National Chamber of Commerce and Industry: Promoting Trade and Investment in Uganda

Interview with Steven Kabagambe, Secretary General of Uganda National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (UNCCI)

What does Uganda have that can help it attract investors?

Uganda is a country that is endowed with a lot of resources. There is a very big advantage for investors here. There is a very good political wave from the President and our leadership to attract investment and promote partnerships to industrialize the country. We have a very good climate, the best in the world. We have good temperatures. We have many rivers, lakes, fertile soils, forests, different animals and birds, etc. We also have oil and gas and gold. Most importantly, our country has already put in tax holidays for investment. We are within the center of the East African Community of countries. We are landlinked. When you position yourself in Uganda, you are already positioned to serve all of East Africa. We are surrounded by six countries. Through the East African Community integration, there is free cross border movement of goods and services from Uganda to the surrounding countries. That is a very big market. The population is also welcoming. Ugandans do not look at tribes or color. We look at trading as one of the synergies to utilize.

What are the challenges that the country faces?

Our core activity is to promote trade and investment not only in Uganda, but in the region and internationally. We represent the business community in terms of the public private partnership within our government, policy, lobbying and advocacy, research, networking, partnerships, markets, training.

The challenge we face is to make visible what we are as a country. Outsiders do not know that we are landlinked and that we have all of these resources. We want to inform the entire world of what we are and the potential we have for them to come in and work together. For example, in oil and gas, the only way forward is to partner with other companies who have experience in order to work together and become a local content in that industry. There are many other areas. For example, in Uganda we no longer export hides and skins. We need veterinary drug industries. We need to partner with other universities. We need to scale our people in terms of international knowledge. We have our 2020 vision and a strategy for industrializing the country. This will be done through value addition. We need transfer of technology, putting up SMEs, and big industries which are agro based because we are an agro based country. We have gold, but we need machinery to extract it. We have water, but we need modern fishing. We have land, but we need modern agriculture. We have cows, but we need modern abattoirs. We need international certification. All these things we need to work with the international community, international investors, and our brothers in Africa to get to where we need to be in terms of international trade.

What are the main services you provide?

Our core activity is to promote trade and investment not only in Uganda, but in the region and internationally. We represent the business community in terms of the public private partnership within our government, policy, lobbying and advocacy, research, networking, partnerships, markets, training. The world is now automated. We must train our members to fit into the current international arena. We ensure that together with the government, we can promote trade and investment in this country.

What are the biggest challenges to accomplishing these objectives?

The Chamber of Commerce is a brand internationally. We are linked to all Chambers of Commerce worldwide. We have signed memorandums of understanding with them. That means that we have a lot of flow of information from outside. The challenge we have is to roll out that information to our members. This calls for a lot of logistics. We are not a Chamber that has mandatory membership. Like all other Chambers worldwide, we depend on our membership. Sometimes we have support from our government, but it might not be enough. What we need is the capacity to position our members to fit in the international trading arena now.

What events are you organizing for 2020?

We organize incoming trade missions and outgoing trade delegations. Delegations from South Africa, Malaysia, Turkey, and Qatar have already been here. We also want to send our people outside the country to get exposure. We are working with the German University of Siegen on how to promote man driven training in collaboration with our universities, universities in Zambia, and universities in Germany. We have many events planned internally, regionally, and internationally.

What are your current priorities?

In 2020, we want to have a lot of joint ventures and partnerships between our local investors and foreign investors to set up industries here and promote value addition so that we can start exporting to other bigger markets like the European Union, the United States, Islamic countries, Latin America, etc. Our biggest motivation is to see how we can partner with foreign investors and also grow our local investors.

What role do you play internally in the country?

As the Chamber of Commerce, we are a strong partnership locally. Under the public private partnership, we sit on most bodies and it is through these bodies that we can advocate, input into the policies of government, monitor and advise the government, and share what the government is doing. Having a conducive trading environment is the most important thing to promote trade.

Are you working on any specific points currently?

In Uganda, the trading environment is very attractive. We are also contributing to the East African Community policies. At a later stage, we hope to have harmonized policies within the entire East African Community.

Project yourself two to three years’ time, the medium term. What is your ambition for the Chamber?

In the next two to three years, we would want all of our traders to be well networked in terms of information networking and linked internally, regionally, and internationally. Through that, we can have a lot of linkages in terms of sharing information and increasing trade and investment. Now, we are working on getting that capacity needed to serve our members.

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