East African Business Week (Kampala)
Bosco Hitimana
28 June 2008
Kigali — The East African Community heads of state have appealed strongly for improved regional infrastructure and private sector development.
Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni, Rwanda's Paul Kagame, Kenya's Mwai Kibaki and Burundi's Pierre Nkurunziza jointly agreed at the official opening of the EAC investment conference last week in Kigali that good infrastructure will create an enabling business environment.
The conference was held concurrently with the 9th retreat and summit of the EAC heads of state.
The four presidents called for concerted efforts to revamp stagnant physical infrastructure to ease the cost of doing business in the region.
The three day conference that brought together over 800 participants from within the East Africa region and the rest of the world was the first of its kind in the region aiming at showcasing investment opportunities in East Africa.
The heads of state called upon the investors to consider the East Africa region as an investment destination.
They admitted that the region is still facing challenges like poor physical and soft infrastructure, low human development skills, weak private sector, low production and sticky bureaucracies that slow down the process of doing business in the region.
In a keynote address President Museveni, who is the out going chairman of the EAC heads of state summit and who is handing over the chair to President Kagame, spoke of what he described as the "11 commandments to improve the business environment".
Mr. Museveni named roads, railways, broadband for ICTs, electricity, the undersea cable and piped water in towns as very crucial elements that enable businesses to make profit and lower costs of doing business in the region.
Museveni also cited tax incentives, size of internal and external markets, energy, liberalization of the current and capital account, convertible currencies, natural resources and expeditious commercial justice as pre-requisites for regional economic prosperity.
Museveni said private sector development and the spirit of ownership to some crucial development projects such as energy and roads in the region should be at the forefront of the East African people if they want to build a strong economy.
He urged East African producers and manufactures to produce more and add value to them so as to exploit the duty free markets in the U.S, EU, Japan and India.
President Kagame said East Africa is at the crossroads with three clear navigational tools to determine the correct direction: Growing large, small and medium enterprises in different sectors and implementing the infrastructure development strategy.
In, their remarks presidents Mwai Kibaki of Kenya and Nkurunziza of Burundi whose countries have just been come out of conflict, urged investors to spread capital in the two embattled nations. Kibaki appealed to investors to consider investment opportunities in ICTs, energy and other sector in his country as well as the region.
The secretary general of the east African community, Ambassador Juma Mwapacu called for skills development especially technical skills which can enable the people to do practical work.
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