Stop Your Ejjogo On Us – We Aren’t Your Slaves!! Museveni Blasts Biden’s Government After Removing Uganda From AGOA Trade Deal

President Museveni, Uganda’s long serving leader has once again hit back at the United States over plans to suspend Uganda from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) a business forum that connects sub-Saharan Africa with US businesses and investments.When Museveni had just appended his signature to the controversial Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023, US president Joe Biden in his strong worded statement threatened that if Uganda doesn’t repeal this law which they refer to as inhuman, the country risks losing key support from the US.

The US supports Museveni’s government in key sectors like defense, democracy, security, agriculture, health among others. Key in this is the funding under PEPFAR which cares for over the 1.4million people living with HIV in Uganda. This fund buys them ARVs and other care support services but the US threatened to withdraw this support over the Anti-Homosexuality Act.

Biden in the same letter threatened to remove Uganda from America’s juicy AGOA and indeed this has since been implemented and Uganda risks losing out on key businesses and investments from the US. To suffocate the Museveni government more, the US also threatened to issue travel ban on some government officials they think are involved in violation of human rights.

This is the second blow to Uganda since May when the Anti-Homosexuality Act came to life after Museveni signing it into law. It was the world bank first which suspending any more funding requests from Uganda over the homosexuality law. Museveni as usual lectured and lamented at the world bank for behaving the way they behaved wondering why they’ve chosen to suspend funding to Uganda yet some countries even with toughter Anti-Homosexuality act aren’t even threatened.

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) is a peace of legislation that was approved by the US congress in May 2000 to assist economies of sub-Saharan Africa to improve economic relations between the United States and the region. This means the forum is key in gearing trade and investments between African countries particularly Uganda with the wealthy United States.

Via his twitter account yesterday, President Museveni scoffed at the U.S for suspending Uganda from such terming the act as ‘ejjoogo’ of western powers who think they can bully African countries and coerce them into their own culture and perceptions.

We shall include his statement verbatim in this article as seen below.“

Fellow Ugandans and, especially, the Bazzukulu. Greetings. I need to advise you not to be over-concerned by the recent actions by the American Government in discouraging their companies from investing in Uganda and on removing Uganda from the AGOA list. Some of these actors in the Western World overestimate themselves and underestimate the freedom fighters of Africa. On account of some of the freedom fighters making mistakes of philosophy, ideology and strategy, some of the foreign actors, erroneously think that African Countries cannot move forward without their support.”

“Certainly, as far as Uganda is concerned, we have the capacity to achieve our growth and transformation targets, even if some of the actors do not support us. It is the eight points that I outlined for you at our recent Independence celebrations that are decisive.”

“These pressures from outside are joogo (dharau – looking down upon somebody, underrating somebody) towards the Africans and must be rejected. I am told that some of the Arab Countries, have similar laws. Why don’t these actors put similar pressures, on them?” Museveni Fumed