Following a series of high-level meetings with President Yoweri Museveni and local business executives, Momar Nguer who recently led a business delegation of top French executives to Uganda declared the mission a success.

The 25-member delegation recently traveled to Kampala under their MEDEF umbrella (Mouvement des Enterprises de France), a French business association which brings together close to 170,000 French companies to explore opportunities in road and internet backbone infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, telecoms and credit finance, among others.

Nguer who is the chairman of MEDEF’s Eastern Africa Business Council and also sits on French oil major, Total’s executive committee, told local journalists in a debriefing session at the French ambassador’s residence in Kampala on Nov.26 that French companies are “eager to build long-term partnerships with their Ugandan counterparts.”

“We know that French companies will never know better the local environment than our Ugandan counterparts,” Nguer said, “We are humble enough to know that and we are humble enough to want to build upon the knowledge that our Ugandan counterparts may have.”

Among the French business leaders who traveled to Kampala were those from Airbus Helicopters, a helicopter manufacturing firm, Thalès, an aeronautic, space, defence and security firm, Société Générale, a banking and financial services giant, Ponticelli Frères, a construction and maintenance firm that has interest in the oil and gas sector, Sogea Satom, a construction and public works firm and Bolloré Transport & Logistics, a logistics company which is already well-established in Uganda.

Others included; Suez International which has interest in water and waste management, Ragni SAS (public lighting and solar street lighting), Vinci Concessions (construction and maintenance for infrastructure and public network projects), Omexom Major Projects (electricity production and transmission), Laboratoires Servier (pharmaceuticals), Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank (banking and financial services) and Meridiam (investment and asset management).

Over the course of two days, the business executives met and exchanged ideas with top government officials in the ministries of trade and industry, tourism, energy and minerals, agriculture and foreign affairs. They also met with executives from the Uganda Revenue Authority, Uganda Investment Authority and the National Planning Authority.

Source: The Independent

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