Africa-Press – Uganda. President Museveni has called for increased value-addition to Uganda’s raw materials to increase the country’s revenue.
While addressing a team of investors under the Council for Algerian Economic Renewal-Conseil du renouveau économique algérien (CREA) led by their President, Mr Kamel Moula, in Algiers on Monday, President Museveni urged Algerian investors to take advantage of Uganda’s profitability by ensuring value-addition in Uganda’s products.
“The big battle we have now and we want you to help us [with] is value-addition like the coffee for instance. The problem here is that when we export unprocessed coffee, we get little like $2 a kilo and after processing it we get like $50. So, this is massive robbery,” he said.
Mr Museveni said with 9 million bags of coffee per year, Uganda ranks number four globally in coffee production after Brazil, Vietnam and Colombia.
The President, who was concluding his three-day state visit in the North African country, told the Algerian business community that despite the global value of coffee business in the world being $460 billion, the coffee producing countries share only $25 billion, of which Africa gets only $4.8 billion. Uganda pockets only $900 million of that.
“It is a big scandal and a battle we’re engaged in,” the President said.
President Museveni said the continued export of unprocessed products had not only made Africa lose money but also jobs hence underdevelopment.
“When you hear that there’s insecurity in Africa and that African youth are running away going to Europe through the Mediterranean Sea, this is the reason. Africa is the one donating money and jobs to the rest of the world,” the President noted.
Investment
Value-addition in coffee is among the10 key priority areas of investment where Algerian investors working together with Uganda’s Ministry of Trade should focus their energy.
The other areas include: Textile industry, Automobiles industry, chocolate production using cocoa, footwear production, animal feeds production, pharmaceutical starch production, fruit processing, human medicine and vaccine production and tea processing.
“We have got about 30 factories of tea, but we need more tea buyers but also investing in tea processing. Because there are some areas where we have got the green leaf but less processing capacity. Those are some areas which are not yet covered,” Mr Museveni added.
The president of CREA, Mr Kamel Moula, informed President Museveni that their private sector plays a key role in the economy with plenty of family-based private multinational companies leading in the domestic market and are ready to share the knowledge.
“We share the same vision because Africa has been relying on the western world. Our president has instructed companies to send 150 representatives to your country to interact with the business community in Uganda to identify the goods we need from each other so that we target our objectives,” Mr Kamel said.
President Museveni welcomed them to Uganda and commended their strategy of private companies working with the government.
“That’s a very good strategy to combine private sector and the government efforts. That’s how the Chinese economy grew very fast,” H.E Museveni noted.
The meeting was attended by the Minister for Trade, Industry and Cooperatives, Mr Francis Mwebesa, Minister of State for Trade Harriet Ntabazi, permanent secretary Geraldine Ssali, Uganda’s ambassador to Algeria Alintuma Nsambu, among other officials.
Other meetings
Before concluding his visit, the President held a meeting with Algeria’s Minister of Energy and Mines, Mr Mohamed Arkab, together with the CEO of Sonatrach, Mr Toufik Hakkar, and their delegation where discussions hinged on opportunities in oil and gas development in Uganda.
The meeting was also attended by officials from Uganda’s Energy Ministry led by Minister Ruth Nankabirwa.
He also met Algeria’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, M. Mohamed Abdulhafid Hanni, and his delegation over animal vaccine/animal product exports between the two countries. The meeting was attended by officials from Uganda’s Ministry of Agriculture led by Minister Frank Tumwebaze.
This is President Museveni’s second visit to the North African country after the first one in October 2015 at the invitation of the then President Abudelaziz Bouteflika that saw Uganda open its first ever mission in Algeria to strengthen relations in education, trade and cooperation in the oil and gas sector to boost Uganda’s exports.
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