Kampala, Uganda – The Permanent Secretary/Secretary to the Treasury, Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Mr. Ramathan Ggoobi, led a delegation to pay a courtesy call on the Deputy Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Mr. Zhang Xiangchen, at the WTO Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
The meeting, which took place on February 20th, 2025, was part of Mr. Ggoobi’s 2-day working visit to Geneva. He was accompanied by Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva, Amb. Arthur Kafeero, Commissioner Economic Development, Policy and Research, Mr. Joseph Enyimu, and Mr. Moses Kabanda, Commissioner Public Administration in the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development.
During the meeting, Mr. Ggoobi expressed gratitude to the World Trade Organization for its continuous support to Uganda. He highlighted the important role of trade and development for Uganda and other Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and developing countries.
“I wish to thank you for the WTO’s continued project support towards Uganda, including through the Aid for Trade Initiative and the Enhanced Integrated Framework,” Mr. Ggoobi said. “Uganda received USD 6.9m comprising support to building the institutional capacity for trade; diagnostics; and strengthening the capacity of district commercial offices and productive capacity development in the tourism sector.”
Mr. Ggoobi also welcomed the Abu Dhabi Ministerial Declaration’s reiteration of the centrality of the development dimension in the work of the WTO. He noted that the full integration of developing Members, including LDCs, in the multilateral trading system is important for their economic development.
Recalling the last WTO Ministerial Conference in February 2024, Mr. Ggoobi acknowledged the significance of intra-African trade in supporting economic diversification and export stabilization. “As a landlocked LDC, we see great potential in intra-African trade offering greater scope to support economic diversification and export stabilization, considering that the EAC has a market of 300 million people, COMESA 640 million and the AFCFTA about 1.4 billion.”
The Secretary to the Treasury and the Deputy Director-General held a vibrant discussion on the green transition as well as the importance of digital trade for Uganda. Mr. Ggoobi acknowledged the digital infrastructure gap, including limited internet access and high costs, especially in rural areas.
Mr. Ggoobi took the opportunity to inform that Uganda had formally expressed its interest in joining the “Digital Trade for Africa” Project, a joint WTO/World Bank effort that seeks to help African countries share fully in the benefits that digital trade brings and improve their development prospects.
The Secretary to the Treasury also briefed the Deputy Director-General on Uganda’s 10-fold growth strategy anchored on the pillars of Agro-processing, Tourism, Mineral Resource development, and Science and technology transfer and creative economies.
Deputy Director-General Zhang applauded Uganda on her path to achieving her development goals through digital transformation and for the ambitious target of the 10-fold growth strategy by 2040 the current DGP. He emphasized the importance of e-commerce and digital transformation as key elements to achieving such exponential ambition. They agreed that Uganda and WTO explore opportunities to support Uganda develop an IT ecosystem for the country share fully in the benefits that digital trade brings.
Zhang said that in view of the demographics of Uganda with a high percentage of youth, there is great potential in encouraging and developing a creative economy, citing examples from his own country of origin, China that to date relies heavily on creativity and digitalization, not only in basic Information Technologies, but embedding AI into critical sectors like Agriculture.
Mr. Zhang reiterated the readiness of WTO to work with Uganda.
