On my way out of Uganda, as my taxicab pulled up to the airport, a soldier – with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder – stopped the car. As he and the cabbie chatted amiably, the cabbie quietly slipped him a little money, the equivalent of about 50 cents.

I’ve seen this kind of petty bribery before in other parts of Africa, but it still dismayed me. "What a shame that you have to pay a bribe just to get into an airport," I thought.

But as we pulled away from the soldier, the cabbie – who’s been driving taxis for 40 years – said that during the infamous dictatorship of Idi Amin in the 1970s, soldiers would point their guns at civilians and demand all their money. "So things have gotten lots better," he said, cheerily.

Another sign of progress in Uganda is the explosion of schools. Driving the roughly 50 miles from the airport to downtown Kampala, I must have passed 80 or 100 schools – everything from technical colleges to pre-schools. Most appeared to be private. When I asked around, I was told the government recently set specific educational requirements for official positions. To be a member of parliament, for instance, a person must have specific advanced degrees.

Also, Uganda, like many African countries, has drastically lowered school fees recently. This allows many poor kids to go to public schools – and has made many middle-class parents want to get their kids into private schools, away from the masses of under-educated poor kids.

It’s all helped spawn an almost frantic culture of education in Uganda. Most good schools have long waiting lists. One wealthy mother complained about suddenly having a huge new item in her household budget: "Now we spend all our money on education," she said. Indeed, she makes sure all her nine of her kids go to some of the best schools in the country. "That way," she said, "I know they’ll be OK for the future."