‘I wish you a happy 2004’

Jan 02, 2004

President Yoweri Museveni addressed the nation on December 31, 2003 wishing Ugandans a prosperous new year. We bring you his speech

President Yoweri Museveni addressed the nation on December 31, 2003 wishing Ugandans a prosperous new year. Below is his speech.

Fellow Countrymen,

In the last New Year’s address, those who may remember what I said, I identified seven strategic challenges:

  • Transforming our society from a pre-industrial to an industrial modern society;

  • Creating more and more non-Government, non-primordial agricultural jobs; creating more jobs;

  • Widening the tax base;

  • More infrastructure development;

  • Market integration and market access (regionally and internationally);

  • Human resource development (Education and health for all Ugandans); and

  • Building the State.

    Since this will be a short congratulatory message to all of you on finishing the old year and starting a new one, I will not assess the progress on each of the seven points mentioned above.

    Nevertheless, the rate of industrial growth in this calendar year is estimated to have been 6.7 percent. The overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rate of growth in the Financial Year 2003/2004 will be 5.6 percent.

    Both the industrial rate of growth and overall GDP rate of growth are good but could be better. What is important, however, is that we started getting export-oriented, value addition industries in a number of areas.

    I was able to notice, in the course of the year, such export-oriented, value addition industries in the following areas: coffee processing; textiles and garments; fruit processing; and honey processing.

    We also got enquiries from Thailand into the possibility of processing banana juice and from Japan into the possibility of transforming banana fibres (ebyayi, ebireere, pot labolo ) into paper. It is the very first time since the days of Adam and Eve that processed Ugandan coffee (roasted and ground) is being sold in European supermarkets.

    By so doing and provided we consolidate this, we shall be getting from ten to twenty times more amount of forex compared to what we get from selling Kasse Arabica coffee i.e. de-husked and graded coffee – graded according to size and sold as raw material.

    According to the Bank of Uganda figures, I notice that in the last three months, Uganda is earning more than US$ 300,000 per month from the export of garments to the USA. This is still on a small scale but very significant. This is real liberation, liberation from slavery of selling raw materials.

    Mrs. Maria Odido, the Chairperson of The Uganda National Apiary Development Organisation (TUNADO), recently, opened a high quality, honey-processing factory in Arua. These new factories (coffee roasting and grinding, textiles and garments, honey processing and fruit processing) mean that Ugandans have now got three new possibilities:
  • new jobs,
  • the beginnings of more foreign currency and
  • greater opportunity for our rural population in producing raw materials for these factories.

    Since many decades ago, we have been producing coffee and cotton as raw materials. The greater value of that coffee, however, has been going to outsiders – both in terms of much greater portion of cash and in terms of jobs.

    The National Resistance Movement in which I would like all of us to join is to ensure that we add value, as we have started doing, to both coffee and cotton by exporting roasted and ground coffee rather than bean coffee and exporting yarn, textiles and garments instead of lint cotton. Calling this movement of resistance, when it comes to fruits, honey, vanilla and silk.

    These are new cash products. Factories for processing fruits, honey and silk have come up. We can, therefore, get money from these products at the two levels: the level of the farmers and the level of the export earnings (more forex).

    I am, therefore, informing Ugandan farmers that we can get cash from producing fruits, silk and honey. This should supplement, in the rural area, what we are already getting from coffee, cotton, banana, upland rice in some areas, milk, beef, tobacco and tea. I long ago told our farmers not to behave as children when they are playing by walking on one leg (kaichokomba, kukongojja, pye ki tyen acel.). When you kukongojja, you cannot go far.

    Similarly, farmers should arrange their farms by basing them on multiple products according to the area. The people of Bundibugyo, that most remote part of Uganda, give a good example. Their economy is based, in each homestead, on the following products: coffee, vanilla, palm oil, upland rice, cocoa and other foodstuffs.

    When we were in the National Executive Council (NEC) at Kyankwanzi, a delegate from Bundibugyo told us that in one parish, near the Congo border, our citizens there had bought twelve pick-up vehicles.

    The leaders must, therefore, help our people in all the areas of our country to identify a package of farming activities they can engage in so as to get diversified and, therefore, secure homestead incomes. The district of Mukono is currently bursting with energy because of vanilla. I congratulate them. However, I would not like them to kukongojja.

    The vanilla prices are now very high because of the shortage in vanilla supply that was created by the turmoil in Madagascar – the former big supplier. Madagascar has now settled down. In time, the price will come down like it happens to all raw materials.

    Therefore, our Mukono people should emulate their compatriots in Bundibugyo. They should have a package of homestead activities: vanilla, fish farming, fruit farming, cocoa, coffee, forestry products and dairy farming or any other mix; but do not kukongojja on vanilla only.

    Your prosperity will be short-lived and I do not want that. I want sustained prosperity. More importantly, however, the Ministry of Industry (should, right now, start identifying the ways in which added value (industrial processing) can be added to vanilla. What industrial or confectionery products do we get from vanilla? Those should be made here and their price will be much higher and more stable.

    In this area of North Ankole (where I am speaking from today), I long ago advised them not to Kuchokomba (kukongojja) by just depending on selling milk alone, a product we commercialised for them since fourteen years ago. I advised their leaders to help them have a package of the following products: milk, beef, fruits, goats, silk and forest products especially (eucalyptus).

    When I fly over the area, I do not see the additional activities. It is still milk only. Yet this one cash product, milk, has already transformed the area. All people live in mabati houses. Many children are going to schools. How much more would they have achieved if that package of activities, which I recommend, had been developed? They would have achieved much more.

    One very important export that was introduced by NRM is fish. In the month of September, processed fish brought in US$ 7.45 million. This figure was higher than the coffee earnings for the same month (US$ 6.9 Million).

    Our farmers who live near our numerous swamps in Kabale, Ntungamo, Mbarara, Bushenyi, Masaka, Mpigi, Mubende, Mukono, Wakiso, Lira, Apach, Gulu, Soroti, Kumi, Pallisa, Tororo, Iganga, etc. can create fish ponds on the edges of these huge and extensive swamps (slow flowing rivers in reality).

    A lot of cash for our rural families in these areas could be generated. It would also generate more employment because more fishponds would mean more fish; more fish would mean more fish factories, more jobs and more forex. We now have ten fish factories.

    I must congratulate the people of Kanungu. When I first went to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, three years ago, I noticed that the people near the Forest had no cash crops. I told the local leaders to advise these people to plant tea, Arabica coffee and fruits.

    When I went back recently, in the month of August, I found that so many small tea estates had sprung up. I was very pleased. I hope they will grow more tea but will also introduce fruits and Arabica coffee.

    Although our strategy of value addition for an export– oriented strategy has not taken off fully, the export earnings are beginning to improve. The Deputy Governor of Bank of Uganda, Mr. Opio Okello, told me the other day that by the end of October the total earnings from visible exports (coffee, tea, fish, cotton etc) were US$ 452.6 million; the invisible exports (Tourism, Kyeyo etc) had brought in US$ 556.5 million.

    Therefore, even before the calendar year has ended, our combined external earnings are already more than US$ 1 billion. This does not include what we get from donors except small in-flows of NGOs. This is not an exceptionally good performance but it is good.

    Our young and highly trained scientists at Makerere and Mbarara Universities as well as the natural chemo-therapeutic centre at Wandegeya are also advancing the ancient heritage of our ancestors by describing, in scientific terms, our ancient production processes: making banana juice (kusogora omubisi, kunyuuka, biyo), toothpaste (muteete), millet porridge (obushera, obusera, nyuka kal), Ankole cattle beef, shea butter oil, muhoko products and many other products I would not like to talk about here, for reasons intellectual properties.

    Our scientists are re-affirming that Africa is the origin of man and also the origin of knowledge. Very soon, Ugandan scientists, drawing on the knowledge of their ancestors, will be able to liberate the whole of humanity from many diseases, pests, parasites and junk food.

    The Government is determined to support these scientists. However, the present flabby procedures of government planning must be revamped. In particular, the President of the Republic, operating through the Presidential Economic Council and working with the Planning Commission must have more powers to support industrialisation. The work of our scientists will benefit from that more streamlined procedure.

    In order to transform our society from the pre-industrial state to a modern, industrial state, we must, in the Public Service, emphasise the scientists. It is not correct to emphasise the administrators and the political class and neglect the scientists.

    If anybody must come first, especially when the resources are limited, it must be the scientist because he is the one to help us get out of the backwardness. Throughout the millennia, any people who lag behind in science and technology either perish or become slaves.

    For instance Egypt, (Mizram), was conquered by the Hyksos who came in from Syria and Canaan, and ruled it from 1567-1574 as Pharaohs, because Egypt had lagged behind in metallurgy (it was dependent on brass weapons when the Hyskos were using iron tools) The whole of Africa (except for Ethiopia) was colonised because we lagged behind in gunpowder technology.

    Science is the future; it is the basis for survival; it is the basis for freedom and independence. Therefore, when it comes to remuneration, the scientists must be emphasised ahead of everybody else. Then you may add the managers, etc. and some other categories of people.

    The implementation machinery of the Government is not satisfactory to me at all: it is too slow and too indifferent to the needs of the people.

    This frustrates the industrialisation process as well as the poverty eradication programmes at the homestead levels. I am discussing this with the Cabinet.

    We need serious rectification measures here.

    By the 26th of January 2004, I will communicate to the country the rectification measures that will have been agreed upon in respect of setting up an adequate industrialisation fund, bring micro – finance closer to the people as promised in my manifesto and addressing other implementation weaknesses.

    Now that we have resolved the biggest strategic bottleneck. to our development, lack of access to the huge and lucrative markets of the USA, EU and Japan, it is my intention to insist on vigorous implementation of our export oriented industrialisation programme and homestead poverty eradication.

    Therefore, all those involved in the government must play their part or vacate their positions for those who can. “Lukewarmness” to the interests of the people is no longer acceptable to me.

    The Kony terror in the North East has been defeated decisively. Many Kony fighters were killed. 568 reporters have come from the bush in 2003. A total number of 7,299 abductees have been liberated by the UPDF this year. The remnants of Kony have now fled back to the Acholi area.

    The few that were remaining in the Lango area are being swept by the UPDF. In particular, I need to salute the people of Teso and the people of Lango, as well as their leaders, for rising up against these hoodlums. I also salute the people of Acholi for standing up against these killers all those years.

    Apart from a few irresponsible leaders, the Acholi people have long resisted these killers. Given the improved equipment of the UPDF, it is only a matter of time before the UPDF kills Otti and Kony just as we killed many of the bandit leaders. The North will get peace.

    AIDS still remains a problem. We must close all the loopholes through which AIDS comes. The main route is promiscuity. Anti-Retroviral (ARV) are not a cure. They prolong life all right. However, that life is permanently bruised.

    Somebody cannot lead a full life with AIDS but dependent on ARVs. Some of our soldiers have died because of engaging in strenuous exercises. ARVs could not protect them. Even with the use of ARVs one is already disabled. It is, of course, better than dying; but it is not a full life.

    Therefore, prevention remains the only real solution for AIDS. Avoid promiscuity; avoid unprotected sex if you are promiscuous; do not share needles for injections — use disposable needles and syringes; medical people must ensure that blood supply is safe for blood transfusion; and those who engage in traditional circumcision, do not share the knife.

    I congratulate all of you on going through 2003 and I wish all of you a prosperous 2004.
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