A FEW YEARS AGO, the entire country of Sweden registered itself for a phone number and then invited the world to “Call Sweden”.

Sounds straightforward, eh? Till you realise that you have really never heard of such a thing. Their phone number was not for one to call the Government of Sweden or some specific person believed to be representative of the country. You were calling THE ENTIRE COUNTRY but one person at a time.

It was a brilliant idea and ran for just under four months with success.

The number +46771793336 (0771 SWEDEN) was assigned to a system where any random Swede could answer the phone and speak with a caller.

197,678 phone calls came in from 190 countries, with people asking more or less anything about Sweden and getting back ANY answer from unscripted, unmanaged, uncensored sources because the people answering the phones were …just Swedish people saying what they knew or thought or felt.

They had no job titles to speak of, no salary or allowance or official car linked to the Government. They were on job because they were Swedish and wanted to talk about – represent – their country.

“Everyone who lives in Sweden is able to register as an Ambassador. When you call you will be connected to a random Swede. The chances that you are connected to the same Swede twice are small – so you get a new side of Sweden every time you call,” stated the programme advisory online.

So it wasn’t just Swedes, naturally created, but everyone who lives in Sweden. Presumably, the four thousand (4,000) Ugandans living in Sweden could also have registered and promoted their host country.

Amazing stuff! I have no doubt in my mind that it did wonders for tourism over there – which it should have since this was the brainchild of the Swedish Tourist Association, a bunch of serious, clever people who stated their objective as:

“We at the Swedish Tourist Association know there is much more on the side of the road, a bit further into the woods and a little higher up the mountain. By guiding and inspiring everything from small to great adventures we want to encourage more people to explore and take advantage of our unique environments.”

Through this programme, they strategically chose to use ordinary everyday people to do so – which made everything even more authentic because there was no control.

They have had a culture of involving their entire population in promoting their country, those Swedes. They introduced their Constitutional law abolishing censorship in 1766, start there.

That Swedish Tourist Association (STF) was founded in 1885, open to all Swedes with the specific intention of opening up and conserving more tourism attractions and locations – not hotels and whatnot, but forests, lakes, picnic sites, and more natural points that would be attractive to anyone who wants to tour the country.

STF now has more than 206,000 members. Imagine having 2% of Ugandans joined together to voluntarily promote Uganda’s tourism – 940,000 Ugandans out there cleaning up the country, creating more tourism hotspots, conserving wildlife, being hospitable and all deliberately putting positive things onto social media to attract tourists.

The STF is a non-profit organisation, not a government body; the government one is ‘Visit Sweden’, which I interacted with a few months ago when my teenager was planning to go over on a school trip.

The two work together quite cleverly, and Visit Sweden even states on their website: “Visit Sweden is not a tourist information centre, a Swedish authority, working with destination or product development.” Instead, they “market and strengthen Sweden as a brand” while the non-profit STF uses ordinary Swedes on the ground to do the destination and product development.

Does it work? The internet says that in May 2024 alone there were three million (3,000,000) arrivals at accommodation establishments in Sweden – in that one month juuzi hapa. A third of their population. Tourism generally employs 1% of Swedes in full-time jobs.

You will obviously find more, and more, and more evidence that their strategy makes sense and can be a learning point all round for us. What do we need to do? Be Serious about ourselves as a people and about tourism.

Of course we can’t start by setting up the phone number +256 799 842632 (UGANDA) and inviting anyone to call. No.

Right now can you trust any random Ugandan – including some government officials even assigned and paid to do so – to answer a random phone call and say nice things about the country? Are their conditions right for doing so? Hey – some people won’t even let their spouses answer their phones.

But we can’t wait 250 years to build up a culture of openness, authenticity, love-for and pride-in country. We need to do it faster – all of us. We need to de-governmentise it – all of us. We need to Ugandanise ourselves to a level that makes us actual owners of our country, willing to build and promote it the right way regardless of all the other factors that keep confusing us.

We need to all make people Call Uganda. But first, we need to Be Serious about it so that the phones are answered properly.

—

Simon Kaheru

http://www.skaheru.com

@skaheru