What you need to know:
- The latest development involved President Museveni visiting the US after five years. The US gives Uganda nearly $1 billion each year, mainly for health and security support.
President Museveni returned to the US after five years to attend the second US-Africa summit convened by the Biden administration as part of Washington’s gambit to counter Beijing and Moscow’s diplomatic charm offensive in Africa. The summit ran from December 13 to 14.
In Washington DC, the President—accompanied by daughter Natasha Karugire—was hosted by President Biden to a dinner at the White House.
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From Washington DC, Mr Museveni flew to Chicago in the Midwestern state of Illinois to officiate at the first US-Uganda international trade summit.
The President—who at his inauguration more than three decades ago chastised as “a pathetic spectacle” leaders who “fly to the UN in executive jets, but have a population at home of 90 percent walking barefoot”—had last been to the US in September 2017 for the 72nd United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
For the 2018 and 2019 UNGA meetings, the President delegated. Diplomatic sources attributed this to President Trump’s lackadaisical attitude towards Africa.
Mr Trump made 20 trips to 24 countries during his term, but none to Africa. Only Nigerian President Muhammed Buhari, former Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and Libya’s Fayez al-Sarraj visited the White House.
The US gives Uganda nearly $1 billion each year, mainly for health and security support.
In return, the Kampala regime runs security errands in the region, more significantly fighting al-Shabaab in Somalia; brokering peace with bickering neighbours; and playing its diplomatic power favourably at international fora.
Coming to America
The side-show to the Washington summit and the Biden-Museveni tête-à-tête was the President’s entourage—five ministers and the State House advance team—bulldozing the cash-strapped Ugandan embassy for facilitation during their stay in Washington DC.
One official in the entourage told this newspaper on condition of anonymity that they were treated as “second class citizens” by the embassy staff while the “ambassador was all the time blaming her juniors as if she’s not the one in charge.”
However, diplomatic sources in Kampala told this newspaper that the Foreign Affairs Permanent Secretary (PS), Vincent Bagiire, had written to his counterparts prior notifying them to adequately facilitate their delegations, including if possible taking the airport shuttle (a limousine) as his ministry and embassies abroad were facing liquidity challenges owing to the austerity measures inputted by the cash-strapped Treasury.
“They can complain all they want. The good thing is each ministry has a travel budget to take care of their own and the PS informed them ahead of time,” a senior official at the ministry told this publication.
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From the Washington DC and Chicago trip, President Museveni made stopovers in London, England, to officiate at the 12th Uganda-UK trade summit. During the second leg he met King Charles III at Windsor Castle.
International incursions
It was widely thought that the bloodied 2021 election campaigns, in which President Museveni polled a sixth electoral term in office and the seventh overall since shooting to power 36 years ago, would puncture the relationship with Washington and Brussels (seat of the European Union).
The mess in the election campaigns—unprecedented violence, killings, egregious human rights violations, and broad daylight abduction of Opposition supporters—brought with it implications. While Washington and Brussels responded by imposing travel sanctions on several officials in government and the military, it is apparent President Museveni is still their man.
Later this year, the President, accompanied by among others, Foreign Affairs Minister Jeje Odongo, Agricultural Minister Frank Tumwebaze, Finance Minister Matia Kasaija and ICT Minister Chris Baryomunsi, was in Vietnam at the invitation of his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyễn Xuân Phúc.
The US-UK-Vietnam visits were Mr Museveni’s international excursions this year. For the most part he was shuffling across the region between Kenya, DR Congo and Tanzania.
Great Lakes powder keg
The President kicked off the travelling calendar in February, visiting Congo Brazzaville, where he joined DR Congo’s Felix Tshisekedi and Togo’s Faure Gnassingbé Eyadéma for a mini summit on peace and security convened by Brazzaville’s strongman, Dennis Sassou Nguesso. From Brazzaville, he flew to Senegal for a one-day visit at the invitation of President Macky Sall.
Later in February, the President left for Kinshasa where he joined Presidents Sassou Ngueso, Tshisekedi, and Angola’s João Lourenço for the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) Heads of State summit.
ICGLR, is a 12-member body of countries (Uganda, Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Congo-Brazzaville, DRC, Sudan, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Zambia) of the restive Great Lakes region. The President also handed over the rotational chairmanship to Mr Lourenço.
DRC joins EAC
In early April, Mr Museveni flew to Nairobi to witness the signing of the accession treaty of DR Congo into the East African Community (EAC). Later in April, Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi travelled to Kampala on a three-day official visit.
In early May, Tanzania’s Samia Suluhu Hassan visited Kampala during which her government, among others, agreed to slash transit fees for cargo trucks bound for Uganda and made U-turn on its 2019 ban on sugar imports from Uganda.
Mr Museveni returned to Nairobi for the second mini-summit on peace and security in DRC, where he met with his Rwandan counterpart—Paul Kagame—on the sidelines. A third summit was held later in June in Nairobi.
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Among other travels, in July, Mr Museveni flew to Arusha, Tanzania, for an EAC engagement; Juba in September to witness the graduation of the first batch of the United Forces of South Sudan; and back to Nairobi in September to witness the swearing-in ceremony of the Kenyan President William Ruto.
At the end of June, Mr Museveni held a virtual meeting with the deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation—Dmitry Medvedev. He also held meetings with Russian Foreign Affairs minister Sergei Lavrov on July 27, and the United States Permanent Representative to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield in early August, and in October. All of this was on home soil before he hosted eight African heads of states as Uganda marked 60 years of independence.
Balancing interests
In early October during meetings between Mr Bagiire and the Russian Ambassador to Uganda—Vladlen Semivolos—the latter requested Uganda’s support on the initiative against conducting destructive direct ascent anti-Satellite Missile tests pushed by the United States. Mr Semivolos also sought Kampala’s neutrality on the vote by the US and its Western allies to suspend Russia from the International Paralympic Committee in Berlin last month.
On October 12, Uganda voted to abstain on the UN General Assembly resolution to condemn last month’s public referendums organised by Russia in the occupied Ukrainian regions of Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye. One hundred and forty-three countries voted to condemn Moscow for the illegal annexation of the Ukrainian regions; while 35 countries—including Uganda—abstained. Russia alongside Belarus, Syria, North Korea and Nicaragua voted against the resolution.
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Earlier in the year, Uganda voted to abstain during the UN General Assembly vote called by the UN Security Council (UNSC) to call for immediate cessation of violence and withdrawal of Russian military from Ukraine.
However, arguably, the normalisation of relations with Rwanda, and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) court ruling—which ordered Uganda to pay $325 million in compensation to the DRC for plunder of its natural resources—were the two major highlights of Uganda’s diplomatic calendar.
Kigali olive branch
Relations between the two neighbouring countries started deteriorating in late 2017 and culminated into border closure in February 2019. In came Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who visited Kigali after which a sliver of hope for normalisation of relations flickered.
In late April, President Kagame who was last in Uganda on February 21, 2020, for the fourth Quadripartite Summit of Heads of State of Angola, DR Congo, Uganda and Rwanda convened at the Katuna border, visited Uganda to attend Gen Kainerugaba’s 48th birthday fete.
President Kagame’s visit on April 28 was the clearest testament that relations had improved but to this end the publics remain befuddled about what caused breakdown in relations in the first place.
Muhoozi tweets
Gen Muhoozi, the First Son cum senior presidential advisor for special operations, started being active on Twitter not so long ago posting this and that. When he forayed into regional politics, his posts on the conflicts in Ethiopia (he tweeted support for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front—the rebels opposed to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government) and the eastern DRC could easily have gone unnoticed. The Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defence, riled quietly, often struggled to comment on the First Son’s incendiary tweets.
Then in what became a customary Twitter meltdown, this time in early October, the then commander of the UPDF Land Forces posted that he and the Ugandan army would take control of Kenya’s capital Nairobi in less than two weeks. The post immediately elicited panic in the Ugandan government quarters and harsh rebuke from across the border, Uganda’s main gateway to the sea through Mombasa port.
Uganda’s High Commissioner to Nairobi Hassan Galiwango was immediately dispatched by his supervisors in Kampala to reach out to the then incoming Kenyan Cabinet Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Dr Alfred Mutua.
Elsewhere, Kenyans on Twitter pilloried Gen Muhoozi over the virtual condescension. President Museveni telephoned President Ruto to apologise for the imbroglio.
Subsequently, President Museveni, who is the Commander in Chief of Defence Forces, promoted his son from the rank of Lieutenant General to General and removed him as commander of land forces. In an interview with this newspaper on the sidelines of the US-Africa summit, Mr Museveni said had told his son to refrain from tweeting about politics and related matters.
Meanwhile, with the cash-crunch biting the government, Uganda’s diplomatic missions abroad have had a rough year with several activities paused or deferred. On November 28, Mr Bagiire wrote to all heads of missions abroad detailing that the cuts will extend into the 2023/2024 Financial Year.
Congo reparations
In early February, the ICJ ordered Uganda to pay DRC $325 million—a middle-of-the-road settlement that was far less than the $11 billion (about Shs40.8t) that Kinshasa had earlier on claimed—in five annual installments of $65 million between September 2022 and 2026.
The court awarded Kinshasa $225 million (about Shs833.8b) for loss of lives, $40m (about Shs148.2b), and $60 million (Shs222 billion) for plunder of natural resources during the military occupation.
The judges found that Uganda was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the eastern Ituri region. Following the reparations judgment, Kampala continued engaging Kinshasa politically and diplomatically to duck paying the money in the spirit of regional cooperation. Uganda acquiesced and made the first payment as scheduled in September.
