Museveni, UK envoy discuss health, investment, energy development

President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has met with the UK Trade envoy for Uganda and Rwanda, Lord Popat together with the British High Commissioner to Uganda, Kate Airey.

The meeting held at Nakasero State Lodge saw the principles discuss issues of mutual interest between Uganda and the United Kingdom in various sectors including health, investment, energy, transport and agriculture among others.

The president said Uganda is focusing on improving the standards and processing of agricultural products that are acceptable to the international market.

““Standards and processing of agricultural products is crucial, like poultry products, milk, sugar, etc. They are very cheap because of low cost of production,” he said.

Museveni encouraged his guests to attract more investors from UK to come and invest in Uganda because Uganda is rich in minerals.

“Get me people to link up with our people here to start producing cobalt batteries because we have a lot of phosphate here instead of exporting law materials.”

Lord Popat revealed that they have a grand plan of taking Ugandan qualified nurses to work in the UK, adding that they chose Uganda because they are English speakers and they have so much in common.

“Health has become a very important issue. We want to start taking Ugandan nurses to the UK for work. Ugandans are English speakers which is an advantage to them, he said.

He said negotiations are already underway with the Ministry of Health Permanent Secretary, Dr. Diana Atwine.

“Dr. Diana is going to collect their CVs. We want to train and up-skill the Ugandan nurses in the UK,” he revealed.

Uganda, he said, is a land linked country and so good for investment.

On the side of agriculture, Lord Popat said “Uganda’s culture is agriculture. We want to support this particular area of agriculture because the demand for agricultural products is high in the UK.”

He wondered why Uganda is so rich underground, but so poor on the surface.

“Let us sort out this. I will bring you a delegation for mineral investors,” he added.

On her part, the UK High Commissioner to Uganda, Kate Airey emphasized the need to have direct flights to the UK to promote tourism and links with the UK.

The meeting was also attended by the Minister of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives,  Mwebesa Francis and Amb. Beatrice Pachunega, among others.