December 05, 2010
John Donnelly

This is the 12th in a series of posts from the Ministerial Leadership Initiative for Global Health's Learning Collaborative Forum in Ethiopia. On Monday we will post two wrap-up pieces from the conference, and later this week we'll continue with out Motivators series from health leaders in Ministries.
At the MLI Learning Collaborative Forum in Ethiopia, a four-day event that attracted senior officials from five Ministries of Health, one of the most poignant moments came early on the last day in opening remarks by Dr. Francis Omaswa.
Peggy Clark, vice president of policy programs at the Aspen Institute and executive director of Aspen Global Health and Development, introduced Omaswa by not only describing his work as a former director-general of Ministry of Health in Uganda and founding director of the African Center for Health & Social Transformation, but also that he spent five years as a doctor in a remote mission hospital in Uganda nearly three decades ago.
Omaswa, a senior MLI adviser, used his breadth of experience to give a sweeping view of Africa, country development, and the current trend of expansion and progress.
But he minced no words in talking about the difficulties in the past. In many countries, he said, the post-independence era initially went well, but in the 1980s, he said, “it changed.”
‘Africa on its knees’
“We in Uganda had Idi Amin, but even African countries without Amins didn’t escape trouble,” he said. “In decline, Africa ended up on its back and on its knees.
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