UGANDA | RWANDA | COOPERATION

The Uganda and Rwanda joint permanent commission meeting has restored the confidence and commitment that both countries have embarked on to revive historical cooperation.

Francis Kisirinya, the deputy executive director of Private Sector Foundation Uganda, said the three-day 11th joint permanent commission meeting that was concluded last Friday came up with many resolutions.

Kisirinya said that the agreements govern several engagements on business.

As many as 350 business people from Uganda and Rwanda attended a parallel engagement as the government-to-government meetings were ongoing.

He told New Vision on Tuesday that the business communities explored opportunities for partnerships, trade, and investment.

“We had business-to-business meetings to see what opportunities to take. We were also joined by government officials during the business meetings," said Kisirinya.

One of the areas agreed on was that at the East African Community and bilateral level, there has to be guaranteed free movement of people, goods, and capital to restore the trade levels that have declined. Uganda’s exports to Rwanda plummeted to $2m (sh7.6b) in 2020 at the peak of hostilities from $200m (sh757.8b) before 2020.

The volume of bilateral trade that stood at $350m (sh1.3 trillion) per year equally declined to $2m annually.

“There are cultural linkages between the two countries, which agree that they can have mutual benefit from their selling goods. "We agreed there should be free movement of people, goods, and capital because of mutual benefit,” said Kisirinya.

They also discussed the concerns about infrastructure. The Uganda business community said that it takes 11 hours to travel by bus to Rwanda's capital Kigali and two hours by air, plus a check-in time of three hours. They called for the building of a railroad between Uganda and Rwanda to ease movement.

They also urged Uganda and Rwanda to sign the bilateral air transport, where flights between the two countries will be treated like domestic flights instead of international flights to make flights cheap.

'Time lag'

Isaac Shinyekwa, the head of the trade and regional integration department at the Economic Policy Research Centre at Makerere University, said that following the re-opening of the border between Uganda and Rwanda, time is required for the businesses that found markets elsewhere or those that lost out to resume.

“There is a time lag." The border was closed, and there is still skepticism. The business will not automatically take off; people can’t just rush in. The government has to assure business associations, support them, and help them get back into the system,” he said.

The joint permanent commission meeting aimed at discussing areas of cooperation between the two neighboring countries, the first such forum since the normalization of relations.

The three-day meeting signaled that both sides are committed to ongoing efforts to revitalize relations as well as deepen trust, according to the Rwandan foreign affairs ministry.

Relations between Uganda and Rwanda were strained in 2018 when Kigali accused Kampala of hosting hostile groups to it, leading to the closure of the border with Uganda in February 2019. The border was re-opened in February 2022 but trade remains low.

Shinyekwa urged the two governments to resolve their security and political concerns.

“It was good the government people met. Once the rules of engagement are determined, the private sector comes in.

“The regional leaders have a dream of a single visa for tourism, free movement of goods and persons. "Integration is not what leaders agree on, but it has to be cascaded down to the business community."

The commission was revived in September 2022 during a meeting between Ugandan and Rwandan senior government officials in Uganda.

'Committed'

Elly Kamahungye, the director of regional and international affairs at Uganda’s foreign affairs ministry, said that both sides at the technical meeting found the best ways of resolving issues to facilitate the smooth flow of goods and services between the two countries.

“We remain committed to the ongoing process of consultations and discussions and urge both Ugandan and Rwandan officials to remain flexible, and dedicated and create the required conducive environment for business to thrive,” he said.

The Standard Gauge Railway, one of the Northern Corridor Projects supposed to connect Kenya’s Mombasa port to Kigali through Kampala, and the regional refined petroleum products pipeline are some of the key regional projects that Uganda and Rwanda had committed to jointly implementing before political tensions developed.

Kamahungye said that Uganda hoped that the forum in Kigali could be used to “see how together we can contribute in reviving the Northern Corridor Projects”.