In his youth, Professor Yash Tandon was a presidential adviser to Uganda’s government soon after the country’s political independence. Because president Milton Obote tried to change the economic structure of the country in order to achieve real independence, as the first president of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah advocated, a coup d’etat broke out which lead to the bloody regime of the dictator Idi Amin Dada between 1971 and 1979.
Throughout a long career standing by the humble of the earth in such countries as Zimbabwe and Tanzania and learning from them, Tandon has also been the founder-chair of SEATINI (Southern and Eastern Africa Trade Information and Negotiations Institute), an organisation which aims at helping African countries to get negotiate more effectively in neocolonial international institutions.
Tandon has also written a number of books, like Ending Aid Dependence and Trade is War. Back in Uganda, Tandon agreed to talk with journalist Alex Anfruns about different issues like his work as an intellectual, the balance sheet of the West’s development cooperation aid programs in Africa, the 60th anniversary of African independence, the risks related to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic but also the opportunities it may offer to strengthen African sovereignty.
