As Uganda advances its development strategy, industrialization remains a key priority. How is your Ministry leveraging trade and industry policy to accelerate manufacturing and value addition?

It’s very important that we acknowledge where we are coming from as a country. Before the National Resistance Movement (NRM) took over in 1986, Uganda really didn’t manufacture or make anything. Whatever little that was made was in the control of the government and you had to get allocation sheets, etc.There was no road network, power was extremely disrupted,access to clean water, healthcare, even simple medicines like paracetamol were not available. So, starting from there, at that level, to where we are today, is where most of the hard work has been.

Back then, against western powers’ policies, against the wishes of the big players on many decisions, like setting up power dams, building roads, security, we were a very insecure country.Now, right in the middle of Africa, with a lot of neighbors that are extremely unstable and insecure, we are an island of peace.All those factors become enablers to the tenfold growth plan.

Something else is that when the NRM took over power there was almost negligible graduation taking place at Makerere University, which was the only university that was available in the country. Today we have more than fifty-five government and private universities graduating close to three hundred thousand people.

If you add all that up, what in economics are known as the fourfactors of production, we have land, labor, capital and entrepreneurship. And when you look at the new, modern ways of doing business, the enablers become very many. Amongst the most important in the real world today, I think peace and security is one of the biggest enablers for development. Then, of course, the second one is the raw materials, which you would refer to as land, natural resources. And then the other one is the labor. Uganda has one of the highest educated and most youthful populations.

We are just completing the renovation of the meter-gauge railway (MGR). We restarted our airline successfully. That gives us connectivity and especially access to market for horticulture, vegetables and fruits. And we have also signed a contract for extra ten airplanes, two of which are cargo. So, if you look at the whole jigsaw puzzle and you are an investor, then Uganda is the best place to be for production.

Now the question comes, where is the market? Uganda is signatory to the East African Common Market, the South and Central African Market, the North African Market, the AfCTA,that exposes you to more than 1.5 billion people if you’re manufacturing in Uganda. We tick all the boxes and we are ready for business.

Uganda’s position within the East African Community presents significant opportunities. How is the Ministry improving cross-border trade, logistics, and regional market access?

The ministry is working on the free trade zones and the one-stop border markets. We also have the deliberate effort to create special economic zones that are export-oriented. We have already opened one at the airport, that is going to be enabling export via air. We have built a logistics hub in Gulu that will serve the entire northern Uganda and target the South Sudan market. There are quite a number of initiatives that are taking place.

All of these, obviously, are accompanied by strategies that are being implemented to diversify Uganda’s export base. As I mentioned, the initial task was to make sure that we are able to fill the local demand to avoid importation; things like cooking oil, salt, sugar, pharmaceutical, education material, all thosebasic needs. Now the Ugandan industry has matured, and we arein the process of preparing to enter into the global market.

For example, the milk vertical. In 1986 there was no milk, wewere importing powdered milk from Holland and Denmark. And today we are a net exporter of milk for the Middle East, Tunisia, many African countries. We have also completed the sugar vertical, from farm to table. Today, in many of the countries on the African continent and the Middle East, Ugandan sugar is there. And you can keep the story going with coffee, tea, etc.

We have recently opened one of the largest steel plants in Africa. Both in terms of quality and quantity we are ready.We’ve already started exporting into the surrounding countries, but we have enough to go on to any global market. They have a state-of-the-art machinery that can beat any global standards.These machines could be in any global capital, and they would be able to give a very good competition. So, we’ve sorted out the issues of quality, the issues of branding, and we are ready for those markets.

For steel, we are still working backward integration. The consumption of steel is a good marker of the level of development of a country. Uganda is blessed with a lot of iron ore reserves, over 100 million tons discovered. We have three companies doing the mining and the processing, that will help us reduce the imports of the billets and the coils. There’s a plant coming up in Tororo, another one in Kasese, and a third one in Kabare. Once all those plants are on, we would have sorted out the steel vertical as well.

If you look at cement, we have clinker that’s being processed from Ugandan raw material. We have some of the best cement quality-wise, and we are feeding the region with cement.

Like I’ve said, there are many verticals, many positive stories to talk about, but we still have a long way to go.

Expanding exports is essential for sustainable growth. What strategies are being implemented to diversify Uganda’s export base and strengthen value chains for regional and global markets?

Exploit the ATMS. The agro-processing sector, we can position our agro-processing as number one. For instance, people are happily eating honey made in laboratories in the northernhemisphere. China, India, Europe, they’re all taking synthetic honey. And Uganda has a lot of natural honey. It’s unique because of the pollen grains that are there during the various pollination. Our honey from Kigezi is white, our honey from Ankole and Tooro is golden, our honey from northern Uganda is dark brown or black. That is because of the flowers that they’re using. Even the bee wax, it’s such a simple process and there is so much demand in countries like Japan, Indonesia, China. So,that apiary industry needs to be developed.

The second one is poultry. Today, while we have large-scale farmers that are producing more than a million eggs a day and we have people who have millions of birds, or hundreds of thousands of birds, it’s still just for the local consumer market, for the local demand. But because of the environment that we are in, and the weather, we can feed the whole world with eggs, with poultry and meat.

Then there is the fish. Uganda is blessed, more than one-third of our country is freshwater. We could plant fish anywhere. It doesn’t need to be the lake fish or river fish. The government is putting up a lot of initiative for commercial fish farming. There is a huge demand for fish globally, so that’s a sector we’re looking at under the agro-processing.

Let’s look at the cocoa. There’s a huge demand for chocolate, and a big growth potential. So, value addition on cocoa. We are also growing our exports in avocado. Some people are processing avocado oil, and a few people have gone the extra mile and are doing the virgin avocado oil. We believe that virgin avocado oil is like the next gold. Uganda is endowed with flora and fauna, and we believe that if the correct equipment is put in place, we should be able to serve the global market with essential oils.

Of course, you’ve got the coffee, the tea, the maize, the soya, sim–sim, chia seeds, cardamom, black pepper, and cloves. All in the mix.

My second point is tourism. Uganda is the only country in the world blessed with four unique features. One of them is thesource of River Nile, then you’ve got the silverback mountaingorillas, we have the only snow-peaked mountain that sits on the equator, the Rwenzori, and finally we have also got the Murchison Falls. And, you know, the usual Big Five. So, we’ve got to market tourism, and we know that tourism will open up.

The third one is mining. We are ready to touch the first oil and that should be able to spiral the other minerals, like copper, cobalt, titanium, gold, and iron ore, among others. We want the economy to take advantage of that.

And then, finally, you’ve got science, technology, and innovation. Uganda has some of the fastest speeds in terms of Internet. We have one of the largest fiber backbones, that covers the entire country. And the Ugandan population, that is highly educated, is very suitable to take over. If you compare Ugandan’s English to the Indians, the Chinese, the Arabs, the West Africans, South Africans, ours it’s easier to understand. We are in a good position and in a very good location for the call center business, the BPO business.

So, there are quite a number of projects. There’s a lot of work to be done, and that’s the focus. These are all opportunities that arewelcoming new investments.

Looking ahead, what is your vision for Uganda’s trade and industry sector, and what message of confidence would you share about the country’s potential as an investment destination?

We are a peaceful country, and we have done our studies on the ROI. Anybody who came and put $100,000 or $100 million in any sector within the ATMS, the calculation is that they‘ll get their money back in four years.

Making a dollar for a dollar in Europe takes you about a year. In Africa, it takes you three months. In Uganda, it will take you just a month.