Industrialisation as a Vehicle for Uganda to Achieve a 1st World Economy by 2040: A Review of Uganda’s Industrialisation Efforts

Abstract

Uganda aspires to become “a transformed society from a peasant to a modern and prosperous country within 30 years”. This aspiration and the targeted steps to be taken to achieve it are laid down in a document titled Uganda Vision 2040. Industrialisation is considered to be one of the avenues to use to achieve this Vision, despite the fact that the country has made a number of efforts to promote industrialisation in the past, which have not yielded positive results. Reviewed here are the efforts that have been made to this regard since its independence and short falls highlighted. These efforts are compared with the East Asian countries’ efforts towards industrialisation to note what polic y makers and investors can do better in order to have industrialisation work for a country like Uganda. The comparison is based on the fact that these countries were at almost the same economic level of development in the 1960s and therefore there is a need to learn lessons of what was done differently. The country needs to develop a stepwise approach to industrialisation that can guide all efforts towards a common agenda.