By

H.E. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni

PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF UGANDA
Speech at the coordinators Meeting on the Implementation of the
Follow-up Actions of the Beijing Summit of the China-Africa
Cooperation (FOCAC)
Your Excellency President Xi Jinping;

Your Excellences;

Ladies and Gentlemen.

In September last year, Your Excellency President Xi Jinping, the

Government and people of this Great Nation hosted the 3rd FOCAC
Summit bringing together African Leaders to deliberate on the way
forward on the 3rd FOCAC Cycle running between 2019-2021. The
theme of our meeting was: “China and Africa: Toward an Even
Stronger Community with a shared Future through Win-Win
Cooperation." We had a very successful Conference which adopted
two essential outcome documents including: “Beijing Declaration:
Toward an Even stronger China – Africa Community with a shared
Future” and the“Beijing Action Plan 2019-2021.” In these two
essential documents, we agreed and mapped out a framework
through which we are pursuing this cooperation for mutual benefit.

However, even before we talk about the “Beijing Declaration”, let us,
first, cast a glance abit further in recent history. By 1900, the
whole of Africa had been colonized by the Western Imperialist
countries of Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Holland
except for Ethiopia that had defeated the Italian invaders in 1896.
The infamous Congress of Berlin, 1884-85, of the West European
Powers, had agreed that Africa, having gone through 400 years of
slave-trade by that time, should be percelled out into colonies of the

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respective European Powers. This ignominious capitulation by
Africa was on account of internal weaknesses which we do not have
time to go into here.

However, by 1994, South Africa, the last occupied country in Africa,

had been re-conquered by the indigenous people. One of the three
factors that enabled Africa to end these five centuries of shame (the
slave-trade and the colonial times), were two happy events that took
place in Europe and Asia. The first happy event was the October
Communist Revolution in the Soviet Union and the second was the
Communist victory, here, in China, in 1949.

These two events meant that an anti-imperialist camp had emerged

that, eventually, contributed to the liberation of Africa. The other
two factors that helped us to regain our freedom were the continued
resistance of our people, this time led by the more modern-minded
nationalist freedom fighters unlike the chiefs who, in vain, tried to
resist; and the mutual bleeding of the imperialist countries in the
form of the 1st and 2nd World Wars. Those inter-imperialist wars,
weakened them so much that they could not re-assert their
positions in the colonies after the wars, not for want of trying but
on account of the change of the balance of forces in the world.

The massive anti-colonial movement in Africa, India, Indonesia,

Indo-China, etc., was now backed by the socialist camp at the
global level.

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The Soviet Union, China,North Korea, Cuba, etc., gave serious
military, political and diplomatic support to the anti-Colonial
Movements in Africa and Asia. Therefore, the present relationship
between China and Africa is not new. Apart from the ancient links
between China and the East African Coast, that relationship was
intensified in the anti-colonial period. After colonialism, even when
China itself was still under-developed, they, nevertheless, extended
economic solidarity to Africa as shown by the TAZARA project that
helped Zambia and Botswana to beat the blockade of the White
Fascists and colonial regimes of Southern Africa in the 1960s (the
Portuguese in Mozambique and Angola, the Ian Smith regime in
Zimbabwe and the racists in South Africa and Namibia).

As we gather here, therefore, we cannot forget to salute the

Communist Parties of China, the USSR, Cuba and the other
socialist countries that constituted the third factor in our
emancipation

Furthermore, we should salute the Communist Party of China for

correctly handling the internal situation and within 70 years
propelling China from position no. 45 in the global economy with an
economy of $947 (using GDP per capita)in 1949in terms of the size
of the economy to the second biggest economy today. On account
of that capacity, China is able to give Africa the massive solidarity
they have extended to us, which nobody else was prepared to
extend to us. One of our engineers recently told me that the
Uganda Railways tried in vain to get support from the World Bank

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until one official told them that countries that build railways do so
with “their own money”. Such a statement from an economist that,
purports to support Africa’s transformation through Private-Sector
led growth, shows that some actors are not serious. How will the
private-sector grow if it is bedeviled with expensive transport costs,
expensive electricity costs or no electricity at all, expensive cost of
money, etc.? It is against that negativity, that China’s solidarity
should be measured.

China, of course, has the advantage of having a huge area of land of

3million square miles with all the natural resources therein and a
population of 1.3billion people, under one political authority.

Africa, on the other hand, is a huge area of about 12million square

miles, 4 times the size of China, currently with a population of
1.25billion people that will be 2.5billion by 2050. One of the
complications, however, is that Africa, on account of history, is still
divided into 54 countries with, of course, the corresponding number
of political authorities. The fragmentation of the African market has
been one of the 10 strategic bottlenecks that were detected over the
last 50 plus years of struggle and shared with our African
brethrens.

During the 23rd APRM session of June, 2015 in South Africa, these
strategic bottlenecks were adopted as the shared view point of
Africa with some modifications.

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The strategic bottlenecks of Africa’s growth and transformation are:

Ideological disorientation where identity (tribe, religion, gender) is

taken to be more important than interests e.g. economic prosperity
through trade and exchange of goods and services; this emphasis
on identity leads to sectarianism which undermines the creation of
capable State pillars (Army etc.); the State, therefore, cannot guard
peace, hence the calling in of the ineffective UN; the philosophical
mistake of not realizing the importance of the private sector and,
therefore, disrupting it as was done by Idi Amin in Uganda when he
expelled our Asians who formed the bulk of our entrepreneurial
class; this led to the collapse of the small monetary economic
sector of Uganda of that time (1972 – 1986); the under-development
of the infrastructure (the railways, electricity, ICT backbone, piped
water, irrigation systems etc.); this leads to high costs of doing
business and undermines the profitability of companies, para-
statals or private; I have already referred to this aspect earlier in
these remarks;

I have already referred to the bottleneck of the fragmented African

Market; If one produces but one does not get enough buyers, that
business will collapse; the producer and the buyer are the life blood
of modern business; the more buyers you have, the better for the
business; fortunately, Africa is moving well on this issue of market
integration through the East African Community (EAC), the
Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the
Southern African Development Community (SADEC), the Economic

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Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and, ever since the
Abuja Treaty of 1991, the African Common Market and, more
recently, the CFTA. It was not until the Lagos Plan of Action of
July, 1980, that our leaders understood this, 25 years after Sudan’s
independence in 1955

The export of raw-materials, thereby losing money and jobs to the

outside world was also another bottleneck causing endless
haemorrhage; hence, the need for industrialization.

The underdevelopment of the human resource through lack of

education and on account of poor health was another bottleneck.
However, many African countries, after independence, expanded
education. In Uganda, today, 8.8million children are in the Primary
Schools, 1.6million are in the Secondary Schools, 200,000 are in
the Universities and 70,000 are in Vocational Schools. This is a
total of 10.7million Ugandans, which is 26% of the total population.
This figure does not include those in the pre-primary classes. The
health of the Africans has also, somewhat, improved on account of,
mainly, immunization. That is why the population has grown from
120million people in 1900 to, today, 1.25bn.

Then there is the under-development of Agriculture in spite of the

estimated 874 million hectares of good arable land.

The under-development of the services sector (banking, insurance,

tourism) leaves much of Africa’s potential in this area
underdeveloped. Some of it is affected by insecurity and terrorist
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activities on account of the weak State structures (especially the
Army) already referred to above.

Then, finally, for a long time, there was the problem of suppressing
democracy, which created unaccountable regimes. This problem
has been addressed almost everywhere, although we need to
continue refining the quality.

The good thing is that many African leaders are now aware of this
multi-dimensional challenge to Africa’s growth and transformation,
unlike in the past when some of the actors would only emphasize
one dimension such as education and forget all the others. When
you are aware of a problem, then you cannot fail to solve it.

Furthermore, in this connection, President XiJin Ping’s eight points

of cooperation coincide with some of the bottlenecks. Especially, the
bottleneck of under-developed infrastructure coincides with
President Xi Jin Ping’s infrastructure connectivity vision. The other
points in the Beijing Declaration are:

Industrial promotion;

Infrastructure connectivity, as mentioned above;

Trade facilitation;

Green development;

Capacity building;

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Health care;

People to people exchange;

Peace and security.

Africa and China need to emphasize what some people do not seem
to remember. Modern wealth and jobs creation, means, as already
alluded to in these remarks, understanding the importance of two
primary actors: the producer and consumer. When I buy what you
produce, I am supporting your prosperity and vice-versa. High
levels of production without high levels of consumption, will result
into a disequilibrium like that that occurred in 1929 that preceded
the Great Depression in the capitalist World.

Finally, Africa and China should, therefore, establish an equitable

trade and development model that should emancipate humanity
from the primitive tendencies of win-lose situations. We should all
work for win-win frameworks. China, by supporting infrastructure,
which is the base of the production of tradable goods and services is
already moving in the right direction. Indeed, all the other seven
points in the Beijing Declaration are very crucial and coincide with
the desired resolution of the strategic bottlenecks that we had
independently identified. Let China and Africa move forward. We are
moving in the right direction. I thank you all.