would love to see more of such commendable writings showing up in our media instead of printing pictures of naked women as we often see in some media.

Ronald Egesa, Kampala
This was published in the letters section of the Daily Monitor Newspaper 2008

By Davis Weddi

FINALLY, Uganda’s first mobile-phone banking is set to roll out its services. Ronald Egesa, a software developer, is putting final touches on the new service which will be available on all mobile phone networks in the country.

The mobile banking service is to be managed by a software branded “Smart Cash” developed by Mobitrix Uganda, a company owned by Egesa.

“Realising the surge in the banking and telecom sectors for the last five years, we felt that there could not be a better time to introduce mobile banking in the country,” Egesa explained

Targeting the six million mobile phone subscribers the service is expected to usher in a new model of managing personal finances in Uganda.

“After two years of thorough research and consultations, we have decided to roll out a three-pronged mobile banking platform. We are out to pioneer state-of-the-art mobile banking technology in Uganda,” Mobitrix said in a statement issued on Thursday.

Smart Cash is comparable to a Kenyan version called M-Pesa, but according to Egesa, his mobile bank will be able to offer services on an international scale. It will enable customers who have accounts to access the bank for transactions even when abroad.

The statement explained that Smart Cash “Is cashless, it enables banking from anywhere there are mobile phone services, users can pay for utilities, you can save as little as sh5,000, you can send money to your relatives or friends in any part of the country, Smart cash service will be accessed on all the mobile networks, Smart cash works on a wide variety of cell phone types.”

Asked about how to open a mobile phone bank account, Egesa said, “Mobile phone users will buy scratch cards from airtime dealers, login into the easy-to use smart cash system using their handsets and then load the money on to their account. Once the money gets on the account, it can be used to make payments, transferred to another account or just left there for future use.”

Opening a bank account has been made simple. “It costs next to nothing,” Egesa said and explained that all one has to do is to send an sms to a short code that the company will soon unveil to the public.

The services customers will get include: Transfer of funds from their Smart Cash account to another Smart Cash account using the recipient’s phone number, save money as little as sh5,000 and pay for utilities such as electricity and water, Pay TV, view and check their accounts with organisations such as NSSF and Microfinance institutions.

Egesa also noted that deposits and transfers will be charged a small fee of sh200 making mobile banking very conveniently cheap. He said that in the case of transfer or payments, the sender or payer will incur the same small charge on his/her account. All balance check transactions are free of charge. Users will not incur charges of sms received.

Earlier this year, we reported that Ronald Egesa had developed school management system and was distributing it free of charge to interested schools. So far hundreds of head teachers have expressed interest in the system.

Published on: Sunday, 16th November, 2008 in The Sunday Vision

I am disappointed by Celtel Uganda which is currently playing a song of this musician about to come to town. I got embarrassed when someone called me on Sunday morning and this song that carries a secular message was played back to him before I picked his call.

Celtel is using this as a way of marketing themselves and their activities but it is injuring our reputation. Two committed Christians claimed that calling me and listening to such music spoilt their Sunday.
When I called Customer Care, the arrogant woman who picked my call told me they selected the numbers randomly. But this is bad marketing behaviour.

Ronald Leonard Egesa
0752442375
This was published in the letters section of The Daily Monitor of July 16 2008