Cyprian Musoke
30 July 2008
Kampala — EGYPTIAN President Hosni Mubarak yesterday paid a four-hour state visit to Uganda, his first as head of state, in which he and his host, President Yoweri Museveni, discussed several issues including water security of the Nile.
Mubarak flew in at 1:30pm aboard a private jet which carried an Egyptian-registered grey Mercedes Benz, in which he travelled to State House Entebbe, 3km from the airport.
He was hosted to a state luncheon, after which the two heads of state withdrew for talks. They did not address an earlier scheduled press briefing but drove back to the airport immediately after the talks.
Lands minister Omara Atubo, who instead addressed the journalists, said in a meeting attended by several ministers, they discussed bilateral issues mainly to do with the Nile, which is shared by both countries.
Egypt, he said, had expressed interest in providing support to maintain the water levels so that one country's use of the Nile would not affect the others.
It also agreed to commit additional resources on top of the $33m already pledged for the extraction of the water hyacinth from Lake Victoria and the river Nile, and to set up a permanent Joint Commission to review the agreements on the water use.
"They are due to give us another $8m for fighting the water weed that has infested the surface of our waters, killing the lakes and rivers," Atubo said.
Egypt, he added, agreed to send lecturers to help build the capacity of Uganda's technocrats to manage the waters. Atubo said they agreed to improve Uganda's potential to feed Egypt by marketing and exporting cheese, meat, fruit, wheat, coffee and cotton.
Since tourism is the best forex earner for Egypt, with about 14 million tourists every year, the two vowed to work together to enhance Uganda's tourism infrastructure.
"Uganda should learn from their infrastructure.
"They have seen the cool beautiful weather here, the rain which welcomed them. We have to promote tourism collaboration between Uganda and Egypt to create a tourist circuit that will include Uganda," Atubo said.
He emphasised that as the NRM government believed in trade rather than aid, they agreed to develop partnerships to devise means of boosting trade between the two countries.
In the area of health, since Egypt has one of the most developed health systems, they agreed to collaborate in specialist areas like cancer, research, medical equipment, and infrastructure.
On transport, the two leaders vowed to collaborate in the railway, air and road transport sectors.
Asked whether they discussed the ICC indictment of Sudanese President Omar Bashir, Atubo said: "Uganda and Egypt support the position that was taken by the AU Security Council and accepted to work with the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) for an agreeable position geared at peace in Darfur, the Sudan and the region as a whole."
The Sudanese president has been accused by ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of personally instructing his forces to exterminate three non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur.
The African Union and the Arab League have asked the UN Security Council to delay a decision by the ICC to arrest Bashir.
Earlier yesterday, Mubarak was in South Africa, where both he and President Thabo Mbeki expressed support for a 12-month delay of the indictments, according to the press agency AFP.
"The case could be postponed for 12 months during which something could happen to decrease the tension," Mubarak said at a joint press conference in Pretoria.
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Hooray! Attack the aquatic weeds. They are a central part of most of Africa's problems. Which is the worst varies by location, but all of them are harming you. But you cannot control these plants as simply weeds. They will keep coming back until they exhaust the funding to control them. You will need to find a profit in controlling them so that you can support the crews and equipment to keep them in check. There has been some success in brewing water hyacinth into ethanol. Great success has been achieved with another weed - Typha (bulrush, cattail, kachalla). The same equipment and human resources are needed to control it as are needed for water hyacinth. Small plantations of Typha could help feed and fuel your nations, while keeping available the workers and equipment to keep your rivers and lakes clear. If you use one of the natural hybrids, you will have less trouble controlling it because it will not spread by seed. Just harvesting the existing wild Typha infestations would provide enough food to feed your whole continent, and remove millions of mosquito nurseries as a side effect.