President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has invited Saudi Arabia to interest itself and invest in Uganda's coffee. met and held discussions with Ahmed Bin Abdul- Aziz Kattan a Royal Court advisor in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. 

Museveni was meeting Saudi Arabia Royal Court advisor, Ahmed Bin Abdul-Aziz Kattan at State House Entebbe.

“I want you to invest in coffee processing. We lose a lot of money from selling raw coffee, we get only $2.5 per kilogram instead of $40. It is like oil the way it was in the past where a barrel of oil in 1969 was 40 cents, it was not even $1 USD. When there was the Arab-Israeli war in 1973, that is when there was a boycott and a barrel went to $40,” Museveni explained.

“That was the beginning of the petrodollars. That is how some wealth moved from western Europe to oil-producing countries. This is the same problem with these other raw materials like coffee,” he added.

Museveni reiterated that it would be a good idea if Kattan can identify and get Uganda a company that will be able to process coffee here, further assuring him that there was a ready market for the agricultural product world over.

“The global business for coffee is $460 billion but the coffee-producing countries; all of us, share only $25 billion and Africa shares $2.4 billion. Germany, a non-coffee-producing country, earns more from coffee than the whole of Africa. It earns $6.4 billion,” Museveni stressed.

“So, if you can get me a company which can roast coffee here, grind and pack, it will be good. I was in Serbia; they are ready to buy our processed coffee but even the Americans if we process it, they will buy it because we have got an agreement with them, AGOA,” Museveni added.

Kattan assured Museveni that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was ready to cooperate with Uganda.

“I mentioned to the minister of Foreign Affairs that we would like to increase the investment with Uganda so if you have any projects, you like Saudi Arabia to support, we would like to receive a study. You can send it to the embassy of Saudi Arabia, they will send it to us,” he said.

Kattan also extended an invitation to Museveni to visit Saudi Arabia and attend two forthcoming summits.

“We are going to host two African summits; the Saudi Arabia Summit and the Arab-Africa summit and on behalf of my government, I would like you to be there,” he noted.

President Museveni responded in the affirmative. “No problem, we shall definitely come."

The meeting was also attended by Foreign Affairs minister, Gen Jeje Odongo and other members of the delegation from Saudi Arabia.  Last year in June during the State of the Nation Address, Museveni defended a controversial and unpopular decision to offer tax waivers, free land, free electricity among others to Italian investor Enrica Pinetti to invest in value addition into Uganda's coffee. It is not immediately clear how far the Pinetti deal has gone. By URN/The Observer