President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has highlighted Uganda’s progress towards a knowledge-based economy, marking a pivotal shift in the nation’s economic development. He also vowed to eliminate the money consuming government agencies like Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) and Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) which he argued have contributed littled to economic growth and national development .
President Museveni described this fifth phase as one that moves beyond basic raw material processing to embrace advanced science and technical skills.
“This is where the automobile industry, vaccine production, and the assembly and manufacturing of computers and computer parts come in,” he stated, pointing to these sectors as critical drivers of economic transformation. The President’s vision reflects a commitment to innovation and self-sufficiency, setting the stage for Uganda’s continued growth in a globalized, technology-driven landscape.
“Logically, I can’t work with agencies. They do little or no work, yet we are always striving to work for the mass market, aiming to reach everyone. We are incompatible with UCDA and DDA. When they work, they only serve a few, and they cannot reach everyone.
“I even feel embarrassed talking about this controversy. The whole country talking about coffee , ignoring what’s important. We had been making mistakes for the past 24 years, from 1962 to 1986. But we came with a mission to restore the “three C’s” islands—coffee, cotton, and copper—as well as tea and tourism, which had been damaged by Amin’s regime.
To present this mission to Ugandans in 1986, Museveni said they created the NRM’s 10-Point Program. Point 5 focused on building an integrated, independent, and self-sustaining economy with horizontal and vertical linkages. “Despite obstructions from parasites, the uninformed, and traitors, we have adhered to this goal and successfully progressed through five phases.
The basic human needs include food, clothing, shelter, transportation (such as vehicles), medicine, and utilities like electricity. Services that fulfill these needs, such as education, also have strong potential to generate income. Ugandans should get rid of imported clothes, especially second-hand garments, which are often referred to as “dead people’s clothes,” he argued .
“We are now a middle-income country. The groups spreading misinformation about the restructuring of parasitic agencies, especially in the coffee sector, are a disgrace to the nation. I’m embarrassed to even engage in this controversy. How can someone who genuinely wants the country to progress spend a week debating such an obvious issue?
Suppose we were only doing coffee and our wonderful UCDA, How would the country survive with a population of 46 million? These side agencies, UNRA, UCDA, DDA, etc, were temporary measures that I accepted at the beginning of our government mainly because of the low pay for our public servants and their low enthusiasm and motivation for work, Museveni said in his televised nation address.
The groups that have been misinforming the public recently about the parasitic agencies that we are rationalizing are a disgrace to the country.
” On the formation of MDAs: The logic was that for particular projects, to ensure implementation, create a side group outside public service, pay them well, and facilitate them so that the projects are implemented. I didn’t fully accept this logic but I also didn’t oppose it because we had bigger problems at the time.
It’s those under NARO who truly support the development and growth of our cash crops not UCDA, whose employees were receiving high salaries while scientists, who work just as hard, were earning very little,” he added.
