The month of May has been busy with Technical Working Groups (TWGs) holding their maiden meetings attended by various representatives from the private and public sectors of Uganda and the European Union (EU). The groups are Trade and Investment, Access to Finance, Governance and Accountability, and Skills and Attitude composed of 15 members from the Ugandan and the EU private and public sectors.
As the main technical arm of the Sustainable Business for Uganda (SB4U) platform for the advocacy process, the TWGs hold various dialogues to identify challenges and make recommendations for overcoming the numerous hurdles for investment and trade between Uganda and the EU.
Representing the EU delegation in the meetings, Nicolas Renard commented; “I’m happy that we are really now starting the work of the technical working groups. The working groups will be the core of the SB4U Platform for all the policy advocacy that we want to do. That’s why one of the tasks that we have to start with is to identify issues that we’ll be working on together.”
Dr. Damalie Ssali, Chief Projects Officer representing Private Sector Foundation Uganda (PSFU) commented; “We need to identify and reach a consensus on reform priorities, strategies and proposals for finding solutions to issues unique to each TWG.”
The SB4U Director, Sarah Kitakule remarked; “We are required to come up with a short list of priority reforms that are actionable for the next two years. Once we have identified the challenges and agreed on the recommendations for change, we will design the actions to bring about change; and then finalize the roadmap. We shall build the evidence and then also start the implementation of the agreed actions. And then we monitor and evaluate what we have done.”
The TWGs were launched in March 2022 to support Sustainable Business for Uganda (SB4U) platform, a joint partnership between PSFU and the EU that was launched in March 2020. The groups are scheduled to meet once every two months with flexibility to accommodate emergency meetings or assignments as and when required.
