So many books have been written about this. The plan is to kill local industry so that American and European companies can fill the gap. The global PR side was 'open your economies, globalisation is good' etc, the local enforcer was always World Bank & IMF. It started with the big commodities: grains, steel, cotton, coffee, and so on. Ultimately, once a country is entirely dependent on foreign manufacturing, it is much easier to control. All they would have to say is, “Do ‘x’ or else.” Again, Uganda is perhaps one of the few countries left in the world where a person can be cash poor but asset rich (not even our neighbours —Kenya — have it that good. In Kenya, if you're poor, you're POOR). The question was once raised: who is worse off, the middle-class American with a 30-year mortgage and student loans who is barely keeping up with expenses, or the African villager on his small plot with his two cows, whose farm provides enough food for his family? A boda guy once told me how happy he was to have completed his house and was now building small rentals. His income was supplemented by small farming he was doing in his village. You can count the places in the world where that is possible, even for middle-income folks. Apparently, we are on the fast track to becoming a developed nation, chasing the glitter of the first world and fashioning our once-beautiful spaces into soulless, knockoff high-rise jungles. Let us not be surprised when we get there and realize that it was all a smokescreen.