I am very angry with the German Embassy in Kampala. The local press said they recently denied a visa to a top mobiliser of foreign investment in Uganda. The reports indicate that the embassy officials did not even allow Ms Bad Black to fill out an application form for the visa. They reportedly just turned her away on learning who she was.

The Ugandan ministry responsible for investment promotion must step in and petition the German foreign affairs ministry over this act by their representatives in Kampala, which is stifling investment to my country. It is not every day that we get talented individuals like Ms Black taking up the task of investment promotion. Last year, the 22-year-old lady attracted some four million dollars in investment from the UK when she convinced one (just one) 52-year-old British millionaire that the real estate business in Uganda pays handsome returns. Who knows how many million Euros she was going to get from some German tycoon to help our ailing economy?

Ms Black shot to fame last year when her British lover took her to court on suspicion that she had misappropriated his millions by lavishing it on her Ugandan lover. But they made up after realising the money was actually invested in real estate, and the only remaining task is recovering the properties from the man in whose hands they landed.

Let us face it, Ms Black has succeeded by all standards where most of us have failed. I started travelling the world before Ms Black was born — if indeed she is only 22 as the press says — but I have not even brought home one per cent of the amount she brought back after a few months in the UK.

Tens of thousands of Ugandan professionals have left the country over the past four decades but I doubt if even a dozen have brought back as much as Ms Black did last year alone. We need to protect our geese that lay the golden eggs. Ms Black is not the only Ugandan girl who is collecting resources from mzungu men to boost investment at home. A number of local girls have succeeded in preventing some ageing white men from returning home after completing their tour of duty in Kampala either as top executives or as diplomats. That way, we get their pensions invested in our little economy.

So let us recognise the contribution of these poor girls, who are mostly school drop-outs, and lobby for them where some embassies are making it difficult for them. At least in Uganda, they do not use deadly juju to open the white men’s wallets, the way it is done elsewhere. I know of a coastal African town where some girls use “mortuary water” — water bought from mortuary attendants after it is used to bathe corpses — to prepare food for a man whose heart they want to win. A half-litre bottle of ‘mortuary water’ currently costs them about $200. But the Kampala girls only use arts learnt from sessions with their aunties, so they do not put the health of the potential investors at risk. So come on, you Kampala-based European diplomats! Give our girls those visas! It ain’t gonna hurt nobody.

Joachim Buwembo is a Knight International fellow for development journalism. E-mail: buwembo@gmail.com