{Uganda-Russia ties. As the US and EU rebuked government for the February 18 elections they said fell short of democratic principles, Russia sent praises describing the disputed polls as a demonstration of support. For his swearing in, Moscow sent its deputy minister of foreign affairs Mikhail Bogdanov whom together with dignitaries sent by Beijing, President Museveni described as “genuine friends of Uganda”. Frederic Musisi caught up with the new Russian ambassador to Uganda, Mr Alexander Dmitrievich Polyakov.}
To start with, the newer aspect in the Russia-Uganda relations was the visit in October by your deputy minister for of telecom and mass communications for the first ministerial meeting of the Uganda-Russia Joint Permanent Commission, and during which several MoUs were signed. What is the status of implementation?
Minister Alexey Volin is the chairman of the commission on the Russian side while minister Okello Oryem is the co-chair.
During the meeting in October Memorandums of Understandings (MoUs) were signed for possible cooperation in various areas such as IT, military and technical cooperation with emphasis on training personnel, education, energy (oil and gas, nuclear) and agriculture.
A draft agreement on mutual cooperation in those areas was signed but the Ugandan side requested to make some amendments which we are still waiting. That doesn’t mean we are indifferent to what is happening in Uganda, but in those areas is where our focus will be.
On the Russian side we called for a clause of protection of investment interests, which is still under discussion.
During that meeting there were murmurs of the possible return of RT Global Resources, the consortium that had been selected as preferred bidder for development of Uganda’s refinery, but later walked away. Any progress?
Again, no new negotiations have been held and there is no official Russian position on that matter.
One point I must point out is I was last week interviewed by a colleague from your newspaper who hijacked me during a cocktail reception for Uganda graduates from Russia and asked me about the refinery.
I remember saying most of the things your newspaper attributed to me but the headline, that ‘Russia sets new conditions for Uganda on refinery’ was misleading. There is no nothing like this.
No new negotiations were held during that time because the position of the Ugandan government is very clear; the issue of negotiating with the consortium is closed and is not on the table anymore.
What I said and from our side is not the new official proposal from the Russian government but rather ideas for possible consideration. A day after that story I also read an opinion in your newspaper criticising Russia for setting dictating conditions for Uganda, as a result of the inaccurate headline.
Russia has been here for long but we don’t see or know much about their investments, and especially after President Museveni and president Vladimir Putin first met in 2004 and in 2012. Can you paint a picture on this?
You are right to ask that question, and it is not by chance I mentioned in first place the draft on inter-governmental agreement on protection and promotion of investments. We are still lacking this absolutely basic precondition for the successful Russian investments in Uganda, and that explains why our economic cooperation is not much about investments in Uganda.
Currently, we have only one major Russian investment in Uganda, Cottfield Group, worth Shs56b ($16m) which is involved in (cotton ginning in progress and vegetable oil refinery) and are also targeting fruit processing.
By the way, the two presidents negotiated not so much about investments in Uganda but rather much about global problems and problems of Africa. So we have a very successful political cooperation, especially at both the levels of the United Nations and Security Council levels.
When Uganda was a non-permanent member of the UN between 2009 and 2010, Russia never opposed any proposal by Uganda. In addition we have traditionally supported all African-led proposals because essentially global foreign policy still runs via the United Nations.
Russia also supports the African Union in many ways, for example in South Sudan we have more than 200 Russian personnel on the ground across the country, some of whom are members of the international police force.
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