President Yoweri Museveni has launched Atiak Sugar Factory in Amuru district, with a plea to local leaders to desist from fighting investment projects.
Museveni said local leaders are obsessed with the ownership of factories as opposed to boosting production in the region, an attitude he says works to frustrate development.
“When you hear Ugandans talk about factories of the Indians, that is total confusion; If I go to India and build a factory, that factory belongs to India,” he said.
He added, “Your local politicians wasted a lot of time fighting development; people are fighting development; somebody brings what you do not have and you say that you do not want it.”
Museveni said the factory will stabilise the sugar prices in the country and also create enough stock for export.
With the factory now in place, the deputy speaker Jacob Oulanyah said the region is warming up for more, as it races past the scars of the grueling Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) war that affected the area.
“So many lives are going to be touched by this single project; the over 5,000 women who are going to be part of this idea, some of them include returnees who could not be accepted back into their communities because they came with children whose fathers they don’t know,” he said.
Located in Atiak near the Uganda-South Sudan border, the factory in which Dr Amina Hersi Moghe owns a 60 per cent stake and the Uganda Development Corporation (UDC) 40 per cent on behalf of government, seeks to use its proximity to the vast South Sudan market and also wade into the DR Congo.
The factory will also produce ethanol, animal feeds and other by-products.
