Monday, March 23, 2009

$450 a month

That's what senior doctors are paid by the government of Uganda at Mulago hospital, according to the latest article on Mulago in the Daily Monitor. New recruits make only Ushs 626,181 (about $315 dollars) a month, still better than the Ushs 200,000 a month new teachers are paid (about $100), but it is not hard to see why doctors who have invested much more time and money in their education would hop on the next flight out of Entebbe to more enticing salaries abroad.

By contrast, in Rwanda, newly recruited doctors reportedly earn $2000. What is going on here? Or maybe the better question is, what is going on in Rwanda? As it happens, I am headed to Kigali on the 9am bus today, and hopefully some answers will emerge this week for me...

In the meantime, see this interesting discussion (hat tip Paul Collier and Jim Cust's Bottom Billion Blog) on Rwanda as "The World's Social Innovation Capital". More from Kigali soon....

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