Museveni Blasts NGOs Over AES Bujagali
By Simwogerere Kyazze
The Monitor, September 3, 2002
President Yoweri Museveni yesterday attacked international NGOs for interfering with Uganda's dam construction projects. Speaking 12th among world leaders at the World Summit for Sustainable Development, the president said that only increased use of electricity by peasants would save the environment.
"Therefore the arrogant so-called NGOs that interfere with the construction of dams in Uganda are the real enemies of the environment," Museveni said, in a veiled reference to the pressure from environmentalists that threatens to block the US $530 Bujagali dam project by AES Nile Power.
The president spoke entirely from prepared text.
He told other world leaders that the principles of Agenda 21 which were agreed on in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, have remained largely unfulfilled because of poverty in Africa, lack of commitment in developed countries and "a parasitic trading system in the world that is skewed against Africa." "Africa continues to struggle in her quest to develop because it is faced with major obstacles," the president said, citing poverty and disease as chief among them.
"In Uganda poverty reduction is high on our agenda and we plan to bring it down to 10 percent by 2017," Museveni said. The president also quoted from the Bible (Luke 10: 25) about Jesus' teaching on loving one's neighbour and God. "Similarly, this summit needs to ask itself, 'what do we need for all mankind to get out of poverty and enter the kingdom of sustainable development?'"
Museveni named macro-economic stability, human resource development and access to markets as some of the ways for entering this "kingdom." He said there was greed and insensitivity among the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and Russia that contribute 86 percent of all global greenhouse emissions. "They preach free trade but practice protectionism," Museveni said. "We must banish all methods that bring such distortions in world trade," he said.
Namibia President Sam Nujoma provided the early fireworks when he demanded that the European Union lifts sanctions against Zimbabwe, "otherwise what they are telling us is useless." "Here in southern Africa we have one problem created by Britain whose leader Tony Blair is here," Nujoma said. "The British colonialists brought this on Zimbabwe, where settlers own 78 percent of the land and millions of indigenous people do not even have a single acre." He said Mugabe was doing the right thing and that it was up to the EU to compensate their settlers who were being evicted from the farms.
Nujoma stirred further controversy by saying the countries that created HIV/AIDS should find the money for a cure. "Some of the governments are here," Nujoma said, away from his prepared text. "They know themselves."
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