On Tuesday 10 March in Kampala, the Ugandan authorities and the European Union announced the launch of the Sustainable Business for Uganda (SB4U) Platform.
This initiative aims to bring both the Ugandan and European public and private sectors around the same table in order to identify the major obstacles to bilateral trade and European investment in Uganda by taking initiatives to address them on the basis of an already existing roadmap.
This innovative platform, unprecedented in Africa, will be responsible for facilitating business and job creation in Uganda. It is part of a larger programme in this area financed by the European Development Fund to the tune of €100 million over five years. Two million from this envelope will fund a permanent secretariat to prepare and support the work of the platform participants, who will meet four times a year. The objective is that after five years, this platform will be self-financed by the private sector.
Participating from the Ugandan side is the Private Sector Foundation Uganda, which brings together the country's largest companies. On the other hand, on the European side, the choice was made not to choose the heads of the branches of large groups, but to choose the heads of medium-sized companies. The following were invited to attend: Inez van Oord from the Netherlands, who represents Dutch companies in Uganda, Bernard Wright from Ireland, director of the satellite services company Geo Gecko, and Dan Kaagaard from Denmark, CEO of the Riis Coffee Group.
At the closing ceremony of the 1st Uganda-EU Business Forum (see EUROPE 12442/2), the EU Ambassador to Uganda, Attilio Pacifici, welcomed the call for a renewal in Euro-Ugandan relations, acknowledging that the European approach had so far been “a little too traditional”, based more on cooperation and development than on trade expansion. The business interest is strong, witnessed by the number of participants at the forum, he noted, announcing that such an initiative would be repeated in the future.
Mr Pacifici referred to the results of a survey of 107 European companies active in the country. “These companies are ready to invest €646 million over the next five years. So far they have created more than 32,000 jobs and invested €1.5 billion”.
The main concerns of European companies operating in Uganda relate to skills and training, access to finance, governance and corruption. The EU and Uganda are also in the process of setting up a mechanism within the platform's secretariat to allow whistleblowers to expose corruption within the Ugandan administration. This mechanism would be more intended to inform for statistical purposes than to punish, according to our information.
Closing the forum, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni called on European companies to invest in Uganda and Africa, “a market of 2.5 billion people within 30 years”. He welcomed the eventual goal of establishing an Africa Continental Free Trade Area to address the current fragmentation.
According to Museveni, the EU and Uganda should focus their efforts on “the uncontroversial issue of business” rather than on societal issues such as homosexuality. The objective, he added, taking the example of international trade in cotton, is to allow companies based in his country to upscale instead of being satisfied with raw material work.
In power since 1986, the Ugandan president has touted his country as a politically stable one with institutions capable of facilitating the development of the private sector. In addition to the deployment of infrastructure, he pointed out several factors that complicate and increase the costs of businesses: training, corruption, the cost of funds. For this, he accused the banks, which he has always refused to privatise, of being “parasites” who promote usury and a culture of importing.
The regulatory framework is another “big challenge,” said Elly Karuhanga, president of the Uganda Private Sector Foundation, citing the example of legislation that requires three years of work before it is passed. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)