PACEID trade mission: Serbia offers scholarships to Ugandan students

BELGRADE- The trade delegation from the Presidential Advisory Committee on Exports and Industrial Development (PACEID) consisting of leaders from coffee, horticulture, tourism, beef, dairy and grains sectors, concluded the Serbia leg with a meeting of Uganda student leaders in Serbia and urged them to participate in the ‘Uganda Connect Trade Hub’ due to open mid-June this year.

Serbia has offered more scholarships for Ugandan students to study medicine, engineering and agriculture as part of the bilateral agreement to be signed in June, in an effort to improve trade relations.

The Uganda trade hub will require baristas, chefs, entertainers, food scientists and cultural communicators to deal with differences in languages. Mr. Bratislav Stoiljkovic, Uganda’s Trade representative in Serbia is leading the effort to set up the Hub. He said, “there is need for Ugandan qualified labour in construction, engineering, restaurant management and tourism and I encourage Ugandans to help explain and communicate Uganda better in the region”.

Odrek Rwabwogo with one of the Ugandan students from Kitgum district doing engineering at the University of Serbia (Courtesy photos)

The private sector delegation which included Nelson Tugume (Coffee), Amos Tindyeebwa (Beef), Amos Wekesa (Tourism), James Kanyiije and Mahmood Hudda (Horticulture) was led by Odrek Rwabwogo who chairs a 40-person committee to improve Uganda’s exports and raise USD6bn in sales by 2028.

This is to end the trade imbalance that has plagued the country for a long time because Uganda imports more than USD7bn and exports less than USD5.5bn.

The PACEID effort is aimed at attracting capital in the industrial and agricultural sectors, encouraging company partnerships, investment in agro-industrial parks and negotiating better market access terms. Uganda will be opening seven trade hubs in Dubai, Entebbe, London, Chicago, Belgrade, New York and Beijing.

On Tuesday evening May 16, the delegation met with Mr. Zarko Malinovic Assistant minister for internal and external trade with Mr. Mihajlo Zdravkovic, director of the Airports of Serbia and made a case for a codeshare agreement between Uganda Airlines and Air Serbia.

This is in order to begin direct travel and tourist arrivals from Serbia to Uganda and vice versa. Ms. Olive Lumonya, Deputy Director General of Uganda’s CAA spoke directly to Mr. Zdravkovic to begin the process of actualizing this relationship.

More than 30,000 Serbians visited Egypt in the last four months, a good indication of the potential Uganda is poised to attract once the there are direct flights and promotion in the region. The Russian tourism market is also influenced heavily by the Balkans choice of travel regions which allows Uganda to claw more arrivals from Moscow.

Amos Wekesa of Great Lakes Safaris who represented the tourism sector in the talks said, “If we promote Uganda in the Balkans, this will be a game changer for the industry given Uganda offers more options for tourists than many countries in Africa and the world. The content development work the President directed to be done recently will go a long way to ease this and create market awareness about Uganda”.

The team also met the largest local retailer of foods and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs) called DIS Ltd and their leader Mr. Nikola Simic who offered Uganda orders for supply of coffee, avocados, passion fruits, green chilis, sweet potatoes, jackfruits, apple bananas (Kabalagala) and green Tooke products of the Nyaruzinga Bushenyi project, in his outlets.

They also met the logistics company to manage Uganda’s imports and certification.

On  May 24, the Serbian delegation in the fruits and vegetables sector interested in setting up a pineapple processing plant will be in Uganda following up on the commitments made on April 19, 2023. The Uganda trade delegation also met the makers of sewerage treatment equipment interested in setting up in Uganda for the EAC market.

  “If we don’t comb all aspects of these markets and study them at a granular level, we will have wasted a lot of time for our country. We have no time; the competition has left us and we must double our efforts to sell more and be understood by these markets” Odrek Rwabwogo told the meeting attended by the trade representatives of the region and the retail outlets, at a restaurant downtown Belgrade.

The delegation later conducted interviews about Uganda’s industry, agriculture and tourism and was hosted by Mr. Sasa Blagojevic, lead editor of Alo media, the largest multimedia and content production house in Serbia which is watched by the Serbian diaspora populations in Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, Albania, Romania, Hungary, Macedonia, Austria and Germany.

The Media house promised to promote Uganda on its multiple channels. The delegation later visited the second largest orthodox church in Europe, the church of St. Sava, in central Belgrade to understand the culture and religious history of the country. St. Sava construction began in 1920 and is expected to be completed by 2025. It is the second largest after the Russian Orthodox church.

President Museveni is expected to meet his counterpart, President Vucic next month to strengthen the trade relations and use Serbia as a base for promotion of Ugandan food products.