PRESIDENT`S SPEECH AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE

JOINT EAC HEADS OF STATE RETREAT ON

INFRASTRUCTURE AND HEALTH FINANCING AND
DEVELOPMENT

Thursday 22nd February 2018

President Museveni

Excellencies Heads of State and Government

The Secretary General of the EAC and your Secretariat staff
Government Ministers and Officials
Distinguished Partners and Invited Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen

I welcome you all to this EAC Heads of State Retreat on

Infrastructure and Health Financing as part of Development. On
behalf of the Government and the people of Uganda, I extend a
warm welcome to all of you and invite you to enjoy the hospitality
of our Country.
Colleague Heads of State and invited guests, this Joint Retreat
will serve two purposes – first, as the 4th Retreat on
Infrastructure Development and Financing where we review
progress on the implementation of the priority projects agreed
upon in the 3rd Retreat held in November 2014. Secondly, as the
1st Retreat on Health Sector Financing and Development.
As at our previous Retreats, this is to say that we owe it to
ourselves and the future generations to ensure that this region
has efficient, interlinked and interoperable infrastructure to
enable our People to increase their prosperity through the
exchange of goods and services. The greater the volume of goods
and services that the East Africans sell to one another and to
others, the greater their wealth is.
We are, here, also to consider the regional health sector
investment priorities in line with our commitments to achieve a
robust health coverage and healthy lives for the people of East
Africa.

Excellencies,
I wish to thank you for taking decisive actions jointly and
severally during the intervening period which has enabled the
implementation of some of the infrastructure projects prioritized
at the previous Retreats. Your commitments as Heads of State in
this process provided requisite assurance not only to
development partners and investors but also implementing
agencies to propel the infrastructure agenda forward. I wish to
thank all those partners that are supporting the regional
infrastructure development initiatives in different ways.
Allow me to cite a few notable major ongoing infrastructure
developments in the Region: the implementation of the flagship
Standard Gauge Railways (SGR) of which the construction of the
Mombasa – Nairobi section in the Northern Corridor is complete
and operational while the construction of the Dar es Salaam –
Morogoro – Mwanza - Dodoma on the Central Corridor is ongoing.
Other major undertakings are: construction of the East African
Crude Oil Pipeline, the development of Lamu Port – South Sudan
– Ethiopia Transport Project corridor, among others.
Within Uganda, we are getting ready to, first of all, repair and
start using the old railway lines to Malaba from Kampala, to
Pakwach from Tororo and to Kasese from Kampala. Even using
the old line to Mombasa, is cheaper than using the road. With
the Standard Gauge now in Nairobi, it costs US$5 cents per
metric tonne transported on the railway compared to US$ 15
cents per metric tonne transported on the road. With the
completed Standard Gauge Railway the rail transport will cost
US$ 8 cents per metric tonne compared to US$ 21 cents per
metric tonne on the road. There is also the use of the Lakes:
Victoria (Nalubaale), Kyooga with the Nile, Lake Albert
(Mwitanzigye), Lake Edward (Butuumbi – Rutshuru) and the
River Kagyera, through Kyaaka in Tanzania to Nshungyeezi in
Uganda, a mere 30 miles short of the Rwanda border at
Kakitumba.
However, when we are dealing with the Railway, Electricity and
ICT backbone, we must ensure the final price of the utility is
competitive because those elements are dangerous cost-pushers.
High electricity, transport and internet costs will not allow us to
industrialize. Therefore, the cost of money and the structure of
ownership should never be allowed to interfere with this strategic
aim.
The Region is also moving forward on trade facilitation through
the harmonization of Vehicle Load Control and operationalization
of the One Stop Border Posts. We will open yet another crucial
boarder post of Busia on Saturday, as planned by our Regional
Ministries.
We have also made good strides on the EAC One Area Network as
the implementation of cross-border ICT infrastructure is critical
for the attainment of a unified market in communication services
in East Africa. I am gratified to note that Kenya, Rwanda and
Uganda have implemented the EAC Roaming Framework, which
has considerably reduced on the telecommunication charges for
the East African citizens. I urge all the Partner States to embrace
this initiative for the benefit of our people.
The transformation of the EAC Customs Union into the Single
Customs Territory was a major step in advancing the integration
agenda. The Community has, since January 2014, incrementally
rolled our cargo on the Single Customs Territory. I am happy to
report that in December, 2017, all goods were rolled into the
Single Customs Territory. Thus, all goods are entered into the
Single Customs Territory once they reach the first point of entry
into the Community with taxes being assessed and paid to the
destination Partner States.
I call upon Your Excellencies to continue on the path of
connecting our region and internal investment in infrastructure
to boost the facilitation of production and productivity. While the
rest of Africa continue to register slow growth, EAC is the fastest
growing region. This is partly due to solving this bottleneck of
communication by investing heavily in infrastructure.
I would like to also request all partner states to focus on to the
challenge of doing business in order to realize value for money for
the investments we make in infrastructure.
I wish to mention some of the challenges, like, delays in project
delivery caused by procurement challenges. As Heads of State, we
agreed on the priority projects across the region but we do not
have in place a harmonized approach of procuring for these
projects. This is an area that we must address, collectively.

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

whereas developed countries anchor their infrastructure
development on their strong financial and capital markets, this
region lacks such muscle and, hence, miss the opportunity to
access sufficient and cheaper capital. Infrastructure bonds
issued through vibrant financial markets have become feasible
and profitable investment portfolios for emerging countries in
South East Asia. We need to embrace this approach in our
Region as part of our strategy to enable us realize our long-term
Infrastructure Development goals.
Let me inform you that, in the Health Sector, the EAC has
witnessed a notable increase in life expectancy from 51 years in
2005 to 61 years in 2016. Despite this progress, huge public
health challenges still exist. There is a growing burden of non-
communicable diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes
and cancers; high prevalence of communicable diseases such as
HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis; maternal, neonatal and
nutritional complications; road and other accident related
injuries; epidemics such as Ebola, marburg and even resistance
to antibiotics.
In East Africa, we need to learn lessons from the outbreak of
Ebola that ravaged West Africa from 2014 to 2016 in which over
11,000 people perished, but also investment, production and
travel were severely disrupted. Such outbreaks overstretch the
health systems and resources, threaten trade and slow down the
overall socio-economic transformation. We, as a region, need to
strengthen the rapid response mechanisms against health
security threats.
With the current array of technologies at our disposal, there is
no reason why we cannot eliminate some of the public health
challenges such as Malaria, Tuberculosis, HIV and AIDS;
preventable maternal and child deaths. We are also better
equipped to deal with non-communicable diseases and
epidemics.
We must, therefore, deliberately refocus our efforts to address
these challenges through increasing investment in prevention,
human and technological resources to accelerate progress
towards universal coverage of essential health to the peoples of
East Africa.
As we commit ourselves as leaders to champion the health
agenda, I call upon investors and development partners to take
advantage of potential investment opportunities such as the high
unmet needs for specialized healthcare of the rapidly growing
population; growing middle class and a wide range of potential
incentives offered by Partner States.
Besides, ensuring healthy lives, we expect the health sector to
contribute more significantly to the economy through creation of
new jobs, proliferation of innovations, expansion of
manufacturing of medicines and health technologies and medical
tourism. The sector should be a foreign exchange earner to the
region.
In this regard, we need to learn and apply lessons from emerging
economies such as India, whose total healthcare industry
revenue is expected to increase from US$ 110 billion in 2016 to
US$ 372 billion in 2022 in response to deliberate investments in
telemedicine, manufacturing of medicines and health
technologies, medical tourism, health workforce training and risk
pooling/health insurance, among others. In order to achieve this,
we need to plan in a harmonized way. In Uganda, for instance,
we, indeed, have a nascent pharmaceutical industry producing
Aids/HIV, Malaria, Hepatitis-B, pharmaceuticals, etc. drugs.
These are, however, still using imported pharmaceutical grade
starch and imported pharmaceutical grade sugar. The
pharmaceutical grade starch and sugar are crucial for making
tablets and syrups for children’s medicines. Yet, the starch is
from maize and cassava and the pharmaceutical grade sugar is
from sugar. I am told the drugs would be 20% cheaper.
Moreover, apart from helping in the pharmaceutical industry,
more refined sugar is also needed in the soft drinks industry.
Uganda is squandering US$34 million per year importing refined
sugar for the soft drinks, about US$ 20 million for importing the
pharmaceutical grade starches not including the other raw
materials, US$ 77million for taking patients to India etc. Africa
is incredibly rich but wasteful.
Excellencies,
It is my sincere hope that the outcomes of the Roundtable reports
which will be presented to the Heads of State will provide
avenues and strategies for addressing infrastructure and public
health challenges in our region.
At this juncture, I urge all governments and partners to re-affirm
their commitment to strengthen infrastructure and health sectors
to accelerate attainment of overall socio-economic transformation
for the peoples of East Africa. I look forward to your fruitful
deliberations.
It is now my singular honor and privilege to declare this EAC
Heads of State Retreat on Infrastructure and Health Financing
and Development officially open.

Thank You All and Asanteni Sana!