President Museveni has said that Uganda will not give in to acts of “provocation and arrogance” by the World Bank, following its decision to suspend new public financing over Uganda’s passing of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill into law.
In a statement released on Thursday, 17 August 2023, Museveni reiterated what he described as contradictions of foreign aid to Africa, saying it has not been at the core of spearheading development on the continent in general and in Uganda in particular.
The President said while Uganda welcomes development partners, “many of the loans and aid packages, are either of no value addition to the Country or are even anti-growth, all together.”
He cited an example of the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries, where he said he discovered that a total of USD 800million had been borrowed over a period of ten years, “but that Ministry did not have zonal diagnostic labs and Research centres, did not repair the mechanization centres and did not buy the mechanization equipment like combine harvesters or even tractors, no irrigation equipment for farmers, no value addition equipment, etc. Much of that money was spent on seminars etc.”
“Therefore, most of the borrowing has been having no value addition to our transformation journey,” he added.
The Ugandan leaders instead explained that in some cases, the aid policies are directly against growth.
“Uganda has been manufacturing ARVs and other medical drugs at our Quality Chemicals factory in Kampala – Luzira. The Aid givers from abroad, for a long time, were not allowing us to use their money to buy the Ugandan manufactured drugs. To qualify for aid, we had to forget our own industrialization and jobs creation for our People and support, with our Kujanjabisa (getting treatment), the jobs creation for other people,” Mr Museveni said.
“Who, then, permits the signing of such distortion causing agreements to our economy? It is the neo-colonial lobby in the country behind my back. That is why, on the 19th of June, 2017, I wrote a directive forbidding the contracting of more loans without my express approval,” he added.
Museveni listed five strategic factors that are crucial for Uganda’s unstoppable journey of social-economic transformation.
He listed them as the 4 principles of the NRM－Patriotism, Pan-Africanism, Social-economic transformation and democracy; a Powerful People’s Army, that led the armed resistance from 1971-1986 and has guaranteed peace in Uganda against all and sundry, ever since, and the Private Sector of the Ugandan farmers, the manufacturers (indigenous and expatriate), the investors in the Services Sector, the investors in the ICT.
Others are the core infrastructure such as some of the roads, the electricity, the railway, the piped water, the ICT backbone, the social infrastructure – education and health; and the market to buy the goods and services produced in the economy by the private sector and also the profit-oriented parastatals, that includes the internal market of 46million Ugandans, the 300million EAC members, the 643 million COMESA citizens and the 1.5billion Africans.
“These are the five factors that have enabled the economy of Uganda to grow from USD1.5 billion to USD 55 million by the end of this financial year, or $156.954 by the PPP method. It is these factors that we are using through aggressive value-addition, full monetization of the economy, expanding the services sector and building the knowledge economy, to qualitatively catapult our economy to the size of USD550billion, in the next few years,” he said.
“Therefore, the World Bank and other external actors, have no capacity to interrupt our transformation journey. It is actually the internal weaknesses, that delay our forward march and that must and will be crushed,” he added.