Mw. Semakula, This is from Daily Nation. How M7's letter torpedoed Cancun talks By SUNDAY G. KISANGARA Reports that President Yoweri Museveni has confirmed sending a letter to the head of Uganda's delegation at the WTO conference at Cancun, urging them to support the European and US position rather than that of the developing countries displays a failure to understand the factors that affect poor economies in globalisation.
We know that Museveni wholeheartedly embraced the Agoa Bill when it was being debated in the US and offered little or no support to the HOPE of Africa Bill that was floated as an alternative to Agoa. I really wonder whether he understood Agoa and its implications and whether he ever tried to examine the rationale of HOPE. Museveni�s arguments against dumping in the African context are rather shallow. African countries produce primarily agricultural products. They have not dumped these goods on the US market. On the contrary, the US has dumped agricultural products ranging from maize to soya, in Africa directly, or indirectly in the form of aid. On the other hand, Asian countries have dumped electronic goods on the African market, undercutting the expensive Western electronic goods. This Asian dumping is in Africa's interests, given that we don�t manufacture any electronic goods. What African governments should do in the short term is to welcome the cheap manufactured goods from Asia and draw up a strategy on how to reverse this in the long term. For 18 years, Museveni has not put a long-term strategy in place for the local manufacturing sector. He is therefore responsible for the Asian dumping of their manufactures on our market. Museveni also fails to understand that the main reasons why African governments can�t sell their agricultural products in Western markets is because of artificial restrictions caused by Europeans and US government subsidies that distort the market, tilting the balance in favour of Western farmers. The US legislature passed a Bill authorising massive subsidies to US farmers just weeks after passing the Agoa Bill. Does Mr Museveni really think this was intended to promote Agoa? Does he think Africans can ever trade freely and fairly in an open market without proper reforms? We all know that Museveni is a strong advocate of Uganda�s reflexive solidarity with the US and EC, something that is not out of love for his country, but rather, the need to entrench himself in Uganda's politics. These imperialists, out of their national economic interests, have bank-rolled his regime; turned a blind eye to the chaos in our country; paid no attention to Museveni's activities in Rwanda; overlooked Uganda�s activities in the DRC, and remained silent on rampant corruption in the country. As a result, he torpedoed the WTO conference in Cancun through his letter, and the end loser in this game was the poor Ugandan farmer. In his letter, Museveni showed a degree of envy for emerging economies like India and Brazil. The performance of the Indian economy, for example, today threatens jobs in the developed world, be it in the IT sector where Western companies have out-sourced their cheap services; in pharmaceutical industries, and in manufacturing. Now, companies like Rover are engaged in delicate negotiations with TATA of India. We should learn from them and not look at them as threats in international negotiations that affect the livelihood of 90 per cent of our people. We could easily acquire technology from countries like India, Malaysia, Taiwan, China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore, that is commensurate with our economic circumstances instead of looking to the Western world. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mr Kisangara is a Ugandan journalist resident in the United Kingdom \\\\\\\"Always be a first rate version of yourself instead of a second rate version of someone else.\\\\\\\\\\\\\" Njoki Paul University of Pretoria -------------------------------------------- This service is hosted on the Infocom network http://www.infocom.co.ug
