{{Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has urged the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) member states to prioritise investment in infrastructure to spur economic growth.}}<\/p>\n
He advised African states to adopt innovative ways of financing infrastructure projects, such as through infrastructure bonds, public-private partnerships or savings.<\/p>\n
\u201cImproved infrastructure lowers the cost of doing business, attracts investors and creates employment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He was speaking at the opening of a high level COMESA Infrastructure Conference in Kampala.<\/p>\n
The conference, held under the theme \u201cInnovative means of Infrastructure Financing\u201d attracted delegates from 19 COMESA member states.<\/p>\n
The countries include Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, Rwanda, DR Congo, Burundi, Comoros, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Djibouti, Madagascar, Mauritius, Malawi, Uganda, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Seychelles and Swaziland.<\/p>\n
Museveni, the current COMESA chair, urged African states to focus their investment in infrastructure, which he described as the \u2018cornerstone and bedrock of any society.\u2019<\/p>\n
He challenged African states to learn from the ancient Roman Empire, whose network of paved roads had given rise to the adage \u2018All Roads Lead to Rome.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cEven today, when you go to Rome, the roads are still there; not like the ones you build and within two years they disappear,\u201d Museveni said.<\/p>\n
He observed that inadequate infrastructure in form of transport, energy and information technology was behind region\u2019s underdevelopment.<\/p>\n
NV<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has urged the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) member states to prioritise investment in infrastructure to spur economic growth.}} He advised African states to adopt innovative ways of financing infrastructure projects, such as through infrastructure bonds, public-private partnerships or savings. \u201cImproved infrastructure lowers the cost of doing business, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2000048259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-10395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000048259,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10395.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10395.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10395.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10395.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10395.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10395.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000048259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10395"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=10395"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=10395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}