The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Uganda Manufacturers Association is eyeing 30 acres of former Naguru Housing Estate to expand its showground in Lugogo to accommodate the growing number of exhibitors entering the annual International Trade Fair.
Mubarak Kirunda Nkutu, the Director Membership Services at Uganda Manufacturers Association – UMA says that the current showground has become too small. He says they need more land to expand the available space to reflect the impressive growth the trade fair records every year.
The memorandum requesting the allocation of the 30 acres of former Naguru Housing Estate was placed before President Yoweri Museveni during his visit to this year’s trade fair on October 7. Nkutu says the President pledged to respond to their demand after consultations with the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development and the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA).
This year, Nkutu says, 100 international exhibitors participated in the trade fair alongside more than 1,300 registered members of Uganda Manufacturers’ Association.
In order to create space for this year’s international trade fair, Uganda Manufacturers Association had to open the Compound of UMA Conference Hall, located East of the main showground to a group of new exhibitors sponsored by the Netherlands’ Embassy to inspire the youth into agribusiness.
However, the exhibitors say that the 27-year-old trade fair posted mixed fortune, for domestic and International Manufacturers – with some making huge sales as others counted losses.
The biggest win they say is the networking they have had with potential customers who went home with renewed confidence in their products. They hope to liquidate the numerous contacts they accumulated during the ten days’ show in the aftermath of the trade fair.
Clovis Musimbi, a Business Coordinator at Madhvani Group of Companies says the biggest win for him is the mentorship that small and medium Manufacturing companies received from their experienced counterparts.
For Musimbi, any failure to break even during this year’s trade fair should not be used to condemn the trade fair as a failure. He said the trade show should be judged on international interests positioning the small and medium Manufacturing franchise for market opportunities in existing regional and international markets.
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Because it was a syndicated land-grabbing scheme by the power that be and their foreign agents; the Naguru land is a cursed land. Cursed because, the former occupants or tenants, were not only duped, but also rudely and inhumanely ejected from it like some wild animals. Just like the Nsambya Ugandan Railways land remains a ghost land, the bitterness with which the occupants were also treated, leaves a permanent moral stain behind, to haunt the land grabbers forever.
There is nothing so horrifying like, for a place you called home, is devoured by roaring earth moving equipment before the family eyes, and as your humble household properties are scattered with nowhere to go to.
Unless it is one of the conspirators, why would UMA want a piece land whose background is tainted with inhumanity and bitterness?
From a moral, ethical and justice point of views, what took place in Naguru, Nakawa Nsambya land/properties, and even Shimoni TTC and Demonstration School lands was a sadism, which many Ugandans could not even attribute to alien former British colonial masters.