It’s a proud moment that the World's Largest Lohana Corporate Event is going to take place in Uganda. As you are all aware, the Lohana International Business Forum (LIBF) will start on 19th March 2023. The venue will be the Speke Resort & Conference Centre, Munyonyo, Kampala, Uganda. The 2023 Summit will encourage cross-border business, investment and services.
As our Honourable President H.E. Yoweri Museveni said during all his international and local visits, “Uganda is the safest place for any investor to inject their money and offers immense business opportunities. If there is a place where you can easily make money, it is Uganda. The place is secure. Uganda hosts 1.4 million refugees from the neighbouring countries because of its peacefulness and a friendly refugee policy, despite its history of turmoil including the dictatorial leadership of Idi Amin who because of selfish interests expelled Asians from the country.
THE PEARL OF AFRICA Uganda enjoys a unique location along the equator, in the heart of Sub-Saharan Africa within the East African region. There are countless reasons to invest in Uganda. Uganda is rich in agriculture and endowed with vast mineral resources (Oil, gold, iron, cobalt etc) and has been an economic success story in recent decades. Uganda’s land-linked position gives it a strategic commanding base for regional trade and investment and is readily open for business.
The people of Uganda are warm, the friendliest and make up a highly entrepreneurial community you are set to come across within the next decade. Uganda’s economy also offers high returns on investment thus making it the should be your preferred investment destination.
The African Development Bank strongly suggests that one should look into retail, construction, and telecommunications ventures. Due to the discovery of oil reserves, potential investors such as yourself should look towards a country whose mining, transport, and hospitality sectors will grow in leaps and bounds. Similarly, rapid urbanization and commensurate public investment in urban development mean that the country's service sector will grow faster.
Interestingly, a 2015 global survey established that Uganda was the world's most entrepreneurial country – one that would only see an upward trajectory given further clustering of skills and technology, proximity to financial services, and further progress made on improving the regulatory environment. According to the 2020 World Investment Report, the volume of foreign direct investment being infused into Uganda grew by 20% over the previous year, to a record high of US$ 1.3 billion. Investors from Kenya, Germany and Belgium mostly ostensibly agree with the viability of the country's major oil fields, an international oil pipeline, and the coffee and mining sectors.
While the 2020 Index of Economic Freedom clarifies that Uganda is the 102nd freest economy in the world, it is the 10th freest in sub-Saharan Africa. It intends to become an upper-middle-income country by 2040. The expectation is that Uganda will achieve upper-middle-income status through ambitious infrastructure expenditure within an economic environment where property rights are guaranteed by law, and government spending and budget deficits are efficiently managed. In the World Bank's 2020 Doing Business report, Uganda gained 11 places to be ranked 116th out of 190 countries. The notable improvement in ranking was premised on a more aggressive regulatory regime around power outages, a remarkable development of the country's financial services sector, and further privatization of the banking sector. Relatively, Uganda is a shareholder in regional institutions such as the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank (TDB) and the African Trade Insurance Agency (ATI). TDB is on hand to intermediate both regional and global capital to its Member States, and ATI provides risk mitigation services such as the provision of political risk insurance (PRI).
Invariably, one cannot deny Uganda's strategic location within the Great Lakes region. On top of the country's capacity to become a regional hub of trade and investment, the Pearl of Africa is an integral party to the functional East African Community customs union. Likewise, one can expect that when the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) is fully implemented, Uganda will play a critical role in further boosting and facilitating intra-African trade.
I invite you all to explore the historic opportunity of investment through LIBF 2023, and also visit our tourist sites such as the second largest freshwater Lake in the world, Lake Victoria – the source of River Nile, national parks like Mgahinga impenetrable National Park where you will be able to see our ancestors the Gorillas.