Ggoobi: Domestic Hurdles Threaten Uganda's Economic Diplomacy Success

Uganda must urgently tackle internal policy, regulatory, and service delivery bottlenecks to ensure its burgeoning economic and commercial diplomacy efforts translate into tangible benefits like increased investment, exports, tourism, and job creation. This was the strong message delivered by Permanent Secretary and Secretary to the Treasury, Ramathan Ggoobi, at the Economic and Commercial Diplomacy Annual Review Conference in Kampala.

Ggoobi highlighted that while Uganda’s diplomatic missions are successfully identifying potential investors, export markets, and tourist opportunities abroad, the country often loses these prospects due to the difficulties encountered by investors and visitors once they are in Uganda.

He stressed that the review of these efforts should move beyond simply quantifying meetings and engagements. Instead, the focus must shift to assessing whether these diplomatic activities are yielding measurable economic outcomes. “What is working in ECD? Where are we losing opportunities? And what must be done differently?” Ggoobi posed, emphasizing the critical need for conversion of identified opportunities into actual results.

Concerns arise as Uganda experiences notable economic growth, with a 6.4% expansion in the financial year 2025/26. However, Ggoobi pointed out that a significant challenge lies in converting promising leads from missions abroad into concrete exports, direct investment, and operational businesses within Uganda. He advocated for moving beyond exporting raw commodities to developing value-added products, using coffee as a prime example.

Investors have repeatedly cited an unpredictable tax regime, frequent policy shifts, delayed refunds, inconsistent rule interpretations, and a complex web of licenses and approvals as major deterrents. Furthermore, complaints include corruption, slow bureaucratic processes despite digitization, and issues related to land acquisition and skills shortages in specialized sectors.

Even the thriving tourism sector, which saw 1.64 million international arrivals in 2025, faces challenges. Tourists report issues with travel costs, poor road infrastructure to attractions, inconsistent service standards, inadequate sanitation, and slow border processes. Ggoobi concluded that while Uganda’s product offerings are strong, the overall “customer journey” is often costly, fragmented, and unpredictable, undermining potential gains.

To overcome these hurdles, Ggoobi called for enhanced inter-ministerial coordination and a focus on creating a more predictable and efficient environment for both investors and tourists, ensuring that Uganda’s promising economic engagements abroad translate into concrete prosperity at home. “The challenge, therefore, is no longer simply to convince investors and tourists to come to Uganda, or buyers to purchase Ugandan products, but to ensure that once the opportunity is created abroad, Uganda is organised enough to capture its full economic value at home.”

Source: Nile Post