President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has held discussions with the African Union Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy, and Sustainable Environment, Ambassador Josefa Sacko, who paid a courtesy call on him this afternoon at State House Entebbe.
Ambassador Josefa Sacko was accompanied by the Minister of Agriculture, Animal Industry, and Fisheries, Frank Tumwebaze.
President Museveni and his guests discussed preparations for hosting the forthcoming Extraordinary Agricultural Summit of Heads of State and Government in Kampala in January, 2025.
The president expressed his profound gratitude for the opportunity to host the summit.
“That is music to my ears, and I am very happy to host this summit. The potential for agriculture is huge in Africa. Uganda is really good to peg our agricultural perceptions around what we have saved, because we preserved the indigenous agriculture: cows, goats, bananas, cassava,
fish, etc. Our job was to modernize and commercialize our agriculture,” Museveni said.
“When you hear that people in Africa don't have food, it is because of colonialism and the dislocation of people from their heritage. They (Africans) start despising themselves and worshipping everything foreign. For agriculture, you are definitely at home. Uganda is the
place—we have the crops of the forest, tropical savanna, and temperate crops."
The previous AU agricultural summit was held in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, in 2014.
The summit shaped the action plan around the Malabo Declaration, which emphasized the prioritisation of accelerated agricultural growth and transformation for shared prosperity and
improved livelihoods.
The meeting was also attended by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry, and Fisheries, Maj. Gen. David Kasura Kyomukama, among others.