Milton Olupot
10 November 2008
Kampala — PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has said the slump in European and American economies is partly because African countries stopped exporting raw materials to the west.
"By exporting raw materials, we have been providing jobs for Europeans and yet our children are here jobless. Now that we are beginning to wake up, the Europeans are no longer getting the cheap raw materials. They have to re-organise their economies," Museveni said.
He was launching the Institute for National Transformation - Uganda, which is under the Africa Kingdom Business Forum. This took place at the end of the fourth Annual Continental Conference at the Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala.
The institute, which operates in a number of African countries serves as an in-service training and equipping school for Christian business persons and professionals.
Museveni said: "Western Europe, North America and Japan have been living a wealthy life, a life of opulence. But in the last few years, China, India and some African counties have come up. So demand for raw materials has gone up globally.
"The price of raw materials has gone up and these Europeans who have been living good life at our expense can no longer do it. That is what the credit crunch is about. We now have to plan for a world economy for prosperity for all," he added.
Museveni pledged to support the institute and sell its ideas to other states in the East African Community.
He called for a correct packaging of the content of the courses offered to be able to tackle the bottlenecks to the development of Africa.
"What has been happening in Africa since independence was ideological meandering. They tried Africa socialism, but it failed. Now you are saying religious socialism, I don't know whether it will work," Museveni stated.
At the function, Prof. Vincent Anigbogu, the head of the institute in Nigeria, delivered a paper titled Africa First World Continent by 2030: Opportunities and Challenges, in which he blamed the western world for dividing up Africa.
He urged Africans to change their way of thinking so as to get out of poverty. Anigbogu said challenges to development in Africa include underdeveloped human resources, exporting raw materials, lack of visionary leadership and wars.
"You will be amazed at the destruction Africa has gone through. We have been killed by our own people more than the colonialists did. We have limited time to live, must we spend it fighting?" he asked.
Anigbogu called for relevant training in the education systems in Africa. "We must have competent people in all positions so as to transform Africa."
Uganda Revenue Authority Commissioner General Allen Kagina said one of the challenges facing the African church was how to become relevant in solving the problems in the continent.
"Many believers still consider the global market place a secular environment and, therefore, not a place to be involved in. So, there is a shortage of believers who can apply biblical dynamics to the professions and the business sector. This has contributed to apparent irrelevance of the church in society," she said.
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