Kristy Ramnarine kramnarine@trinidadexpress.com
Thursday, August 2nd 2007
Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has said that people cannot be empowered unless the factors of disempowerment are known.
He was delivering the feature address, which dealt with the empowerment of black people, during the National Association for the Empowerment of African People (NAEAP) dinner and awards ceremony on Tuesday night.
"When you talk of black people you are talking originally of Africans. You cannot talk about black people and not talk about Africa. The African continent is the cradle of mankind," he said.
"What do we need to do to empower black people?" he asked. "In my opinion the answer is dealing with a number of factors."
Museveni went on to name a few factors, one of which was dealing with the under-development of African countries.
"Countries in Africa have been democratic for very long but are still under-developed," he added.
"We need to deal with the problem of Independence and decision making."
He then used an example of coffee exports in Uganda, which brings in less money to the country than it should.
"Uganda is the fourth largest exporter of coffee in the world," he said.
"We sell coffee for $1 per pound while the United Kingdom sellS it for $15 a pound. The United Kingdom makes a $14-dollar profit on coffee, which is imported from Uganda. We need to export raw materials instead of unfinished products."
He said that efforts were now underway to process coffee in Uganda where they will compete with international food company Nestle.
Prime Minister Patrick Manning said Emancipation Day has been celebrated many times but would only have meaning if citizens viewed it as an opportunity to free themselves from whatever shackles that had stunned their growth as a nation.
Manning said the issue of diversity in Trinidad and Tobago must be utmost in the minds of citizens all the time.
"All of us have an ancestry that come from outside of Trinidad and Tobago, except for the Carib community in Arima," he said.
"In societies that are as diverse, in fact in any society where differences exist amongst the people those differences conspire to divide rather than to unite.
"We ought to take a personal decision that whatever differences exist amongst us that we will not use as a form of discord. Instead we would look for the strength in us and seek to build out society and build out nation."
Comments: ...Museveni: Empower black people
Empowering black people Posted: 2007-08-02 00:01:00
