The Speaker of Parliament, Rebeca Kadaga, has discussed the need to deepen the Egypt-Uganda bilateral ties, with special focus on tourism, trade and agro-processing.
In a meeting with Egyptian Ambassador, H.E. Ashraf Swelam on Monday 15 March 2021 at Parliament, Kadaga said there are a lot of areas that need mutual support.
“We should support each other on issues of value addition; we are tired of selling raw materials; we need more value addition and we need to do more trade,” she said.
Speaker Kadaga said in a previous meeting with the Speaker of Egypt’s Parliament H. E. Hanafy El Gebally, she emphasised the need to support Uganda’s tourism especially on the Nile, shared among Uganda and other downstream countries including Egypt.
“We talked about tourism development especially along the Nile, because you realise in Uganda, there is limited tourism activity on the Nile as opposed to what happens in Cairo,” she said.
Ambassador Swelam, who posted to Uganda in October 2020, said Egypt will continue to be a reliable partner of Uganda in trade and other bi-lateral issues.
While presenting his credentials to President Yoweri Museveni, he said, there was an agreement to create an industrial complex to incentivise Egyptian investors and encourage them to start industries in Uganda.
“This is a discussion that I raised with President Museveni on establishing an Egyptian Industrial zone in Uganda and I look forward to having it operational; there is already a lot of progress made since my conversation with the president,” he said.
H.E. Swelam also hailed Uganda’s elections as peaceful, congratulating the Speaker upon her re-election to the 11th Parliament.
The Speaker said with the operationalisation of the Rebecca Kadaga Institute of Parliamentary Studies, MPs and Local Government leaders will be trained on parliamentary practice to ready them for the legislative work ahead.
Kadaga said the high rate of turnover and attrition in not unique to Uganda, and has been the trend in most African countries, and that the new MPs in their own right are qualified and with induction, will carry on with the work seamlessly.
