President Museveni Calls On Algerian Investors To Fund Value Addition In Ugandan Products

President Yoweri Museveni has concluded his three day visit to Algeria with calls on investors to put money into value addition of Uganda’s raw materials.

The President told a team of investors at the Council for Algerian Economic Renewal-Conseil du renouveau économique algérien (CREA) led by their President Mr. Kamel Moula in Algiers, that Uganda boasts of valuable raw materials that are yet to be exploited.He cited coffee growing an example, saying Uganda is the biggest coffee producer, earning only 900 million dollars of that it produces.

“Uganda is on the right path of waking up people to go from a traditional non-money to a money economy, producing a lot of raw materials which only need value addition. The big battle we have now and we want you to help us is value addition like the coffee for instance. The problem here is that when we export unprocessed coffee, we get a little like two dollars a kilo and after processing it we get like 50 dollars. So, this is massive robbery,” ” he said

He stated that value addition in coffee is among the 10 key priority areas of investment where Algerian investors can partner with Uganda’s Ministry of Trade for dual development.

The President however stated that Ugand has continued export of unprocessed products leading to underdevelopment. The other raw materials he mentioned include e textile industry, automobiles industry, chocolate production using cocoa, footwear production, animal feeds production, pharmaceutical starch production, fruit processing, human medicine, vaccine production, and tea processing.

Museveni informed Algerians that Uganda has built a leather factory that is producing high-quality leather, but local absorption of the finished leather is still low.

“Because we have a lot of leather from our leather factory, what we need is a foot factory to use the leather,” he said.

He said that although his government inherited a largely collapsed economy when it took power in 1986, they have managed to take the country’s economy through several phases of economic recovery, expanding, diversifying, and transforming the economy on all fronts.

“When you hear that there’s insecurity in Africa and that African youth are running away from 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,” said Museveni

The meeting was attended by the Minister for Trade, Industry, and Cooperatives Francis Mwebesa, the Minister of State for Trade Harriet Ntabazi, the Permanent secretary Geraldine Ssali, Uganda’s Ambassador to Algeria JC Alintuma Nsambu, among other officials.

The President also held a meeting with Algeria’s Minister of Energy and Mines Mohamed Arkab together with the CEO of Sonatrach  Toufik Hakkar and their delegation where discussions hinged on opportunities in oil and gas development in Uganda.

This is President Museveni’s second visit to the North African country after the first one in October 2015 at the invitation of then President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, which 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.