Why Museveni is courting the East

An old truism recommends making new friends but at the same time keeping the old; one is silver, the other is gold.
No one knows that better than President Museveni, who in the recent days hosted South Korean president Park Geun-Hye and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The visit by the two heads of state highlighted the President’s commitment to cement relations with new frontiers in the East, especially in light of the usually on-and-off relationship with the United States and European Union (EU) over his government’s approach to governance.

In April last year, for example, President Museveni was in China for the annual Boao Forum for Asia after which he put signature to paper for loans reportedly amounting to $4 billion (Shs12 trillion) from Exim Bank; in September he was in Japan for talks over projects with the country’s prime minister Shinzo Abe; in October was in New Dehli for the India-Africa Summit discussing trade and courting investors and in December was in oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

Embracing more in the East
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to visit sometime in July.

Apart from the usual visits by African or neighbouring heads of state, occasionally for problem solving and or advice, president Park who was in the country briefly last week as part of her 12-day trip was the first foreign head of state to visit in quite a very long time.

At her reception, the government and that of South Korea inked 10 memoranda of understanding on defence, social welfare, rural development, health, agriculture, cooperatives, information and communications technology, science and technology, diplomacy and consultations and energy. All the frameworks amounting in the range of Shs6.7 trillion ($2b). President Park was also accompanied by at least 27 business executives who similarly signed several deals with local companies.

South Korea, on the southern half of the Korean Peninsula, is not only one of Asia’s success stories, but also a global success story. The country’s “rags to riches” economic transformation has been told and retold countless times in Uganda.

Development experts alike usually recount Korea’s history and that of Uganda as similar—both countries underwent colonialism, experienced political disorder, wracked by poverty, diseases, economic decline, name it. More intriguingly, 50 years ago, Korea is said to have been a worse state than Uganda; with a GDP per capita of $87 (Shs292,000) and GNP of $79 (Shs265,000) per capita but now has a GDP per Capita of $27,195 (Shs91 million) compared to Uganda’s $730 (Shs2.4 million).

Also, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, South Korea is the 23rd largest development assistance donor, with $1.9b (Shs6 trillion) as of 2014, which represented only 0.13 per cent of its gross national income. The country is also home to some of the world’s leading brands such as Samsung, Hyundai-Kia Automotive group, Hyundai Heavy Industries and LG.

The country’s capital Seoul is filled with one glass skyscraper after another. But despite retelling Korea’s story, in Uganda leaders are still blaming the past colonial administration for the underdevelopment malaise manifesting in the present.

The biggest highlight of president Park’s visit, however, was the announcement and moments-later rejection of statements of cutting ties with South Korea’s archenemy, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), or North Korea, whose leader Kim Jong-un has threatened countless times to blow up the former’s capital Seoul into “rubble and ashes”.

The said cutting of ties with DPRK was in keeping up with the spirit of the UN’s pillars of nuclear non-proliferation and in compliance with a broad array of the sanctions slapped on Pyongyang in March after conducting its fourth nuclear test in January, detonating what it claimed was a hydrogen bomb.

For Uganda, abandoning ties with DPRK meant deepening ties with South Korea. However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly put the spanner in works by issuing a strongly worded statement rebuffing the claims.

The ministry’s permanent secretary James Mugume in part indicated that the claim of cutting ties attributed to the line minister Sam Kutesa was “taken grossly out of context”.

Uganda and North Korea have had a remarkably close relationship that dates back to 1970s under former president Idi Amin when Pyongyang started providing assistance to the armed forces.
This relationship extended into the Museveni era, and the country is noted for providing training and expertise for the police as well as the provision of “non-lethal” equipment.

Uganda being an emerging oil and gas frontier in the region, the other under looked component is that South Korea’s SK Engineering and Construction Company was retained by government as alternate bidder for the development of the Uganda’s proposed Shs4b Greenfield oil refinery.

SK was beaten to the deal by Russia’s RT Global Resources, a consortium led by Russia’s Rostec, a defence and technology corporation— with huge EU sanctions on its boss.

Negotiations with RT are officially said to be ongoing cordially, but insiders say otherwise. Already the upstream industry is in the balance of interests marked by by France’s Total SA, UK’s Tullow Oil PLC and China’s Cnooc.

A day after president Park departed, Turkish president Recep Erdoğan jetted in the country as part of his four-day East African tour. His country’s bilateral trade volumes with Uganda are estimated at nearly $29m (Shs96b) as of 2015, with about $22m (Shs73b) being exports.
President Museveni visited Turkey in 2010 at the invitation of then president Abdullah Gul. This was followed by the country opening up its diplomatic mission in Kampala the same year and Uganda also opened up an embassy in the Turkish capital, Ankara, in 2013.

During his visit, president Erdoğan underscored his government’s commitment to invest $600m (Shs2 trillion) in an industrial park for agro-processing, manufacturing and energy in Luweero District. President Erdoğan, who is feared both at home and in the Middle East, also used the moment to scold the EU for cutting back on funding to the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom)—to which Uganda is a contributing country.

The good Russians, Chinese and the bad US, EU
Government deployed in Somalia in 2007 and currently maintains the largest peace keeping force of 6,000 troops. Other countries contributing troops to Amisom include Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti. The mission is funded by the EU, US and United Nations.
However, most recently, the EU unveiled plans to reduce funding to the mission. The move is thought by some critics to be reinforced by the frigid relationship between President Museveni and Uganda’s largest bilateral partners.

After the EU cut funding early last month, government also revealed measured plans to withdraw or rather “review” its contribution to Somalia—the timing of the decision in light of recent political developments also very crucial.

Largest partners
The US and EU are no doubt Uganda’s largest partners, and yet the two Western powers are also a nosy nightmare with a habit of lecturing President Museveni on what he should or shouldn’t be doing.
“I don’t like foreigners giving me orders on Uganda. Uganda is ours,” the President usually hits back. He said it at his first press briefing after re-election in February, at his victory party in April and at his swearing-in ceremony last month.

To mean it this time, at his swearing-in ceremony; a day that literally appeared set aside for bashing the West, Mr Museveni after made special introductions of Russia’s deputy minister of foreign affairs Mikhail Bogdanov who represented Russian president Vladimir Putin and representatives from China—these countries he described as Uganda’s genuine friends.

“Those Russians sell to us those spears you have seen (referring to guns and fighter jets) without conditionalities and arrogance. You know we already rejected arrogance. Let everyone rule over his house. Therefore, those people (Russians) are our genuine friends,” he said.

Russia, then known as the Soviet Republic, established diplomatic relations with Uganda in 1962. The two countries presently enjoy modest relations, but majorly on defence and military cooperation. In 2011, government purchased six fighter jets from Russia at $744m.
At the peak of the Cold War, Uganda enjoyed a healthy relationship with the Soviet Union (now Russia). Although President Museveni later shelved his Marxist inclinations, embraced capitalism and immediately became a darling of the West, his ratings in the eyes of the West have considerably dropped since.

He, however, maintained a very good relationship with Russia and China in a delicate diplomatic balancing act that now he is just recalibrating the knob. But his confidence to deride the West, observers say, is bolstered by the 6.5 billion stock tank of oil in place in the Albertine Graben.

Shuffling of power or desperation?
The US provides $760m (Shs2.5 trillion) support annually to Uganda, more than half of it ($440m) allocated to the health sector and military. This assistance, the country’s the principal deputy secretary for African affairs Bruce Wharton, said recently they were “proud of it”.

While this assistance remains crucial, President Museveni, now in his fifth term in office – the last one under the Constitution – on the other hand is preoccupied with looking for money for ambitious infrastructure projects to complement his legacy.

In an interview with the UK’s Financial Times in 2014, the President conceded that the government’s previous intention to issue a debut sovereign bond to finance infrastructure projects was now a “last resort”. “Now the Chinese are coming and they come with a sense of solidarity and they come with big money, not small money, and they also have experience,” he said.

In general, the government is banking on China to provide $10 billion (Shs33.6 trillion) for the mega infrastructure projects, not only because Beijing offers the cheapest capital, but also because the Chinese do not usually set conditions besides non-interference in internal affairs.
President Museveni, like several of his like-minded compatriots on the continent, like the flexibility of this ‘aid on demand’ approach, while many the West are at unease with it. They worry that it may enable the aid-receiving countries’ political leaders to site projects according to their personal or political needs, rather than according to the needs of the recipient population.
Such was the manifested last December at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit attended by some 48 African leaders in South Africa, where China committed a package of $60b (Shs200 trillion) in loans to the continent.

‘Healing the injury’
Speaking at the conference, President Museveni said: “Unlike some global actors who have been concentrating on using cotton wool to mop up oozing blood from a wound, the Chinese have agreed with us, certainly in Uganda’s case, that to heal the injury, one needs to repair the internal primary systems; the blood circulatory system, the nervous system, the digestive system, etc.”

No doubt China is providing substantial amount loans to African nations, but while the governments are at ease with it, experts and critics have repeatedly questioned its motives.
But while President Museveni is known for his political pragmatism, observers in the aftermath of the just concluded elections pointed to a not so normal state of affairs. So how far will he go with continuing to balance the act?

Experts’ view

Harold Acemah, retired diplomat: “After the post-election row with his closest allies, I think he is now trying to create new allies and or even to cement relations with the old ones he did not look at as serious at once. Not that he can live without the US or the EU or biggest partners, but like the saying goes; make new friends but at the same time keeping the old; one is silver, the other is gold. The problem with foreign policy under Museveni is the lack of consistency; today we are here, tomorrow we are there but the bigger problem, in fact, is while foreign policy is supposed to be based in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Uganda it is cooked in State House.”
Dr Juma Okuku, lecturer Makerere University: “In times like these when he [Museveni] he has over exposed himself, he definitely has to look around for people who will not mind what he does or how he does it.”