Overview:
A $2.37bn Boeing order and Starlink's launch signal US interest in Uganda, says envoy Mikael Cleverley, as the embassy eyes deals in agro, tourism and minerals.
KAMPALA – Recent moves by major American companies into Uganda show that US businesses see opportunities in the country and will open the way for further investment, the US Chargé d’Affaires in Uganda, Mikael Cleverley, said on Thursday.
He pointed to three deals: Uganda Airlines’ $2.37 billion agreement with Boeing for 10 aircraft, signed on 10 June; the launch of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service on 1 September; and the opening of the Kampala Marriott Hotel and Executive Apartments in Nsambya.
“They say American companies are interested in coming here because these are important companies, they’re big companies, they see opportunities here, and I think they lead the way for others to follow,” Cleverley told journalists at the embassy’s celebration of 250 years of American independence, known as Freedom 250.
He said Boeing would link Ugandan markets in new ways, Starlink would bring internet access to “the most rural remote villages”, and the Marriott would draw business travellers and tourists.
“These are the types of investments we hope will draw other investments,” he said.
Cleverley said Washington wanted investments that are “mutually beneficial”, create opportunities and add value in Uganda, and support the government’s tenfold growth strategy and its priority growth sectors.
He said the US system differs from Uganda’s because American investment is “bottom-up”, driven by companies looking for opportunities rather than by the government. The embassy’s role, he said, is to attract those firms, explain the Ugandan market to them and provide mechanisms to help them reduce investment risk.
“But ultimately we are also trying to advocate for the types of transparent and level-playing-field markets that draw US businesses, because we have to compete for them. They’re looking across the world to where they are going to get the best opportunities,” he said.
He added that the embassy was working with Uganda’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its missions in Washington and New York to promote trade and investment in both directions.
The embassy, in a statement issued for the event, described the Boeing deal as the largest single commercial agreement in the history of US-Uganda relations. It said Starlink began operating after obtaining a five-year provisional licence from the government, and that the Marriott opening showed investor confidence in Uganda’s tourism and hospitality sector.
It also said it was working with several US companies on further opportunities in agro-industrialisation, tourism, mineral development, and science and technology, sectors the government groups as ATMS. The embassy valued these opportunities in the hundreds of millions of dollars but did not name the companies.
Asked where American firms could contribute to Uganda’s economic growth, Cleverley said US companies already supply advanced technology in the health sector. He cited Abbott, which he said had recently provided diagnostic equipment to rural health facilities so that women could receive test results within about an hour.
“We’d like to see more of that in the health sector. We’d love to see US companies in the mineral sector, in the energy sector, because these are also all parts of the Ugandan government’s strategy,” he said. “Many of them are here already, and we’ll see if we can get others.”
Cleverley said commercial diplomacy was the embassy’s “big priority” in a relationship he described as the strongest it has been.
“It’s better than it’s ever been. We have political will on both sides to do more together,” he said. “We are instructed from Washington to broaden the cooperation, and we have an open door here with the Ugandan government indicating interest in doing as much as we can together. So we just need to explore that and exploit that, bring US companies here, expand the cooperation.”
Beyond trade, he listed security cooperation and health as other priorities. He referred to reports of possible Ugandan participation in peacekeeping “not just regional … but beyond that”, and said the two countries could work together on peace and security globally. He did not give details.
Cleverley acknowledged that US travel restrictions on Ugandans remain in place. Asked why Ugandans, including government officials, were still being denied entry after the World Health Organization and Africa CDC declared Uganda free of Ebola, he said the restrictions were set in Washington and not assessed by the embassy.
“In Washington they do re-evaluate them periodically, and they’re looking at the broader region as well,” he said.
He said Uganda’s institutions had done “an outstanding job of early detection, treatment and addressing all of the cases, most of which were imported”. However, he said Washington was also watching the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he described the Ebola outbreak as one of the fastest-growing and worst epidemics seen in history, with “the possibility for international spread”.
Cleverley said the embassy wanted normal travel restored because the goals he had described depended on people moving between the two countries.
“To achieve these things that we’ve talked about, whether it’s from the business side, whether it’s security cooperation, whether it’s anything else, of course we want people travelling back and forth,” he said. “Our goal is to be back to where we were as soon as possible.”
On health, Cleverley said the $2.3 billion US-Uganda Health Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was a new model. It involves co-investment by the Ugandan government, performance-based support, and Ugandan institutions taking on a growing share of programme management each year.
Over five years, he said, the United States will contribute $1.7 billion and the Ugandan government the balance. The embassy put Uganda’s share at more than $570 million in new domestic health spending and linked the MoU to Washington’s America First Global Health Strategy.
“It integrates various aspects of our health assistance, which previously had been siloed. We had HIV programmes over here, TB programmes here, malaria and global health security. These are all integrated into the same programme,” he said.
He said a joint health steering committee, which he co-leads with the Minister of Health, sets the programme’s strategic direction. He added that the United States hoped the arrangement would leave the Ministry of Health and other Ugandan health institutions “strengthened” and “empowered”.
According to the embassy, the MoU supports government-led responses to HIV/Aids, tuberculosis, malaria and pandemic diseases, as well as work on health systems and emergency preparedness. The embassy said more than two decades of health cooperation had helped stop more than 600 disease outbreaks. It also said the US government remained the largest contributor to humanitarian assistance in Uganda, and had this year moved to new delivery mechanisms for emergency assistance, which it said were meant to improve efficiency and accountability.
The Freedom 250 celebration was held on 24 September rather than on the US national day of 4 July. Cleverley said the embassy had postponed it to respect the Ministry of Health’s guidance on mass gatherings until Uganda’s Ebola outbreak was concluded.
“It’s 250. I remember when we celebrated 200. I was a little boy then, so these milestones don’t come along very often,” he said.
In his prepared remarks, Cleverley said the anniversary celebrated “a nation of doers, of tryers, of adventurers”. He said the embassy in Uganda described the qualities the United States brings to its partnerships, such as innovation, philanthropy, pragmatism and transparency, as “the American Edge”.
The embassy traced US-Uganda ties to 1909, when former US President Theodore Roosevelt visited Uganda on a scientific expedition. It said more than 6,000 Ugandans are alumni of US exchange programmes, and that the American Center, opened in Kampala in January, receives thousands of visitors each year.
It also described sport as a growing part of the relationship as the United States enters what it called a “Decade of Sport”. It noted that Uganda’s Ghetto Kids performed with Shakira at the FIFA World Cup final this summer, and that Uganda is set to co-host the Africa Cup of Nations next year.