Uganda, Rwanda discuss common border security

By Abdulkarim Ssengendo

Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) and Rwanda Defense Forces (RDF) have signed a security agreement with the focus to maintain peace and security along their common borders.

The agreement was signed on Thursday at Lake View Resort Hotel in Mbarara during the proximity division commanders and intelligence officers meeting.

The meeting was attended by officers from both countries, including division and brigade commanders and intelligence officers.

Maj Gen Alex Kagame, 2nd division commander of RDF headed the Rwandan delegation while Brig Gen Patrick Kankiriho, UPDF’s 2nd division commander was the head of the Ugandan delegation.

UPDF 2nd division and RDF 2nd division cover the borders of Uganda, Rwanda and Congo.

During the one-day meeting, the two parties agreed to draw a mechanism on how they could implement the resolutions that were reached between the two Presidents of the two neighbouring countries.


“Following the several meetings by the Presidents, they agreed that at our division level we should meet and interact so that we look at the security along our border and it is healthier that we keep checking on our border security,” said Kankiriho.

The two parties also looked at how to incorporate other stakeholders like civil authorities and other stakeholders in security meetings and also how to uplift their intelligence gathering and sharing at local levels.

Besides agreeing to cut the routes and check well illegal immigrants, the two coutnries looked at the current event of terrorism and how to fight it.

Before the cordial meeting, the officers visited prominent farmers in Biharwe sub-county in Mbarara district to show how some business people had progressed.

The farmers have different cows of different breeds.

It was the second such a kind of meeting, with the first have been held earlier in May this year in Rwanda

The two countries’ plan is to continue meeting after every four months to exchange visits of security forces at tactical level, targeted especiallyat creating a mechanism on intelligence and information gathering.

“The border relations between Uganda and Rwanda is very good. That’s why we are here in Uganda, we wouldn’t have come if the two countries had tensions,” said RDF’s Kagame.

On talk that Rwanda Forces were involved in the ongoing Congo war,  Kagame called such “baseless rumors” and said even when the fighting broke at the Uganda-Bunagana border, they were shocked and had to ask Uganda what was going on.

He said Congo has its own genocidal problems which “shouldn’t be attributed to any neighboring country.”

He was surprised to hear that Rwanda was accused by United Nations and Congo over the M23 war.

On the same matter, Kankiriho said there were so many ways of proving whether Rwanda or Uganda were in Congo and asked those alleging so to go on ground and find the truth instead of basing on false information.