President Yoweri Museveni has said that the African continent has lagged behind in technological advancement because of political fragmentation, societal disintegration and persistent use of manual as opposed to intellectual labour for development.
“The use of the brain as opposed to manual intelligence made the Western world develop steadily recording scores in both qualitative and quantitative socio-economic transformation in a new form of life,” he observed.
The President made these observations yesterday at State House, Entebbe while delivering a lecture to a delegation of military officers from the Tanzania National Defence College.
The military officers who hail from twelve different African countries are on a visit to Uganda to share Uganda’s experience on environmental issues, socio-economic challenges, agriculture, industry and security in comparison to other countries in the region.
The President said that if it had not been for the weakness and selfishness of African chiefs who were all the time igniting unnecessary fights and conflicts in their territories due to their ideological bankruptcy and lack of cohesion, the Europeans would not have been able to conquer Africa.
“Even after independence, some of the African countries, bad regimes continued to cause more underdevelopment. In Uganda, for instance, its people have now just assumed peace and stability for the first time,” he said.
He explained to military officers that the main problem was ideological as African chiefs of the time, stack in their minds sectarian issues of tribe and opportunism and roundly ignored the interest of the people.
Mr. Museveni strongly called on the people of Africa to be strong, economically powerful and have strong defence and military mechanisms in order to ensure their sovereignty.
“Unity in diversity is the way forward. What is important is to have a union with a common market, common foreign policy and one army,” he said.
The head of the military delegation, Brigadier General Ibrahim Michael Mhona and Senior Director at the National Staff Defence College of Tanzania, explained that Uganda was chosen as a case study of their visit basing on the country’s agricultural background, for doing well in economic development, peaceful and stable.
“We shall take home these strategies that we have learnt from Uganda for our leaders to borrow a leaf,” he said.
