Uganda has expressed support to calls for the United Nations (UN) to finance peace operations by continental body, African Union (AU) as one way of fighting terrorism on the continent.
This has been revealed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gen Jeje Odongo while representing President Yoweri Museveni at the 8th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD8) from August 27-28 in Tunis, Tunisia.
He said peace, security and stability is the overarching framework for inclusive and sustainable development and socio- economic transformation of Africa, saying, without a sustainable and predictable way of funding the AU Peace Support Operations, it is likely, that the continent may not be able to preserve the gains made so far in fighting terrorism.
“Terrorism, if not contained, has a tendency of achieving a universal character with un-intended consequences. The UN Security Council (UNSC) has the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security,” Jeje Odongo said.
“We therefore support the call, for financing the African Union Peace Support Operations through the use of UN Assessed contributions,” he added.
With 6,162 troops, Uganda is the second largest contributor to peacekeeping operations worldwide as of December 31, 2021. This was contained in a study done by SIPRI, a global security think tank.
Uganda’s troops are in the African Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) where it is the leading nation in the mission. It was the first country to deploy in the UN-backed operations in 2007 and for it, it has earned recognition around the world.
In addition, ATMIS is the largest multilateral peace operation in the world with 19,384 military personnel.
Gen Jeje Odongo noted that he was optimistic that as TICAD marks its 30th anniversary next year, the Summit provides the opportunity to strengthen cooperation and enhance the continent’s capacity to deal with several challenges.
“In Uganda, a number of tangible projects, under the TICAD Framework, have been delivered, and others are ongoing implementation. This has significantly contributed to Uganda’s transformation. These include in the areas of energy, health, and infrastructure development etc,” Gen Odongo said.
He explained that since 2007, Uganda has focused on sustainable growth, wealth creation and structural change in order to reduce poverty.
Odongo said: “Our approach has been aimed at triggering the key priority areas of the economy such as Agriculture and Agro Processing; Energy development; Value Addition in Mineral Development; Development of critical Infrastructure; and ICT. Foreign Direct Investment, should, therefore be channeled to the aforementioned areas.”
He said that COVID-19 has had a negative effect on the Continent noting that Africa’s financing needs are estimated between USD 285bn-400bn between now and 2025 yet Africa was only allocated USD 33bn by the IMF in Special Drawing Rights (SDRs).
“We urge our Partners to reallocate part of their own SDRs to Africa. This will be vital in bridging our financing needs. The reallocation should be in form of grants, and or, concessional long-term financing and it should consider a country’s specific needs,” Gen Odongo said.
He further noted that the lack of equal access to the COVID-19 vaccines was a good lesson for Africa which has now realized the need to build local capacity to develop and manufacture vaccines including fast tracking research and development of therapeutics and diagnostics.
“What we also seek from our Partners is for pathogens to support our endeavors. We support the call to increase African vaccine manufacturing from the current 1% to at least 60 % by 2040,” Odongo added.
Odongo also reiterated Uganda’s appreciation for the continued partnership and stronger cooperation under the TICAD framework before reaffirming Uganda’s commitment to jointly advance the implementation of the TICAD-8 Tunis Declaration.