Africa-Press – Uganda. Officials working for the UN in Kampala have said they have nothing to do with an outfit that is going around claiming it plans to invest $5 billion (Shs19.4 trillion) in projects related to the world body’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Uganda.
Sources have told the little-known outfit first approached the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) – under which the government runs an SDG secretariat — with their ‘too good to be true’ proposal early this year.
Along the way, due diligence carried out by OPM has raised doubts about the outfit, which increasingly does not seem to be what its representatives claimed.
With heightened suspicions about its intentions and validity, Mr Ramathan Ggoobi, the Ministry of Finance permanent secretary and secretary to the Treasury, put out feelers. On February 8, the UN Resident Coordinator, Ms Sarah Namondo, wrote back to Finance, disowning the so-called United Nations Alliance for Sustainable Development Goals Inter-Governmental Organisation (UNASDG). Ms Namondo copied her letter to Minister of Finance Matia Kasaija and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Permanent Secretary Vincent Bagiire.
The UN country coordinator also spoke to us days ago, saying: “We thank you for contacting us. We would encourage you to do the same whenever you have such interaction with suspicious individuals or organisations claiming to be part of the United Nations”.
Attempts to reach Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja for comment have been futile. She did not pick up or return our calls over several days.
Last Tuesday afternoon, her personal assistant promised to relay our request for comment and also advised that we call back at 8pm. We were still unsuccessful that evening and the next day. OPM spokesperson Charles Odongtho, however, confirmed that the premier has twice held face-to-face talks with the alleged representatives of UNASDG.
Mr Odongtho said Ms Nabbanja “engaged the investor[s] as the leader of government business who is mandated to coordinate government programmes. One of her methods is to take the office to the people: anybody, Ugandan or foreign, can meet her. She is more bothered about effectiveness and efficiency”.
“A decision was taken by the prime minister with guidance from His Excellency (the President) that thorough due diligence first be done before serious engagements can take place,” he told this newspaper last Saturday.
The spokesman said Ms Nabbanja later contacted Attorney General Kenneth Kiryowa Kiwanuka who also wrote to the UN resident coordinator.
“The UN team responded that they don’t have offices with the agency (UNASDG). But the agency purports it has offices in London and Washington,” he said.
Press has learnt that individuals introducing themselves as coming from the outfit first approached OPM in January with several fanciful propositions, including 100 percent financing of projects free of encumbrances; debt, cost and liabilities.
In their presentation, they described Uganda as “an ideal central location” to host its regional campus, a permanent SDGs lab, and a financial centre “to cater for” the East African Community region. The proposed financial hub in Kampala would service Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi and South Sudan, and further to the south, Botswana, and Lesotho.
It is upon getting wind of the lucrative financing overtures that Mr Ggoobi wrote to the UN’s Ms Namondo to authenticate the outfit claiming to be headquartered in the Atlantic island nation of Sao Tome and Principe. Ms Namondo responded eight days later with the disavowal, saying “nor have we had any official indication from our headquarters (New York) to work with them.” In a follow-up email to our inquiries, RCO spokesperson Michael Wangusa maintained that UNASDG is not part of he UN agencies they supervise in Uganda.
“They might be a non-government organisation,” Mr Wangusa said.
According to documents, the outfit’s self-declared representatives in one meeting asked to be accorded diplomatic privileges and immunities, including official diplomatic passports.
The acting head of Public Affairs Diplomacy in Ministry of Foreign Affairs Margaret Kafeero in an email reply to our inquiries acknowledged that they put on hold “a request for a meeting”.
“We are carrying out due diligence to establish more about them,” she said in reply to our questions
Other sources say the UNASDG indicated a Mr Mukesh Kumar and Mr Patrick Kyamukaate Mutabwire — former Ministry of Local Government permanent secretary who was interdicted in 2015 following the bicycle procurement scandal — as its local patron and deputy, respectively.
Attempts to speak to both Mr Kumar and Mr Mutabwire have, however, been unsuccessful, making it impossible to independently verify if the two men have anything to do with this outfit.
The ‘Mr Kumar’ did not return repeated calls to a number listed as his in documents. He also never responded to short-text messages to one of the two telephone numbers shared with OPM. The other number was picked by a lady who said we had called the wrong number. Mr Mutabwire’s known number was answered by someone who also said we had dialled the wrong number.
In the pitch to OPM, the UNASDG had reportedly made the unusual request to be allowed to set up a “secured fund account” in Bank of Uganda. They also asked to be granted access to what is known as an Application Programming Interface (API) link—for security reasons—for their operations.
Last week, BoU’s acting director for communications, Ms Natamba Bazinzi, said private individuals cannot open an account with the central bank.
“The notion of a private investor opening a bank account directly with the BoU, especially one with specific conditions such as “only API” access, is not allowed,” Dr Bazinzi said.
It remains unclear whether there is any relationship between UNASDG and the surprise visit to Uganda in October last year by the Sao Tome and Principe leader, President Carlos Manuel Vila Nova.
Until then, Uganda and the island nation hardly had any publicly known contacts. Insiders said UNASDG representatives in February almost made it to a meeting with President Museveni but were caught out in the nick of time after the Attorney General raised a red flag about the bona fides.
“They somehow managed to secure an appointment to see H.E. before a brief prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs got to him. Somehow, Ministry of Foreign Affairs caught them abruptly at State House en route to the meeting,” one source told this newspaper.
As part of its profile pitch, the UNASDG team is said to have told OPM that the enterprise was established in June 2019 on the margins of the “United Nationals (sic) Global Index Institute—SDGs Cities Leadership Champions Conference” held in the Finland’s capital, Helsinki.
“The goal of UNASDG is to support global implementation, the development, and the realisation of lighthouse projects for SDGs, defined by the UN and adopted by the General Assembly with 193 member states on 25th September 2015 in New York, USA,” reads one of the briefing notes presented to OPM.
The enterprise said it “press, advises, and supports project partners, capital funds, government and related parties reaching their aims in relation” to achieving the 17 SDGs. To assist Uganda achieve these goals, UNASDG, according to documents, requested recognition as an international organisation and an account in Bank of Uganda to guarantee universal basic income “for the citizens of Uganda for two years and other purposes to be agreed upon between” the government and the organisation.
Furthermore, it proposed that projects be developed under a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement upon which a Memorandum of Understanding shall be signed for each venture.
“Funding starts for implementation of projects as soon as a treaty is signed between the government of Uganda and UNASDG,” documents detail.
In an interview, the head of the PPP Unit in Ministry of Finance, Mr Jim Mugunga, said many projects billed as PPPs being floated around lately actually fall outside the strict provisions of the PPP law enacted in 2015. He also expressed ignorance of UNASDG. “I’m not aware of this particular investor and if the discussions happened at the highest level, perhaps they will cascade down,” Mr Mugunga said.
Past bad decisions
The OPM-UNASDG entanglement comes against the backdrop of the government’s at-times blind faith and seeming obsession with what later turn out to be dodgy foreign ‘investors’.
Among them is the elusive Italian, Ms Enrica Pinetti through whom more than Shs500 billion in taxpayers’ money has disappeared into what increasingly looks like a ghost enterprise – the infamous Lubowa International Specialised Hospital. Construction works have largely stalled at the foundation level nearly four years after the original completion date of June 2021.
In mid-July, 2022, Parliament terminated a deal between the government and an enterprise going by the name Uganda Vinci Coffee Company Ltd which was also linked to Ms Pinetti. If Parliament had not stepped in and stood its ground under extreme pressure from the President, the deal would have created a monopoly over the country’s lucrative coffee sector – to the detriment of coffee farmers, among others.
Also on July 13, Ugandans were treated to the incredible revelation that President Museveni had entertained an American actor, Mr Terrence Howard, who came peddling the idea of setting up a plant to produce hydrogen in Uganda. Two years down the road, nothing has come of it.
Months earlier, Senegalese-American RnB singer/record producer, Akon, also waltzed in. He pitched the equally fantasy idea he wanted to build a futuristic ‘Akon City’ in Uganda powered by cryptocurrency to President Museveni. Officials went to work looking for several acres to host the city. The idea has never come to life and Akon has not been heard from since.
The Vinci-Terrence Howard fiasco came barely two months after a parliamentary ad hoc committee laid bare revelations of how 82.05 acres of prime land, part of the former Nakawa-Naguru low-cost housing estates, was illegally parcelled out to well-connected persons after plans to purportedly build a satellite city fell flat.
The investors for the mega satellite city had been hand-picked in opaque circumstances and parachuted in. According to designs presented to President Museveni, the city would include recreational facilities, places of worship, Nakawa division headquarters, a five-star hotel, a referral hospital, an international school, a shopping mall, and low to high-level condominiums.
The investors, the Comer Group owned by billionaire brothers Luke and Brian Comer in partnership with a hitherto unknown local company, OpecPrime Properties, had been given land measuring 166 acres in 2005 with the approval of Cabinet. The Comer Brothers walked away in 2017 citing messy local politics and the unviability of the project.
Mr Luke Comer told Irish newspaper, The Business Post then that: “The main problem was the difficulty local people had in obtaining mortgages. Who’s going to give them mortgages? Africa is not a great prospect in that way.”
What they said
Mr Jim Mugunga, head of PPP unit
“What I believe the PSST is trying to do is the right process. Under the ministry of Finance whenever an investor comes, we have to undertake basic due diligence which takes three stages really—financial, legal, and technical.”
About SDGs
SDGs are 17 objectives for a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for the people and the planet” which were adopted by world leaders in September 2015 as an offshoot of the eight-point Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted earlier in 2000.
The agenda’s targets have to be met by 2030 for $3 trillion. Resource mobilisation has, however, proved a daunting task, with the UN General Assembly turning to the global private sector for help.
For More News And Analysis About Uganda Follow Africa-Press
