The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Toronto, Canada | THE INDEPENDENT | President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has urged Ugandans living in the diaspora to utilize the available opportunities and invest back at home. Museveni made the call while closing the second annual edition of the 2023 Canada National Resistance Movement (NRM) Chapter Symposium in a virtual meeting held at State Lodge- Nakasero.
The two-day symposium which took place in Toronto, Canada, ran under the theme: “Dialogue, Unity and a Prosperous Diaspora”. “It would be good if you also participate by bringing either foreign friends to invest with us or even you yourself if you can collect your small money and add it up and put it into some of these enterprises. By combining savings, we can do more work,” Museveni said.
He informed Ugandans living in Canada that currently, the government is focused on supporting and executing the knowledge-based economy, explaining that with investment sustained, the country will achieve more. “Our people are highly educated and qualified, they have got a lot of knowledge but of course lack money. The government has been supporting them to start innovations like electric vehicles, you have heard of the Kiira electric vehicle, this is a car named after the Nile, we have got Kayoola, the electric mini-bus made by our scientists,” Museveni said.
“These are already moving on the roads, and we are supporting them. By the end of this year, we shall be rolling out more electric buses for now. If we can get investors from Canada and you people as well, with the money that you have, you can co-invest and much of this work would move faster,” he added. The President also highlighted that with the electric vehicles in place, the government is now aiming at making the electric batteries from the available lithium to be able to support the electric car’s function, adding that electric motorcycles are also being made.“
Then we have the pathogenic economy, which is the economy from diseases. The big problem of Africa is that we have been getting diseases, but foreigners have been making money from our diseases, they make vaccines, we buy them, they make therapeutics, they make diagnostics, equipment for medical use,” Museveni said. However, he noted that Ugandan scientists have started making the vaccines and drugs within and the government is supporting them.
“We have already started with some of the factories like Quality Chemicals which has been making ARVs for AIDS and Anti-malarial drugs and so on. Therefore, this is one of our priority areas, the knowledge economy based on human knowledge,” Museveni noted.
“Our people are involved in space science, and we are going to launch our own satellite, in fact, our young people have already launched one satellite for the experiment, but we are going to make a bigger and more reliable satellite. All these scientists that I am talking about, it is the government that is giving them the money, but it would be good if each of the citizens were to provide someting small. I want you to know that your country is moving forward and that we have worked with our brothers here to form the African common market to buy our products,” he further assured his audience.
The President also used the opportunity to appeal to the Ugandan Diaspora to foster value addition to Ugandan products. “If you know some groups in Canada that can help us to add value, they are most welcome. We are producing a lot of coffee now at 8 million bags, but we are getting only about $ 845 million from that big crop.
The symposium which attracted many Ugandans living in Canada was also attended by Ministers; Babirye Milly Babalanda, the Minister for Presidency, Judith Nabakooba, the Minister of Lands, Housing, and Urban Development, Ruth Acheng, Uganda’s Ambassador to Canada, among other dignitaries.
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