President Yoweri Museveni has said that ideological disorientation is the major cause of the security problems in Africa.
The President was speaking to a delegation of military officers at State House, Entebbe this afternoon. The officers are undertaking studies in Ghana.
The delegation of officers that hail from Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Botswana and South Africa, are currently visiting Uganda to understand how to confront emerging security challenges in Africa.
Museveni informed the delegation that Africa’s problem has been suffering from strategic bottlenecks not identified realistically and holistically.
“Africa is like the children of Israel who were wandering in the desert for forty years,” he said.
President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni interacts with Dr. Vladimir Antwi – Danso as the rest of the Delegation of Military officers from the Republic of Ghana looks.
He noted that poor ideological orientation and sectarianism have led to the breeding of weak institutions and weak states, such as in Somalia, whereby leaders have used identity opportunistically to cause chaos.
“If you believe in sectarianism, you cannot build strong national institutions such as the army,” he stressed.
Museveni called upon African politicians and technocrats to address the other bottlenecks affecting the African continent, namely: infrastructure, human resource development, fragmented markets, underdevelopment of the services sector, agricultural modernization, under-utilization of the private sector and democracy.
He added that if these sectors are addressed, the continent would be enabled to tackle the challenge of insecurity.
“When you talk of security problems, they are rooted in these bottlenecks,” he said.