Allow me at the outset, Sir,
to congratulate you on your election to the presidency
of the General Assembly. Uganda is convinced that,
with your experience and well-known diplomatic
skills, we shall have a successful session. I wish today
to pay tribute to your predecessor, His Excellency
Srgjan Kerim, for the excellent manner in which he
presided over the sixty-second session. I would also
like to pay tribute to the Secretary-General for his
leadership and efforts to reform our Organization.
The founding fathers of the United Nations had a
dream of creating an organization whose purpose,
among others, was “to achieve international
cooperation in solving international problems of an
economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character”.
Today the world is facing a multitude of problems,
many of which the United Nations was meant to
address.
It is encouraging that the theme chosen for this
session is the impact of the global food crisis on
poverty and hunger in the world as well as the need to
democratize the United Nations. The view of some of
us in Uganda is that the so-called food crisis is actually
good for equatorial Africa. It is certainly good for
Uganda’s farmers. Over the years, we have been
growing a lot of food: maize, bananas, Irish potatoes,
sweet potatoes, cassava, rice and wheat; and producing
animal products such as milk and beef. The problem
has always been the market for this food.
That was an account of two problems: first,
protectionism in the United States, the European
Union, Japan, China, et cetera; and secondly, the lack
of factories to process that food so that it could reach
distant markets. Apart from these two, there are other
factors in some African countries, including poor
traffic infrastructure, lack of electricity, lack of seeds,
et cetera. These, however, do not apply to Uganda. In
the case of Uganda, the problem has been the lack of
markets and low processing capacity, in other words,
low value addition. The rest we have, or we can have
easily.
The high food and commodity prices have arisen
on account of the hundreds of millions of Chinese and
Indians that have entered the opulent middle class in
the last 20 years. That means they need better food,
better houses that require cement and steel bars, and
better means of locomotion such as cars. That is why
food and commodity prices have gone up. It is for the
same reason that petroleum prices have gone up: if
only 200 people were driving cars previously, the
number has now risen to 400. That means more
demand for petroleum. Following the continuously
21 08-51606
rising petroleum prices, some Western countries have
started talking of biofuels — using plants to produce
diesel.
Uganda, however, welcomes all of this. It is an
opportunity, as far as we are concerned. It is not a
bottleneck. In fact, farmers in Uganda are already
reaping high. That is why our economy grew by 9 per
cent last year. Once we solve the problem of energy,
our economy will grow in double digits.
It is good that the United States of America, the
European Union, India, Japan and China have opened
their markets to African products, tariff-free, quota-
free. However, there is still the issue of subsidies. They
should be removed. In Uganda, we farm without
subsidies. Why should not the farmers in those
countries with better infrastructure, lower interest
rates, abundant electricity, et cetera, do the same? Why
do they need protection? Protectionism interferes with
those countries that can produce food easily, such as
Uganda. That is not correct.
We have been producing too much milk without
having the capacity to process it. Recently, an Indian-
owned company installed a high-tech integrated milk-
processing plant and began to process powdered milk,
producing a whole range of finished milk products:
pasteurized milk, ultra-heat-treated (long-life) milk,
yoghurt, butter, ghee, et cetera. Those milk products
are now being exported to all parts of the world.
Another example has been bananas. Uganda
produces 10 million metric tons of bananas per annum.
These are high-quality bananas — called enyam wonyo
in one of our local dialects — which contain rare
ingredients. They are quite different from the bananas
known in other parts of the world. Forty per cent of
those bananas have been rotting in gardens and
marketplaces. Our scientists, funded by our
Government, are now converting them into processed
foods such as flour, bread, snacks, et cetera.
High fuel prices are a real problem for countries
that do not have petroleum. Maximizing the use of
other forms of energy — including hydropower;
geothermal power, which is used effectively in
countries such as Iceland; solar power; wind power;
and biofuels — is part of the answer for such countries.
All that, however, depends on the development of
human resources through education. An educated
population has more capacity to look for answers than
an uneducated population.
As far as Uganda is concerned, in addition to lazy
individuals, the only groups that are adversely affected
by high food prices are salary earners in towns. Unlike
farmers, they cannot benefit from higher food prices;
yet they must buy food. Fortunately, however, all such
families in Uganda have a dual capacity: in addition to
being salary earners, they or their relatives own land in
rural areas. They can therefore subsidize themselves by
growing food using that land. Africa and other regions
with agriculture-based economies should rise up,
utilize their full potential and take advantage of high
food prices.
Regarding the statement that I have heard
repeated so many times since the opening of the
present session of the General Assembly — that no
African country can achieve the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 — I would like
to make two positions clear. First, the statement
confirms what I said yesterday at the high-level
meeting on Africa’s development needs. Discussing
sustainable development without discussing
socio-economic transformation is not correct. We have
repeatedly pointed that out. I have often used the
example of pregnancy: one cannot talk endlessly about
“sustainable pregnancy”. Yes, pregnancy should be
sustainable until it transitions into a baby. Therefore, as
Europe did, and as other societies in Asia have recently
done, Africa must metamorphose socially,
economically and technologically from a
pre-industrial, sometimes feudal, society into a middle-
class and skilled-working-class society, period.
Achievement of all the MDGs would be the
consequence of such a metamorphosis.
One cannot maintain a pre-industrial society and
somehow achieve the MDGs. An industrial society is
what Uganda has been working towards over the past
20 years. Africa must industrialize, develop a modern
services sector and commercialize agriculture. That
means that emphasis must be placed on market access.
It means that we should not only gain access to the
major markets of the world, but also rationalize our
own African markets through regional and continental
integration. It also means that, in order to lower the
costs of doing business in Africa, we should deal with
energy; transport, especially by rail; and primary and
higher-level education. Achievement of the MDGs
would be a consequence of these developments, rather
than a precursor or a phenomenon extraneous to them.
08-51606 22
Mr. Yáñez-Barnuevo (Spain), Vice-President, took
the Chair.
The second position that I would like to point out
regarding the MDGs is that Uganda is on course to
meet all of them except those related to maternal health
and child mortality. I see no reason why those Goals
should not be achieved. With the exception of
combating HIV/AIDS — which is behaviour-related —
I am sure that all the others are achievable if we in
Uganda do enough political-led sensitization and
investment.
I do not associate myself with those who are
pessimistic about Africa or with those who put the cart
before the horse. Why, for instance, were
industrialization and value addition not made one of
the MDGs? The export of raw materials is one of the
cardinal sins that cause Africa to contribute only a
2 per cent share of world trade. If value were added to
those raw materials, Africa’s share of world trade
would rise, even today. Africa is exporting many
things, but they are in the form of raw materials; that is
why their value is 2 per cent. If value were added to
those raw materials, their value would rise.
Moreover, that would create jobs for Africans and
therefore contribute structurally to poverty eradication.
How are we supposed to eradicate poverty without
creating jobs, other than by using witchcraft? We have
repeatedly pointed out these issues in several forums,
to no avail. It is Africans themselves who can and
should resolve them.