I didn’t say Uganda was middle income- Museveni
President Museveni. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- Critics hold that Mr Museveni’s near four-decade presidency often associated with dictatorship has been largely conditioned by electoral irregularities but the president said "Ugandans think that NRM is good."
- Mr Museveni also condemned the West for the first Libyan civil war which is just one of over 10 such power grabs in Africa that the 1980-86 guerilla war leader has consistently attributed to external interference.
President Museveni has disavowed reports that Uganda is now a middle-income status nation.
"I didn’t say we have already become but I said we are entering middle income status,” Mr Museveni said after weeks of a protracted-factual confrontation involving the World Bank (WB) and Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos).
On July 13, 2022 Mr Museveni contested the WB’s $840 Gross National Income (GNI) calculation in Uganda’s economic update for FY2020/2021 stating that Uganda had eclipsed the GDP per capita threshold of $1036 ahead of FY2022/23.
“What I said was that the GDP per capita at 1,046 has just entered the middle income bracket which is $1,036. There’s no contradiction (with WB),” he said in an interview with World Is One News (WION).
Mr Museveni capped his new position acknowledging that Uganda must sustain its already overheating economy with a GDP above $1,036 for three consecutive years.
“But in order to be declared officially, I said in my speech that you need to maintain that or surpass it,” he emphasized on July 16.
On NATO’s invasion of Libya
Mr Museveni further reiterated that the African Union (AU) “should have confronted the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)” during 2011 operations that ended dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya.
“After we defeated the whites [during decolonization], there was some relaxation and diversion and that’s how we allowed NATO to attack Libya. We shouldn’t have allowed it,” Mr Museveni echoed.
The Ugandan leader observed that NATO exploited weaknesses of the AU and other continental organizations to deploy forces that backed Libyan protests leading to the fall of Gaddafi - after 42 years in power.
“The consequence is all this chaos you are seeing in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso,” said Mr Museveni who has been in power since 1986.
The first Libyan civil war is just one of over 10 such power grabs in Africa that the 1980-86 guerilla war leader has consistently attributed to interference by the West.
But according to him, African Organizations such as AU, SADC and ECOWAS “have the potential and capacity to save Africa from these criminals, traitors and imperialists.”
Asked to comment on the ‘United States of Africa’ ideology peddled by Gaddafi and former Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, Mr Museveni contended that he did not support the idea.
“I never supported the idea of an All African Union government. What I support is the continental free trade area which can become an African common market…” he told WION’s Eric Njoka in a July 16 interview.
Mr Museveni, 77, further called for political integration- only in parts of the continent that are either similar or compatible like East and Central Africa.
‘Democratic dictator’
Critics hold that Mr Museveni’s near four-decade presidency often associated with dictatorship has been largely conditioned by electoral irregularities.
“Well, if I am a democratic dictator…then it must be an interesting one. I always win elections on the first round. Majority of Ugandans think that my party (NRM) and what I represent is good,” Mr Museveni said adding that “to call such a person an autocrat is really not serious.”
