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What President Museveni said in Abu Dhabi

Peter 17th Jan, 2025 Economy PPU
What President Museveni said in Abu Dhabi

President Museveni presents his speech at the event. PPU PHOTO


President Museveni has been in Abu Dhabi for the Sustainability Week 2025. This is an abridged version of his speech at the event.

Uganda has got a population of 46 million People and is part of the East African Community with a combined population of 300 million People, all of whom are part of the CFTA (Continental Free Trade Area) of Africa, with a combined population of 1.4 bn People. Until 1900, Uganda was part of Africa that had had limited direct linkages with outsiders.

In the 70 years the British were in Uganda, typical of the Colonies, they created a small enclave economy of the 3Cs and 3Ts. Enclave economy, meant a small island of money economy, surrounded by a sea of under-development and moneylessness. The 3Cs were: coffee, cotton and copper and the 3Ts were: tea, tobacco and tourism. By 1962, Independence time, only 9% of the homesteads were in this small money economy.

  • Owing to the wrong politics of the political actors, Uganda soon entered a period of crisis. In 1971, an illiterate Colonial Sergeant, Idi Amin, came into power. He ruined the small enclave economy by making many mistakes including the expulsion of our immigrant Asian Community of 80,000 that had been a part of the entrepreneurial class.

By 1986, only Coffee of the 3Cs was surviving and only tobacco of the 3Ts was still kicking. Since that time, we have gone through 5 phases as follows: 1. Bring back part of the small ‘Island’ of the 3Cs and 3Ts; 2. Expand the ‘Island’ – more coffee, more tea, more tourism, etc. 3. Diversify the economy by commercializing new products such as fruits, bananas, fish, dairy products, beef, sugar, cassava, leather, wood-products, etc. 4. Add value to some of the raw-materials - such as textiles, dairy products, sugar - to produce finished products. 5. Enter the knowledge economy by producing products of the intellect such as auto-mobiles, vaccines, etc.

However, to go into the five phases, apart from peace, you need infrastructure and a skilled and healthy population. We have, therefore, invested in electricity generation, roads constructions, building schools and health centres. These modest efforts, have seen the economy grow from a miserable USD 4bn in 1986 to now USD 55bn by the foreign exchange rate method or USD 168.5bn by the PPP method. We are not satisfied with this.

  • Much of this USD 55bn is raw-materials. By merely adding value to a spectrum of these raw-materials – coffee, cereals, minerals, etc - we intend to grow the economy to USD 500bn in the coming few years. We, therefore, invite investors from the World to help us do this rapid transformation of our economy and society as they also benefit because the IRR in Uganda is 14.1%.

Uganda is now classified as a lower middle-income Country. It will, however, rapidly grow into a high middle- income Country and, eventually, into a first World Country. To achieve these goals, as already stated, we need to add value to the large spectrum of our agricultural raw-materials (coffee, bananas, fruits, cotton, oil seeds, cassava, maize, tea, dairy, beef, poultry products, fish, forest products, sugar, etc) and mineral raw-materials (gold, iron-ore, phosphates, lithium, uranium, petroleum, gas, etc).

The efforts of value addition to raw-materials are part of sector two of the economy- manufacturing. The other sectors are: commercial agriculture that will generate some of the required raw-materials; services (tourism, hospitality, transport, professional services, etc); and ICT.

I salute our African brothers and sisters in East Africa and in the whole continent. With clear vision, we agreed that when you produce a good or a service, you need to sell. The more you sell, the better for our prosperity. The internal market of Uganda of 46 million people, is not enough to support large scale sustained production of goods and services, especially when their purchasing power is still low. Already, Uganda has surplus of many products: maize, milk, beef, bananas, steel products, cement, tubes and tyres, textiles, cassava products, etc.

How would the Ugandan economy grow if we did not have the East African market, the COMESA market and the wider African market? I would like, therefore, to assure investors from outside Africa, that the Africans, have already laid down a lucrative market. When you invest in Uganda or any of the brother African Countries, you have the assurance of this huge and growing market.

  • The population of Africa will be 2.5 billion people in the next 25 years. The population of Uganda, will be 106 million People by that time. The growth of Africa is now unstoppable. Future leadership in prosperity belongs to Africa without a doubt as long as we are acting right.

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