A team from the Reuters news agency in Nairobi has met President Yoweri Museveni and the First Lady and Minister for Education and Sports, Mrs Janet Museveni ahead of the UK-Africa trade and investment summit to be virtually held in London this week.

The President is pushing for regional and international trade with the UK given its new post- European Union (EU) status. 

First Lady Mrs Janet Museveni (centre) with Reuters bureau chief Katharine Houreld (third-left) and other officials.

The summit will be opened on Thursday by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who during the last summit asked Uganda to export beef to the sh3 trillion market.

The last summit saw 27 investment and trade deals signed with African countries worth £6.5b. Uganda pushed to have her coffee and beef exported to the UK market.

Museveni who met the Reuters bureau chief, Katharine Houreld, at Kisozi, Gomba on Sunday said: “The UK can now source good food and other rare products from relatively cheaper sources like Uganda, which has tremendously increased her exports of coffee, bananas, meat, dairy products, tea and many others including industrial goods such as cement, steel and sugar, among others. Their EU membership had tied them to high price sources. We are available now as a community of Commonwealth nations to supply the UK market.”

Museveni said this is the true shared prosperity that the National Resistance Movement (NRM) encourages with the West to build stronger and stable societies in Africa.

The Reuters team later toured the Nakasongola prototype production site for the Kiira electrical buses where their manufacturing plant for several units is located, to confirm the improvements made in Uganda’s manufacturing capabilities over the last 10 years. 

Paul Musasizi, the executive director of Kiira Motors, said: “We have production capacity for 5,000 buses annually; buses that are environmentally friendly given that we use electricity. Our buses are already being hired by private companies and plying Kampala’s roads. We are working with the President to ensure the fulfilment of the vision of Uganda producing for the greater Africa demand of 10 million vehicles by 2030, according to a World Bank study. We want to be participants in this market.”

Odrek Rwabwogo, the senior presidential advisor on special duties, accompanied the team to Nakasongola and other sites in the country. 

“Often nations that have been scarred by a history of colonialism tend to have low levels of self-confidence in matters of import substitution for key products. It is impressive to see the confidence, determination and market focus of the Kiira team in delivering a strategic product for the country and rise above the naysayers. If Korea, China, Turkey, Morocco can do this, why can’t our people do it too?” he asked.

The team later interviewed Mrs Museveni who emphasised the strong connection today between the improved focus on technical education by her ministry and the skills producing new Ugandan products in the medical, transport sectors and the other consumer goods that the team had seen. 

“We are focusing on education of the mind, the heart and the hands of the youth so as to build a better tomorrow for our country,” she said.

“In the past technical education wasn’t taken very seriously. People thought getting degrees in arts is what mattered most. Today, we have put our full emphasis on having our youth get the needed technical skills so as to fulfil the agenda of tomorrow which is a prosperous and confident nation providing jobs to her people,” she added.