Overview:
Uganda directs its Gulf embassies to focus on investment, exports and tourism, as the country pursues a $500 billion economic growth target by 2040.
Uganda is sharpening the economic mandate of its embassies in the Gulf, instructing them to focus squarely on attracting investment, growing export markets and bringing in tourists, as the country pushes ahead with a target to expand its economy tenfold to $500 billion by 2040.
The push was the focus of a retreat held in Istanbul from 21 to 25 June, organised jointly by Uganda’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development. It brought together officials from missions in Riyadh, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Ankara under the theme “Unlocking Uganda’s Trade and Investment Potential from the Interventions of Economic and Commercial Diplomacy.”
The Ministry of Finance has told missions to concentrate on three deliverables above all else: foreign direct investment and diaspora remittances, export markets, and tourist arrivals. That mandate framed much of the discussion in Istanbul, where ambassadors accounted for progress against half-year targets and agreed work plans for the 2026/27 financial year.
The push is rooted in the scale of Uganda’s economic ambition. The country wants to expand its economy from roughly $50 billion today to $500 billion by 2040, under what officials call the Tenfold Growth Strategy. The plan rests on four priority sectors — agro-industrialisation, tourism, mineral development, and science and technology — and requires the economy to roughly double in size every five years, a pace that depends heavily on exports, foreign investment and diaspora remittances reaching Uganda from abroad.
To operationalise that ambition abroad, the government has rolled out an Economic and Commercial Diplomacy Strategy that sets out how missions should engage the global economy: widening market access for Ugandan goods and services, courting investment in priority sectors, and using diplomatic relationships to support the country’s development plans.
Ambassador Henry Mayega, who heads the International Economic Cooperation Department, opened proceedings by noting that missions have received increased funding from the Ministry of Finance over the past two financial years, and should use it to chase realistic, measurable targets rather than spread themselves thin. “Missions have received improved funding and are therefore encouraged to prioritise achievable targets and focus on activities with measurable and tangible outcomes,” he said.
Ambassador Richard Kabonero, who heads the recently created Economic and Commercial Diplomacy Hub, used the retreat to address recurring weaknesses standing in the way of stronger investment and export results, including gaps in coordination with Kampala, limited engagement with stakeholders, and a shortage of reliable trade information reaching investors and exporters. He pressed missions to tighten their reporting and align their work more closely with the Tenfold Growth Strategy, the Fourth National Development Plan and Vision 2040. “We are building the capacity of our diplomats and stakeholders and providing feedback on Half-Term Performance for FY 2025/26 and Work Plans for 2026/27 to the Ministry of Finance,” Kabonero said.
Joseph Enyimu, a commissioner at the Ministry of Finance, briefed missions on the Middle East’s strategic outlook, intended to help Gulf-based embassies in particular sharpen how they pursue investment and export opportunities.
Uganda’s ambassador to Türkiye, Nusura Tiperu, who hosted the retreat, said Istanbul’s position as a hub linking Asia, Europe and the Middle East made it a fitting venue from which to coordinate investment and trade efforts across the wider region. She credited close cooperation between the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Finance for keeping the retreat’s economic targets aligned with diplomatic activity on the ground.
The Istanbul retreat closes a cycle of regional reviews held earlier this year covering Uganda’s missions in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe and the Americas, meaning every Ugandan mission with an economic mandate has now had its investment, export and tourism performance assessed against the same national targets.
The pressure on those missions is rising alongside the scale of Uganda’s ambition. The country’s GDP has grown from about $34.7 billion in the 2019/20 financial year to roughly $61.3 billion in 2024/25, and is projected to reach about $66.1 billion by the end of the current financial year — solid progress, but still far short of the $500 billion goal set for 2040. Trade officials have acknowledged that reaching that figure will take more than policy statements; it will require export growth, competitive industries, and the kind of sustained foreign investment that Uganda’s missions in the Gulf are now being pressed to help unlock.