KYANKWANZI, (The Southern African Times) – Chinese private investment in Uganda is growing while Westerners are losing appetite to put money to work in the country, President Yoweri Museveni told Reuters, pledging to step up efforts to tackle corruption that have made slow progress.
Museveni, in power since 1986 and one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders, said Uganda was working to sign a number of deals with Chinese private sector lenders in sectors such as agro- and fertilizer-processing, minerals processing and textiles.
“The Western companies have lost their spectacles; they no longer have the eyes to see opportunities. But the Chinese see opportunities, and they come, and they are knocking, they are coming very vigorously,” Museveni told Reuters. “But (Western companies) are saturated with wealth. They are not bothered.”
Chinese state entities and private-sector firms have long been a driving force of investment in Africa, lending countries on the continent hundreds of billions of dollars as part of President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
According to the Uganda Investment Authority, the country ranked third in Africa on foreign direct investment (FDI) from China in recent years.
The ties have not been without conflict, however.
A parliamentary probe in October concluded that China had imposed onerous conditions on a $200 million loan to Kampala, including the potential forfeiture of the east African country’s sole international airport.
Museveni flatly denied using the airport as collateral.
“I don’t remember mortgaging the airport for anything,” Museveni said, adding Kampala would pay what it owed to China. “There is no problem, they will be paid.”
Museveni’s administration, seeking to finance its infrastructure construction programme and shore up political support, has secured large credit lines from China over the last decade.
“The bombs which they exploded in Kampala recently, we have some indication that they were coordinating with groups in Kenya and in Somalia,” Museveni said. “Maybe not command and control but collaboration.”
He was coordinating the operation with Congo’s president, Museveni said, but he did not answer a question whether there was coordination with Rwanda, which also has security interests in eastern Congo, and which has fought with Ugandan troops there before.
Uganda said on Friday that its troops sent this week into eastern Democratic Republic of Congo would stay as long as needed to defeat Islamist militants.
