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President Museveni of Uganda met a UAE investor delegation in Abu Dhabi, urging them to explore Uganda’s untapped potential in pharmaceuticals, leveraging abundant resources like sugar and starch.

In Abu Dhabi yesterday 13^th November 2023, His Excellency Gen. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, President of the Republic of Uganda, met with a delegation of investors from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

At the invitation of his UAE counterpart and Abu Dhabi’s ruler, His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the President travelled to the Middle Eastern nation on a working visit. 

President Museveni urged an investment delegation led by H.E. Rashed Abdulkarim Al Blooshi, the Undersecretary of the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development, to show interest in Uganda’s domestic pharmaceutical product development.

“In Uganda, we possess valuable resources that we do not utilize. For instance, we generate a lot of sugar but only use it to make tea. We also have a lot of starch from cassava and maize, which is still underutilized but has potential use in medicine, according to President Museveni.

He said, “Many of these tablets are not entirely medicinal; some of the tablet is merely a vehicle to deliver the medication to your stomach. Pharmaceutical-grade starch, which is made from maize or cassava, is required to make the tablet.”

In light of this, the President made a plea to the investors to work in tandem with the Ugandan government to reduce the vast amounts of starch derived from different crops by utilizing them to make pharmaceuticals.

He went on to say that Uganda is rich in sugar, which can be used to make a variety of syrups, and that refining raw sugar into pharmaceutical-grade sugar is a significant prospective sector for investors to study.

“There is a lot of sugar in Uganda that could be utilized in medicine. I think this is something we can also do here locally by making use of what we have, as a lot of syrups for kids usually contain sugar to make it sweet for them,” he said.

President Museveni also mentioned that Uganda is blessed with a variety of minerals, thus encouraging the investors to consider the country’s lucrative industrial venture, saying that the government is ready to work with them. 

“There is iron ore for steel, phosphate for fertilisers, we have copper for electric military industries, gold, and lithium for electric batteries. We are already making electric cars so we need those batteries and many others. You are therefore welcome to tap into these areas locally,” the President said.

“The big ones here though are iron ore and phosphates; iron ore is like 800 million tons, while the confirmed phosphates are 230 million tons. So the only thing we are struggling with now is for us to be able to link the industry and the minerals.”

H.E Abdulkarim thanked the President for informing him about the different potential areas for investment and economic cooperation between the two countries, saying that they are ready to work together for a better future.

 “We are talking about manufacturing cars here, and so when it comes to batteries, we believe that it will be the next big potential market area, so why not consider Uganda?” Abdulkarim said.