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Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 1:24 AM
Subject: Museveni Blames Socialism for Retarding Economic Growth in Africa



Netters:

We can only begin to wonder as to what Cuban President Fidel Castro thinks of Yoweri Museveni  (the socialist who was conducting barter trade with Cuba  when the dictator  shot himself into power in 1986... Mbu you give me beans  ..and I will give you   fish). Castro must be reading Museveni's remarks below with "shock and awe Well Museveni has done a 180 degree about turn!!

Reead his comments below.

Matek  



Museveni Blames Socialism for Retarding Economic Growth in Africa


    
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United States Department of State (Washington, DC)

November 10, 2003 
Posted to the web November 11, 2003 

Jim Fisher-Thompson
Washington, DC 

Adds that Uganda and others could still be "economic tigers"

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda capped a weeklong investment tour in the United States with an education lesson for the press on how misguided policies, based on ideologies like socialism, hindered economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa even as other nations such as the so-called "Asian Tigers" prospered.

Museveni spoke at the National Press Club November 7, following a meeting with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice at the White House. He said he had also had an opportunity to meet with President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo, who was also in town, to discuss the turmoil in the eastern Congo where, Museveni said, "things are moving well" toward peace.

At the Press Club, Museveni told the media that following independence in the 1960's, Africa nations missed their chance to be prosperous like Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, and Malaysia because "our leaders opted for socialism, which interfered with the private sector."

Many African countries, like Uganda, could be as prosperous now as the "Tigers," he said, "if it were not for the ideological confusion of our leaders then." The Ugandan, who came to power in 1986 after liberating his country from the rule of two brutal dictators, said, "their shortsighted policies of seizing or 'nationalizing' private business wrecked economies by chasing off investors while taking away incentives for local business to flourish. "

"This was the biggest mistake" in the history of development of the continent, Museveni declared, and was compounded by leaders "not understanding export-centered strategies" for building up the manufacturing and small-business sectors of their economies. They relied too much on the export of raw materials -- in Uganda's case coffee and cotton, unprocessed with little value added and therefore subject to low prices and wide market fluctuations.

Asking rhetorically, "Will we see 'Tigers' in Africa?" he responded: "For sure!"

"Will we see them quickly?" "Yes," he asserted, "if the U.S. cooperates."

Museveni explained that when he was young high school student, his economics teacher taught him that "demand equaled desire plus the ability to pay." While Africans have the desire to buy American manufactured goods like washing machines, he said, "they do not have the income to pay."

America can help here, he said, by buying more African products and putting more disposable income into African hands. "Exporting to your (U.S.) market is the quickest way to empower African markets," he told journalists.

One program that does that is the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which Museveni described as "the first act of solidarity between Africa and U.S." in hundreds of years and "a win-win situation" for both Africa and America.

[Congress passed AGOA, the first-ever trade pact with sub-Saharan Africa, in 2000 to provide duty- and quota-free entry of a wide range of African products -- about 6,000 -- into the U.S. market from nations that are reforming their economies.]

Museveni's remarks reflected his belief that private-sector-led growth holds the salvation for million of Africans living in dire poverty, which, with his forthright approach to combating HIV/AIDS and terrorism, helped establish a close relationship between him and President Bush. In reciprocal meetings at the White House in June and in Kampala in July, Bush cited the Ugandan as a remarkable leader and model for the continent in his determination to reform Uganda's economy and as a staunch ally against global terrorism.

Asked to comment on the seizure -- in effect, nationalization -- of mainly white-owned farms in Zimbabwe by President Robert Mugabe, Museveni refused to assign any blame, noting, "Zimbabwe is not Uganda." But he added, while "I do believe there was a true need for land reform [there] I don't think it should be done in that disruptive way. I do not understand why it could not be handled in a more harmonious way. I think in Zimbabwe the whites are the losers by this [Mugabe] method.

"We have such problems in Uganda, by the way," Museveni added, "but the problem of land ownership is black on black...[and] we have set up a land fund so the peasants can use it to buy [land] and pay the landlords who can use it to go into other business. This is how it should be handled, in my opinion."

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov) 

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