By Odrek Rwabwogo
Chairperson
Presidential Advisory Committee on Exports & Industrial Development (PACEID)
In the last three years, PACEID has created awareness and some presence in more than ten markets – USA, UK, parts of the EU, the Balkan region, especially in south western Europe, DRC, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, India, UAE, Russia, China, and, indirectly, many more. In the USA, some cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Atlanta are on our radar for opening locations given their GDP sizes. To keep this work going, we have to find and keep reliable partners to streamline our trade representation and market understanding in a way we have not done in the past. These people help with basic market research, knowledge of the local media terrain, and, in some cases, establish trade locations to support Uganda products’ entry. This is why in a small way, we are able to underwrite export orders for more than ten firms in the sectors of coffee, fruits, vegetables, dairy and grains. It is the reason we have generated more than USD 500m in orders, even though our firms have supplied a small portion of this because of some structural issues with our economy. We, however, keep seeking solutions for these problems as we learn and grow. We combine this work with negotiation for logistics in the air, land, and water for firms, where possible, so our country can compete. It is the reason we keep knocking on doors for the Africa common market countries. It is why early this year, we pushed hard for Uganda’s accession to the Funds for Export Development Fund (FEDA), an arm of the Afriexim Bank. This is so that Ugandan export firms can attract equity investments for exports within Africa.
Given we are heading into the 2026 elections, I am taking this opportunity to appeal to all of us as Ugandans. We need to recognize that this work can be battered or even stopped by irresponsible behaviour and unrestrained communication from political actors during this time of heightened sensitivity. Without restraint, we increase tension and compromise the gains made over the last three years. When we knowingly or unknowingly, impair this work, we stand to lose jobs – the one aspect we are fighting hard to gain through increase of exports and investments. Some capital that is beginning to knock on the doors of our value chains in IT industry, meats, fruits and vegetables, dairy, iron and steel, energy, can easily freeze. Our country has a young state. You see this fragility in our institutions when we act under pressure to deliver reforms in finance, justice or enforcement, yet we compete against nation states that have been active for more than 300 years on the market. The onus is on us to act with discipline to maintain the gains we have made so far.
For example, while we recently began product aggregation in northern Uganda to aim at 100,000 metric tons of sesame in ten years (a pressing plant as soon as we hit 30% of this figure), our competitors in the West are developing laser and missile systems to fight in space if a large-scale war breaks out now given the tension in our world today, needing this kind of superiority to win on land, air and space!
How do we raise our people from poverty and low productivity to compete with these nation states someday, if we are not able to harness our political behaviour and interests for the collective good?
The Uganda modern state is just 30 years old under the 1995 constitutional order. It is this order which, in a way, answered the questions of the civil war fought in the 1980s and ended the 20-year insurgency in the north by 2009, restoring economic progress. Whereas the nation-state idea for the world began in 1648, it is fairly new to our continent. This idea established borders, encouraged economic planning, built institutions to adjudicate conflicts, brought stability and pluralistic faiths. This in turn triggered scientific enquiry and competition among nation-states and eventual transformation of societies that started ahead of others. This is why within a century (1750), the industrial revolution began and fundamentally changed Europeans who would later govern us; those of us who were still in a feudal state not able to defend ourselves with modern weaponry.
A country can look and act stable but if her state institutions are structurally weak or growing slowly, not keeping pace with the demands of the citizens, it may not stand pressure internally, let alone if pressed from outside by external elements. An example is Libya. It had the highest GDP per capita in Africa (about USD12,000 in 2010), high consumption of electricity (3,361-kilowatt hour per capita), water usage (250 liters per capita per day) and education at 88.4% literacy rate for everybody above the age of 15. There was compulsory education and massive investments in education from the 1970s onwards. Libya was also considered a fairly equal society given much of her oil revenues went into building air, water and land infrastructure that was sometimes considered somewhat first world. However, the country went down fast leaving in its wake, insecurity, refugees and terror groups in the Sahel below it and beyond. This is because while Libya looked developed, its constituent parts (call them nations) had nothing in common. The western part of the country (Tripolitania region) was always influenced by Mediterranean Europe, especially its Greek and Italian past, seeing itself quite differently from the rest of the country. The word ‘Tripoli’ comes from ‘Tripolis’ or place of three cities from the Phoenician and Roman western Libya, in Greek. The center and south occupied by the Fezzan people closely linked to the country of Chad and many were and still remain nomads connected to the south Sahel (Sahil or coast in Arabic), while the East – the ancient Cyrenaica or the Benghazi area where the rebellion started in 2011, always looked to Egypt and the Arab world.
Col. Muammar Gaddafi was the central glue that held the country together and he grew it within 42 years to a nation state of influence, depending on where you stand ideologically. However, states aren’t willed into existence by money or good will. They are a result of a deliberate collective ethic cutting through chauvinistic tribal and religious façades. In Libya the actual state institutions necessary to keep the country stable remained weak.
The lesson is that unity and cooperation are foundational to state building and so are incomes at a household level along with jobs for the graduates educated expensively by parents who have high expectations from the government. Uganda and much of sub-Saharan Africa is not Libya. We are different culturally and in many other ways. History, though, draws lessons for us to avoid pitfalls. In Uganda, we hold regular elections and we went through two civil wars that etched lessons in our hearts and minds to avoid the mistakes and equally learn from the successes. We are a growing democracy facing internal pressures – poverty, corruption, indiscipline and some leaders lacking in supranational ideological breadth and depth. We face external threats from rich, resource hungry nation states looking for geo-security excuses to hold us down. These matters gnaw at our country and the region. We need to protect our young, decent state institutions that we have built so far so they can serve us better, credibly and impartially. They can serve us without rancor and disagreements and keep social order if we work together to protect them. This means we can often disagree ideologically but still work together for a common goal. It is this reason why in 2005, the National Resistance Movement provided for a healthy multiparty political system when parties were restored.
The reforms of 2005 included funding of all political parties, creation of a national consultative forum and an interparty dialogue (IPOD) as vents to deal with things that tend to divide us politically. These structures were not meant for fashion or basic symbolism; they were set up for the work of building state political structures that can endure conflict and keep the country safe. We anticipated a time would come when people with limited ideological background would come into leadership positions inside the Movement. Rather than worry about them, our anticipation was that we would have met them in these interparty structures and supported their rise even if they might not belong to the NRM at the time. This would not hurt our growth and stability for we would have known these people instead of only picking winners at the top. By doing these things, we knew then as we do now; that this is how to keep the reputation of Uganda on the market growing. Interestingly when you visit the pyramids of ancient Egypt, the world’s earliest civilization in Africa, in a sense you feel that whatever mistakes the Pharaohs did in wasting resources on burial grounds, they at least cared a great deal about how the world perceived them and how they would be remembered.
Why does a modern Africa or Ugandan state not care just as much about how it is perceived, and it allow elections to be a choke point where investments cease, capital flight is initiated by the private sector, and disagreements reverse the progress made? This is why I am putting forward four simple things we can do in the next five months to keep jobs and exports growing:
- First, to tame our language and how we communicate and avoid tribal and religious talk even in our private conversations. Private conversations are often the ones that stream into social media and hurt our trade efforts. Whenever I travel outside of Uganda, I am never asked about my tribe. Instead, as we all know, they ask for the passport from my country and the visa to the host country. Many of our brothers and sisters suffer indignities – whether they are ministers or business people, at these borders, yet when we come home, some revert to cocoons of tribe and religion in search of votes. They prey on our people instead of providing issues-based leadership and campaign on the reality we face; the reality of limited private sector jobs in a changing world that demands better negotiators for our place in the world.
- Secondly, I ask that we stamp out intimidation in our behaviour towards the electorate or political opponents. Intimidation is really for weak people who have nothing to offer other than the use of force. If you cannot convince someone to step down for you or a group of people to follow your ideas; instead, you use intimidation, fear mongering, bribery or concocting lies, this won’t bring people your way. If you do these negative things in the elections, you have not read your recent history well. In 1984, during UPC party primaries, those who considered themselves close to President Obote used this perceived access to intimidate and harass other party adherents who wanted a more accommodating party. Within a year and under pressure from a number of other factors, UPC was no more. Unfortunately, stories of intimidation seep into our external markets and give Uganda a bad reputation. Someone said it is harder to build than it is to break, therefore let us all remember that the international image and reputation of the nation which has been rebuilt by painstaking effort and responsible leadership for decades can be easily affected by negative publicity.
- Thirdly, the delays of public sector projects execution is hurting our economy, denying jobs to the youth and eroding our credibility, the type of credibility that attracts the right skills, patents and investment into the country. We must not tag projects to elections and in between return to ‘business as usual’. As an example, the northern bypass, a stretch of only 22kms, took seven years to complete at almost double the cost initially anticipated.
There are many laws and regulations that would drive investment, protect our food, raise our standards of living but they take forever to get legislated and implemented. Many people now know that to acquire public project land in Uganda, is almost an exercise in futility given the multi-layered corruption interests that stand in the way. We have to end this blot on our public institutions if we are going to keep our market reputation improving and attract quality investments. Those we convince to invest here do not lack options elsewhere. They leave us for locations that are more transparent in decision making.
- Finally, I will conclude with the matter of litter with posters and other forms of advertisements on every street pole and corner and the noise on the streets in our towns and neighborhoods. When we convince tourists to come to Uganda to buy our hotel rooms and food, they expect clean cities and low noise levels at night to let them rest after a long day. Not to mention the needs of Ugandans.
I have noticed that many of the people who visit Uganda don’t come with their families. This is partly because of the perceived risks about Uganda. We add insult to injury when we don’t prioritize road safety, cleanliness in our streets, and noise pollution. As leaders, when people know our message and it rhymes with their needs, we don’t really need to destroy lamp posts, water sources, clutter neighborhood spaces with campaign material that often doesn’t say much good about the country and the people we are appealing to. We have multiple television channels, online, and radio stations to help candidates reach their supporters and still keep our neighborhoods clean.
It’s a short but intense period through which our nation elects her leaders and the next government; I appeal to all Ugandans to keep united on the issues that affect us all and to keep our export work moving for the good of the country and Uganda’s global image.
I thank you.
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