Eddy Yawe

Musician Eddy Yawe, contesting for the Kampala Central Member of Parliament seat on the Democratic Party ticket, promises he will be a ‘projects MP’. In seeking to step into outgoing MP Erias Lukwago’s shoes, Yawe argues that whoever wins the seat needs a radical departure from the politics that have dominated Kampala because, “people have to get something they can take home to eat.”
Yawe, a music producer and musician Bobi Wine’s elder brother, argues that his personal entrepreneurship record proves he has new ideas. Not only did his Dream Studios in Kamwokya play a vital role in his own musical career and Bobi Wine’s, he argues: “many of the record producers you see in Uganda today passed through Dream Studios.”
Developing talent Yawe believes that developing people’s innate skills is the way to go in Uganda. Not only because government cannot give everyone a job, but also because, to him, it does not make sense to study a conventional degree like Law and still end up hungry.
Poverty and devising new ways of confronting it is Yawe’s running theme throughout his campaign. Yawe believes that Kampala Central residents are fed up with politicians who spend their careers protesting in Parliament and walking out because a motion they do not agree with is being proposed. This is actually his main difference with his long-time friend Lukwago, who Yawe confesses he helped campaign in 2006. He says: “My MP who was right there has concentrated on his career so much, other than the needs of the people. People have to eat, they have to work, they have to get jobs and security. In my analysis, you don’t only stop from the scoop of Parliament as an MP to represent people. You have to bring ideas. I want to be a projects MP. Because I don’t believe there can be law when people are hungry.” In fact what some may consider his greatest weakness – a previous successful career in music – Yawe regards as his strongest asset in his run for Parliament. Yawe, who claims his father and grandfather were also DP members, first used his musical talent to campaign for former DP President Kawanga Ssemogerere’s run for President in 1996 when Yawe was in his first year at Makerere University. He composed for Ssemogerere the song Olubengo. He also successfully campaigned for Lukwago in 2006 because by then, “he was less known and we were a little more known as musicians.” Yawe has a Masters degree in radio and television from a university in the Netherlands, he achieved in 2000. He also received a scholarship to Morgan State University in the USA, where he studied the intricacies of sound on sound recording. It is this exposure that Yawe credits for awakening in him the realisation that Uganda is only limiting itself in exploiting its talents. “You can hardly find an institution where they teach electronic media,” he says, yet the entertainment sector of the economy is growing at a phenomenal rate. He argues that there is need to import a lot of skills from abroad. For instance, instead of always asking for money from the central government, Yawe believes it would be a better idea to start making connections with foreign friends from countries like the Netherlands.
These ‘friends’ would greatly help to bring modern technology to help Kampala Central residents catch up with the rest of the world in various fields. The aspiring politician who was born on May 11, 1973, believes that in five years, there would be a big difference in the lives of his potential constituents.