First of all, I thank the
General Assembly for electing His Excellency Mr. Sam
Kutesa, our Minister for Foreign Affairs, as President
of the General Assembly at its sixty-ninth session.
As the Assembly knows, the United Nations system
needs reform to reflect the new needs and realities in the
world today. Uganda will use the time of its presidency
to make a small contribution towards the reform of
the United Nations and its organs by pushing for the
African agenda on that issue. Those reforms, as will be
agreed by all of us, will strengthen the United Nations,
not otherwise.
Africa, Uganda included, is at long last emerging
from the long night of decline that the continent has
been through in the last 500 years — ever since 1472,
when the Portuguese started encroaching on the African
coastline. Those 500 years witnessed great traumas
inflicted on the African continent, including the slave
trade, colonialism, neocolonialism, plunder, human
haemorrhage and, in some cases, even genocide. Those
traumas resulted in the haemorrhage of the population
and the depopulation of the African continent to
the extent that by 1900 the population of the whole
of Africa was only 133 million people, while that of
China, which is only one quarter of the land area of
Africa, was 489,000 million people. In other words, by
1990, the population of the whole of Africa was only a
quarter of that of China, in a land area four times larger.
Such traumas were possible in Africa owing not
only to internal weaknesses but also external factors.
Foreign aggression caused serious distortions in
African societies. There was, for instance, the very-
well-organized Kingdom of Kongo on the Atlantic
coast at the time the first Portuguese explorer, Diego
Cão, arrived there in 1483. The Kingdom covered parts
of northern Angola, Cabinda, parts of the Republic
of Congo and the western parts of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo. As a consequence of the actions
of colonialism, that polity, that Kingdom, declined and
disintegrated.
It is only now that the modern countries of that
area are regenerating that portion of Africa. It is those
distortions and the original endogenous weaknesses of
Africa that the present generation of African leaders
have been addressing. In many African countries,
positive results are beginning to manifest themselves.
The middle class in Africa is now of the magnitude of
313 million people, and that has boosted the purchasing
power of Africa to $2.5 trillion. That purchasing power
is growing at the rate of 3.2 per cent per annum. That
growth and expansion of the African gross domestic
product and purchasing power has happened despite
inadequate roads, inadequate railways, inadequate
electricity, and so on. Once those strategic bottlenecks
are addressed, the sky will be the limit as far as Africa’s
potential is concerned.
One bottleneck that has bedevilled Africa has been
the espousing of the pseudo-ideology of religious or
tribal sectarianism, as well as chauvinism vis-à-vis
women. When President Obama was walking out, I met
him at the door and told him that he had copied some of
my statement. That pseudo-ideology has fuelled most
of the conflicts in Africa. We are also witnessing the
same pseudo-ideology causing havoc in the Middle East
and North Africa. When uninformed outsiders link up
with those pseudo-ideologists, the permutation is most
tragic. Sectarian ideology is pseudo and bankrupt
because it is at variance with the people’s real interests
of symbiosis and the exchange of goods and services,
as well as integration for mutual benefit. Only parasites
revel in such schemes. That pseudo-ideology should be
banished and treated with the contempt that it deserves.
With regard to socioeconomic transformation,
Uganda is busy building hard-surface roads, electricity
networks, railways, information and communication
technology networks, a universal education system
and a pan-Ugandan health-care system. Together with
our neighbours, we have integrated our markets in the
East African Community and the Common Market for
Eastern and Southern Africa. We also partner with
others on common security solutions. Africa and the
individual African countries are therefore becoming
more credible partners with all serious actors beyond
our shores.
Uganda needs and welcomes investment, trade
access, tourists and, in some cases, security partnerships
that are approved by the African Union with our
partners in the world, many of whom are Members of
the United Nations.