President Yoweri Museveni, President of Uganda was keynote speaker at the closing session of the conference.
He described how societies in Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand have developed from feudal societies to modern skilled worker societies in the 20th century, based on industry and intellectual capital, which has led to prosperity and affluence. In the second half of the 20th century, other Commonwealth countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, and India, have also achieved this social transformation. However, many countries have not achieved this transformation, including most of the Commonwealth countries of Africa - other than South Africa which has achieved the transformation to some extent – some of the Pacific Islands, and some of the Caribbean islands.
Looking at the reasons why transformation has not occurred in some societies, President Museveni said that there were bottlenecks in Africa preventing this, the details of which he has given in published analyses. He said that some progress was being made in opening the bottlenecks in his own country, Uganda, and other states of East Africa including Kenya and Tanzania..
“There are reasons why Africa has not transitioned and why some of these other countries have not transitioned, and they are definitely curable. In black Africa we are in the process of curing and eradicating those bottlenecks that have stopped us from transitioning,” he said.
He said that developing countires must be entrepreneurial and look at the global market – for instance, there is a new need for steel in countries such as India and China and people are now coming to Uganda again for good quality iron ore. Following a period of neglect of this industry.
He said that local government was part of the solution for transforming societies., but there was a need for some consensus on the way forward. Local governments in developing countries are different from those in developed ones – the forms may look the same but the context is different, and the structure of budgets are different.
“All the countries in the world that have transitioned have done so because of trade, not aid,” he said. “However, there is no doubt that the decentralising of power is better than centralising” and that it was important to identify which services should be done at what level for most effective delivery.
He ended by noting that the Commonwealth network is a great asset and should be used to the maximum.
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