KAMPALA, Uganda, Oct 30 – Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has urged African Union member states to ensure integration succeeds, saying it is the only sure way to prosperity.
Rooting for unity, Museveni said Africa should remain united and focus on integration, which, he said, will bring about development.
“Prosperity will only come to Africa through integration,” he said Thursday when he officiated the opening of the Fourth Judicial Dialogue organised by the African Court on Human and People’s Rights (AfCHPR).
He cited the example of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is advocating for the Silk Road, in which African countries were urged to take part to foster development.
“You see what the Chinese President is doing is great, that is opening up development opportunities,” he said.
When he attended the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) 7 in Japan last month, Museveni encouraged more African countries to embrace Chinese investments which, he said, will drive growth in the continent.
“I must salute the Chinese government for practically encouraging their private sector to come to Africa,” he said, “I hear that their government has put money in the Exim Bank of China.”
In recent years, China has been supporting African countries, in infrastructure development—including Kenya where it funded the construction of the Standard Gauge Railway from Mombasa to Nairobi, and now to Naivasha which is nearing completion.
It has also provided loans to the government for the construction of various other projects, including the country’s first superhighway on Thika road.
“Chinese companies are encouraged to come to Africa, identify “profitable” projects and come back and apply for the money,” Museveni said at the TICAD 7 conference in Japan, also attended by President Uhuru Kenyatta.
In Uganda, Museveni said, “some Chinese companies have used this method to build a fertilizer factory and a steel one.”
He also told the meeting of other Chinese “using their money to build many factories. Even some Indian factories are being built in that way.”
And he wondered why Japanese and Western companies cannot do the same.
Uganda, he said, is not devoid of the entrepreneurial classes.
“Unlike in the colonial times, the transport sector (buses, taxis, boda bodas etc) is now totally indigenized,” he said, in encouraging more investments to his country, “Trading is now indigenized, especially the importing sector.”
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