Kevin A. Roberts
Washington University Professor Fred Ssewamala
Fred Ssewamala
Fred Ssewamala lost his mother at age 3. His father, stepmother, brother, sister, and friend were shot by government soldiers when he was 11, during the second, brutal Obote regime in Uganda. Yet he has always felt absurdly, profoundly lucky—because he lived, because he had family who took him in and teachers who urged him on, and because he made it out of his Ugandan village to this country. He is now the William E. Gordon Distinguished Professor at the Brown School at Washington University, and he has created—and runs—more than 20 economic-empowerment and public-health programs across Africa, easing the lives of kids who are ill, destitute, or ashamed; stabilizing families; and creating a pipeline of highly educated young Africans. His success there is teaching students here what works.
How do you think about luck? Maybe it’s a word for my local Luganda language, omukiisa, meaning not that you are special by any means, but that something comes to you and you had nothing to do with it. It’s that for which you have no control. But what is also important is that you must be prepared to take advantage of luck. I think with my upbringing—growing up poor, having to work hard, being respectful to others—people thought, Oh, this person is willing to learn. Luck has to find you prepared and ready.
What do you say to a kid here who feels unlucky? For me, who grew up in a country where everyone is striving to get to America, the mere fact of being here in one of the richest countries on Earth is luck all by itself. I come from a country that has been devastated by wars, a country that is desperately poor. If you put structures from East St. Louis in Uganda, people would say, “Wow.” So for this person, yes, they can say, “I wish I were like that other person”—but everything depends on your frame of reference.
I wonder if we sometimes lean in the wrong direction, holding up celebrities so rich and successful that a kid feels daunted? And then the internet, consumerism, the social media influencers—all of that makes it worse. We can’t erase technology, but we have to help kids get perspective. Widen their frame of reference. Some of it is an inner feeling; we all compare. But if kids are exposed to more diversity—different kinds of people, different socioeconomic statuses—then they will know that not everyone is slender and rich.
Not all parents have the patience and resolve to guide their kids’ experience online, though. That is where it takes a village. I don’t think one parent should be the sole person raising a kid. Schools play a big role—what are they exposed to there? What role models are they shown? Religious leaders, social workers…parenting should be the responsibility of each one of us who interacts with that young person. There has to be a concerted effort of the different actors and institutions within society to make sure that young person does not feel hopeless, that they have some kind of social network, some kind of social capital.
Define “social capital” for me. The ability to take advantage of social networks. The value in those networks, which can be more powerful than money. We think of financial capital as money; social capital is the valuing of social relations. My uncle and aunties taking me in—that was social capital. And that social fabric still exists in this country, too.
It’s wearing thin in spots. What forces erode social fabric? The moment there is mistrust, social fabric erodes. And of course, war and civil strife erode social fabric because they disorganize the family structure and the community, and you start getting newcomers who may have different values altogether.
Is that why immigrants have become such a lightning rod in many countries? People are always nervous about people who don’t look like them. What’s really eroding the fabric, in my view, is not that sort of difference. It’s a lack of common cause, of common values.
You have fought the shame and stigma Ugandan kids feel when they are orphaned or infected by HIV/AIDS. What causes kids here to feel shame and stigma? In Uganda, girls wouldn’t be worried about their weight. Here, you find a young person trying to starve themselves because somebody made up that all models should be a certain size. In Uganda, shame is about disease. Here—other than their appearance, I don’t know what makes people feel shame. I watched a TV reality show called Survivor—people are willing to do anything for money! I said, “Isn’t that person ashamed?” Maybe the problem is the lack of shame.
All your programs include financial literacy. Why don’t ours? Maybe because everyone thinks they know it already? In Uganda, 60 to 70 percent of people are self-employed. All you need to do is give them a small margin, show them how to save a little each time, how to treat saving as a monthly bill. Here, the system is slightly more sophisticated. You have plastic. People can get a credit card, pre-approved, without even having a job, and they can run up debt.
Also, there’s a sense that saving and investing are for the wealthy, which is not true. Poor people can save; our programs have proved that. Sometimes they just need the financial institutions to work with them. If the bank closes at 5 p.m. and people are still working at 6 p.m. or on Saturday, they have been shut out.
How do you convince banks to grant more access to people with little money? It has to make business sense for them. You remind them of the Community Reinvestment Act; you remind them it’s the right thing to do. When I talk to banks in Uganda, I tell them, “Look here. If you have 3,000 young people opening up an account at your bank, I’m not saying they will be your best customers right away. But people don’t change banks often. Get those young people early, and you will have them for life. And meanwhile, you can lend out their money. A lot of change to lend out!”
Are there programs that have succeeded in Uganda that would work in Missouri? Oh, yeah. Micro savings accounts—those should be universal. If a child is born, you give them a nest egg, a savings account at a bank, and then every 5 years you figure out how to use the tax system to match what that family has saved. That money can be used for education, for housing. It can address structural inequities. Also, like Uganda, Missouri is very rural, and there’s a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS in some places. We can learn from Uganda in how they’ve been able to penetrate rural areas in terms of HIV testing and treatment.
Here in St. Louis, what do you see that does not work, yet continues? The school system in the city. It’s actually sad to see a very wealthy country having schools that lose accreditation. It’s sad to be in a city where some people have so much but when you go to another part of St. Louis, it’s as if you were in a developing country. I wish there were more investment in decent housing and in public schools.
Are we too impatient, too short-term in our thinking? You point out the importance of starting with young kids if you want to build capacity and encourage education…. I don’t think people here are impatient. It’s more that they are very individualistic in their approaches. What I have seen here is that when people are thinking about the future, they are wondering, “Where will I be? Where will my family be?” In Uganda, they are thinking, “Where will my community be?” Here, people move again and again, and that is acceptable. You buy a new house, and you move on. It is different in Uganda. You are always attached to your village. That is your root. I was born in a village, and more than half of my relatives still live there. I can start early, building capacity in young kids, because they will still be in that community years later, giving back.
We’re a wealthy country—what’s getting in our way? One obstacle is so many people being individualistic, everyone on their own. Politics also plays a bigger role here, in terms of people looking at others as if they are not part of society. I don’t think anyone should feel guilty about having resources they have acquired legally. The philanthropy in this country is greater than anywhere I have ever worked. That is the point: the giving back. Maybe some people think every poor person is lazy, forgetting that there are real structural barriers to wealth creation. But most people, if they are making money in a business, they have made money from a poor person in some way. The only thing they need to think about is: How do I give back to the community that has made me who I am? People should feel at some point: You know what? I am living comfortably—99 percent of the things I have, I don’t need. If we didn’t think about accumulating, accumulating, accumulating—if we thought about accumulating and sharing, accumulating and sharing—that would help.
Jeannette Cooperman is a staff writer at The Common Reader, based at Washington University, where she first met and wrote about Fred Ssewamala.
