President Museveni has asked Russia and other European and Asian countries to stop importing raw materials from Africa for processing in their own countries.
He referred to exportation of raw material as "modern slavery and the remaining major bottleneck of neo-colonialism" and suggested that these countries should work with Africa to enable the processing of the resources in the continent towards boosting their economies.
"Therefore, my proposal to our allies of Russia, India, China and others is to point out to them that they could help here by policy decisions to buy value- added products from Africa rather than raw materials. Those are products like processed coffee, instead of bean coffee; chocolate, instead of cocoa beans; textiles, instead of just cotton; steel, instead of iron ore , electric batteries, instead of just lithium, etc,"Museveni urged.
He was speaking during the Russia-Africa summit .
The president explained that whereas the global coffee business annually is $460 billion, the world coffee producing countries' share is only $25 billion while the entire continent of Africa with many coffee producing countries get a mere $2.5 billion due to the exportation of un processed coffee.
According to Museveni, African allies can even ban the importation of raw materials from Africa to their countries to encourage industrialists to invest on the continent which he said would boost people's income, enhance the population's purchasing power and provide a market for the industrialists.
In his remarks, the Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia has at all times been an ally of Africa from her independence struggle and is on record to have never attempted to plunder any part of Africa but rather have contributed to the development of the continent.
Putin added that Russia has at all-time been monitoring with interest the plight of Africa in areas of security, economic exploitation and humanitarian issues and said that the country has always and will continue working with Africa in these areas in line with the United Nations charter.
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President Putin added that Russia and Africa are united in the fight against terrorism, climate change and the imposition of unilateral sanctions by self-seeking nations.
"Some countries have become the founders and interpreters of international laws and just use them for their own benefit and this is unacceptable," Putin said.
He added that it was time for African countries to fight for their sovereignty and Russia was to back the continent in their quest to have permanent representation on the major United Nations bodies.
"Sovereignty is not something you achieve but it's something you have fought for, and Africa must continue fighting for its sovereignty."
He commended the African leaders for their input in trying to find a solution to the conflict in Ukraine and said that Russia attaches a lot of importance to the efforts of the African leaders.
