Uganda President Yoweri Museveni has hailed the contribution of the South Asian community, including India, to the economic development of the country while addressing the Non-Alignment Movement (NAM) summit in Kampala.
“I was asking people how many factories have been built by our Indian returnees. They told me about the 900 factories that they had built since they came back,” Museveni said.
Many of Uganda's Indian diaspora were expelled from the country over fifty years ago, he went on to explain.
"Uganda was moving very well in the 1960s. Then we had a man called Idi Amin. I don't know whether you heard of him. He was a soldier, a British soldier. Poor, no education. He came and took over the government. We decided to fight him. But in a very short time, he expelled our Asians," Museveni explained.
Museveni recounted the steps taken by the current Ugandan government to reportedly rectify these past injustices.
He said Indians have been actively involved in various industries, including sugar, hotels, and steel production.
The NAM “accounts for 4.46 billion people of the world. It was started by our far-sighted elders in the persons of Sukarno of Indonesia, Pt Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Nasser of Egypt and Chou En Lai of China,” he added.