President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni on Wednesday held discussions with the African Union Commissioner for Agriculture, Josefa Sacko, as the Pearl of Africa gears up to host the Extraordinary Agricultural Summit of Heads of State and Government in Kampala in January, 2025.
A statement from State House said President Museveni expressed his gratitude for the opportunity to host the summit.
“That is music to my ears, and I am very happy to host this summit. The potential for agriculture is huge in Africa. Uganda is really good to peg our agricultural perceptions around what we have saved, because we preserved the indigenous agriculture: cows, goats, bananas, cassava, fish, etc. Our job was to modernize and commercialize our agriculture,” President Museveni said.
“When you hear that people in Africa don’t have food, it’s because of colonialism and the dislocation of people from their heritage. They (Africans) start despising themselves and worshipping everything foreign. For agriculture, you are definitely at home. Uganda is the place—we have the crops of the forest, tropical savanna, and temperate crops,” the President added.
According to State House, the previous AU agricultural summit was held in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, in 2014.
“The summit shaped the action plan around the Malabo Declaration, which emphasized the prioritisation of accelerated agricultural growth and transformation for shared prosperity and improved livelihoods,” the press statement noted.
Sacko was accompanied by the Minister of Agriculture, Animal Industry, and Fisheries, Frank Tumwebaze.
The meeting was also attended by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, Maj. Gen. David Kasura Kyomukama, among others.
