UN General Assembly
2008

their markets to African products, tariff-free, quota- free. However, there is still the issue of subsidies. They should be removed. In Uganda, we farm without subsidies. Why should not the farmers in those countries with better infrastructure, lower interest rates, abundant electricity, et cetera, do the same? Why do they need protection? Protectionism interferes with those countries that can produce food easily, such as Uganda. That is not correct. We have been producing too much milk without having the capacity to process it. Recently, an Indian- owned company installed a high-tech integrated milk- processing plant and began to process powdered milk, producing a whole range of finished milk products: pasteurized milk, ultra-heat-treated (long-life) milk, yoghurt, butter, ghee, et cetera. Those milk products are now being exported to all parts of the world. Another example has been bananas. Uganda produces 10 million metric tons of bananas per annum. These are high-quality bananas — called enyam wonyo in one of our local dialects — which contain rare ingredients. They are quite different from the bananas