Speech on:

Uganda’s Vision to Transform froma Predominantly Peasant Society into a Competitive

Upper Middle Income Country by 2040

By

H.E. Yoweri Kaguta MuseveniPresident of the Republic of Uganda

At the Launch of Uganda Vision 2040

Kololo Independence Grounds - 18th April, 2013

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His Excellency, the Vice President,

The Honourable Speaker of Parliament,

The Honourable Chief Justice,

The Right Honourable Prime Minister,

Honourable Ministers,

Honourable Leader of the Opposition,

Honourable Members of Parliament,

Head of Public Service,

Your Excellencies, Ambassadors and High

Commissioners,

Religious and Cultural Leaders,

Dr. Kisamba Mugerwa & Staff of National Planning

Authority;

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen.

Our Banyankore people say: “Otoomize tahwa

ikaranga.” This translates that “if your millet takes

long to dry, you continue roasting it until it dries.”

Our Baganda people say: “Addingana amawolu

y’aggagyamu omukkuto” translates as “a person

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who eats cold meals of the previous night

repeatedly, eventually gets satisfied”.

The NRM, right from the bush days, was clear on the

issue of socio-economic transformation. Point

Number 5 of the NRM Ten-Points Programme said as

follows: “Building an independent, integrated

and self-sustaining national economy”. This

meant that agriculture, mines, forests and lakes

would produce raw materials which industry

(factories) would turn into finished products so that

we would end the phenomenon of Uganda exporting

raw materials where we lose both money and jobs.

I have always given you the example of coffee.

Throughout the last century until today, Uganda has

been exporting bean-coffee (empeke). As a reward

for that effort, Uganda gets one American dollar per

kilogram. Last year, we got US$ 3 per kilogram

because the coffee prices were high globally. When

Nestle roasts and grinds the same coffee in London,

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they get US$ 15. If you assume that US$ 0.20 per

kilogram is for transport, the rest of the US$ 15 is

money Uganda should get. Therefore, Uganda

donates to the U.K. US$ 11.80 in every kilogram of

coffee we sell (although the US$ 11.80 per kg includes

processing and handling costs in London, it is still money

donated to them). This story of coffee is repeated for

other products such as cotton, maize, cattle, goats,

minerals, bananas, etc.

The GDP of Uganda will soon be US$ 25 billion. That

is the same size as the GDP of Nigeria in the year

1992 or twice the size of the GDP of Kenya in the

year 2006/07. It is quite a long journey from 1986

when the GDP of Uganda was US$ 1.5 billion. By

adding value to the raw materials we are exporting

now and what is consumed raw now, even at the

level of today’s production, the size of Uganda’s GDP

could grow to US$ 300 billion, bigger than the size of

Singapore’s GDP of US$ 276 billion in 2012. This size

of economy would create more jobs, provide more

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products and generate more taxes. Therefore, the

NRM’s instructions to the Government system in

1986 was clear – plan for the transformation of

Uganda’s economy into an integrated,

independent and self-sustaining one.

It took a bit of time for me to realize that the

Government system (some of the political class and

the bureaucrats) did not know how to do this. In any

case, some time was needed to deal with the

informalization of the economy that had set in

between 1971 and 1986 by stopping the currency

speculation (the foreign currency black market –

kibanda), the smuggling (magendo), the speculation

in goods (kusamula), etc. These re-formalization and

stabilization measures were achieved quickly

enough. Thereafter, the achieving of our Vision

needed further clarification for the Government

system.

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Some of the political actors, acting out of lack of

exposure, did real damage to the economy by, for

instance, stopping the Bujagaali hydro-power project

in the year 2001.

After some reflections, I discovered where the

problem was in terms of charting the way forward

not only for Uganda but for most of Africa. I realized

that we could not achieve our goal of building an

independent, integrated, self-sustaining national

economy if we did not deal with these strategic

bottlenecks that I have repeatedly told the country

about. These are:

1. Ideological disorientation typified by political actors

in Africa taking sectarian positions – religious, ethnic,

gender, etc.

2. Inability to restructure the colonial state;

3. Stifling of the Private Sector;

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4. Undeveloped human resource, which were not skilled

and were not healthy. Such populations could not

power socio-economic transformation;

5. Inadequate infrastructure that causes the costs of

doing business in the economy to go up, thereby

rendering our products uncompetitive and

undermining the profitability of investments by

having the said high costs;

6. Small internal markets in the respective countries on

account of the colonial balkanization.

7. Lack of industrialization and exporting raw materials

instead of exporting finished products.

8. Undeveloped services’ sector.

9. Under-developed agriculture.

10. Lack of democracy.

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We had to distil these for the Government system. It

was not enough to assume that the Government

system would know what to do by themselves. Why

have all the others in Africa not known this all these

50 years since independence? Even in some of the

countries that have been peaceful all the time since

independence, these strategic bottlenecks have not

been clear. It is no accident that it is only in South

Africa and Gaddafi’s Libya that we have had a kWh

per capita of 4,270 and 4,803, respectively.

Uganda’s kWh per capita in 1986, was 30. It is now

150 kWh. As I have told you repeatedly, the kWh per

capita of the USA is 12,400.

I am, therefore, most pleased today because, finally,

one Agency of the Government, the National

Planning Authority (NPA), has evolved a position that

is fully in harmony with our Vision if they

incorporated the amendments I forwarded to them. I

have not read the final version of their write up. I

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read the draft version to which I added what they

had either not included or what they needed to

clarify further.

The Vision says that in order for Uganda to become

an upper middle income country by 2040, we need to

generate 42,000 MW of electricity from all the hydro

sources, the petroleum and gas sources, the geo-

thermal (ebitagata) sources and the nuclear sources

using our abundant uranium. We need to revamp

and up-grade the railway system to standard gauge;

bituminize much of the road network; utilize the

water transport system; develop our oil and gas

resources; implement the flagship projects of the

phosphates in Tororo, the iron-ore project in Muko;

etc; not only continue to educate enmasse all our

human resource but skill them also; modernise

agriculture through the use of fertilizers and

irrigation; and modernize the services’ sector e.g.

banking, hotels, tourism, insurance, etc. In other

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words, the NPA is, finally, talking about the strategic

bottlenecks and talking the language of Point No. 5

of the NRM’s Ten-Points Programme.

In the last 27 years, the NRM has worked for solving

the strategic bottlenecks or addressing them in part.

We have addressed the issue of markets by working

with our partners in East Africa and COMESA regions.

We have also worked with the USA, EU, India and

Japan on the issue of market access, tariff-free and

quota-free. We have sent all Ugandans to school

through UPE and USE even when we did not have

enough resources yet. We have started addressing

the question of power (electricity), the roads and the

railway by converting our Engineering Brigade of the

Army into a railway building force, among its other

tasks. This is on top of ensuring security in the whole

country and democratising the country.

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We are now set to move. Let all budgeting reflect

the gains of this plan. We need US$ 200 billion to

implement this plan. With our oil, this will not be a

problem. Even without oil, but with discipline, we

would have raised the money to implement this plan.

Using our own money, apart from the usual tasks of

paying salaries, supporting defence, etc., we have

been able to fund the reconstruction of Masaka-

Kampala road, Kampala-Mityana road, Jinja-Kamuli

road, the rehabilitation of Kawempe-Kafu road,

Tororo-Soroti road, etc. We are now building Moroto-

Nakapiripirit road, Mbarara-Kikagate road, Ishaka-

Kagamba road and we have already finished

Matugga-Semuto-Kapeeka road. The Banyankore

say: “Entandikiriro y’oruhara n’ebyeyera” (balding

starts with a high hair line).

There is one tactical bottleneck, which must be dealt

with. This is the issue of hostility to the Private

Sector by elements of the political class and the

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bureaucrats. Much of the wealth is created by the

Private Sector (shops, hotels, farms, factories, mines,

etc.). When I addressed Parliament sometime ago, I

told you that there were two modern kings: the

consumer and the entrepreneur. The consumer

provides the market of what we produce. If there are

no consumers to buy what we produce, our

businesses cannot survive. On the other hand, the

entrepreneur encapsulates three elements:

entrepreneurial ‘eyes’ to see opportunity where

others have not done so, knowledge on how to

exploit that opportunity and savings to use in

exploiting that opportunity. Are such people

abundant in Uganda? If they are, why has Uganda,

indeed, why has the whole of Africa, not developed

all this time to become first World Countries? It is,

therefore, criminal for anybody to mishandle

entrepreneurs – either internal or external. It is a

betrayal for the country. Whose interests are we

working for if we do not nurture and support the

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efforts of entrepreneurs? When an entrepreneur

executes a project, he helps us to address the issue

of jobs, products of goods and services, foreign

exchange inflows or import-savings, tax generation

for the State and, therefore, increases Government’s

ability to pay salaries, provide health care, build

roads, build schools, etc. It is, therefore, criminal to

delay an entrepreneur or to ask for bribes from an

entrepreneur. All projects must be implemented

promptly.

The only aspects to be considered should be: the

ability of the entrepreneur to implement the project,

if there is any damage to the environment and if the

products are safe for the consumers. The last aspect

is the work of Uganda National Bureau of Standards

(UNBS). None of these should delay a project even

for a week because those products are well known

and there are standard ways of assessing them. How

much effluent does a milk factory of this capacity

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produce? How is it handled elsewhere? Why should,

then, a project be delayed? The hostility to the

Private Sector by both the political and the

bureaucratic classes is not new. Even in the past,

there were bouts of those mistakes culminating in

Amin’s economic war against the Asian Ugandans. In

reality it should be better called Amin’s economic

disaster.

Uganda will become a lower middle-income Country

by 2017 and an upper middle-income Country by

2032. We are, finally, harmonized with the National

Planning Authority. Let all elements of the political

class and the bureaucratic class be similarly aligned.

Uganda is unstoppable.

It is now my pleasure to launch the 2040 Vision.

I thank you.

18th April 2013 - Kololo Airstrip, Kampala

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