Industry minister invites Israeli investors to Uganda

The Minister of State for industry has invited Israeli businessmen to invest in industry, agricultural processing and tourism infrastructure sectors. Dr James Mutende told the visiting Israel Ambassador to East Africa, Mr Gil Haskel, during his visit to the Abayudaya faith community in Mbale last week.

Mbale is the centre of trade for the East African countries and Southern Sudan and would be transformed into a food basket if Israel invested here.

“As you plan to help develop the Abayudaya community in Mbale, I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to invest in the different opportunities like Agro-processing, industry and tourism in Mbale. I am sure you have seen how green this place is, you have seen the tourism potential and we also have an industrial park that is yearning for investors, please talk to the industrialists, businessmen and others to come, this is your home since you have your community permanently here,” said Dr Mutende.

Dr Mutende requested the Ambassador to build closer relations to revive the Israel embassy in Uganda that was closed during the reign of late Idi Amin Dada in the 1970s. The Israel Ambassador to East Africa, Mr Gil Haskel, promised to help the Abayudaya community develop through providing income generating projects.

“Since we have a Jewish community living here after surviving the torture during the Late Idi Amin’s reign, we are going to use this as a link to encourage agro-processing companies to exploit this potential,” said Mr Haskel. Mr Haskel revealed that Israel has 10 embassies in Africa and that top on the agenda is opening up the eleventh embassy in Uganda.
“We [Israelites] are definitely coming back to Uganda to open up a new embassy,” said Mr Haskel.

dmafabi@ug.nationmedia.com