Kampala, 23 April 2016
President Kagame today attended the 13thNorthern Corridor Integration Projects (NCIP) Summit in Uganda’s capital Kampala. Chaired by Uganda’s President Museveni, the summit was also attended by President Kenyatta and was preceded by a ministerial and a senior officials’ meeting.
The meeting reviewed the status of implementation of projects that were discussed at the last summit in Kigali in December 2015 including, energy, infrastructure, information technology and socioeconomic development. In addition, the Heads of State welcomed the progress made towards regional integration but emphasised the need to work faster so as to meet implementation deadlines ahead of the next Summit to be held in Nairobi.
Thanking President Museveni for his hospitality and all ministers from NCIP partner states for their work, President Kagame called for more urgency and faster delivery:
“As we have just heard, we continue to make strides in important initiatives. However, it is also evident that further progress in key areas can be faster. We must maintain the urgency that informed these initiatives in the first place, so that we can achieve the targets we set.” President Kagame said.
Other officials attending the Summit included Aggrey Tisa Sabuni South Sudan’s Presidential Advisor on Economic Affairs, Republic of South Sudan ; Debretsion Gebremichael, Ethiopia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Coordinator of Finance and Minister of ICT; Augustine P. Mahiga, Tanzania’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, East African Community, Regional and International Cooperation; Jean Bosco Barege, Ambassador of Burundi and Jean Pierre Massala, Charge d’Affaires of the Democratic Republic of Congo to Uganda as well as Private Sector Representatives from member countries.
Among other projects, today’s Summit launched a framework for regional data roaming with maximum retail tariff of US Dollars 11 Cents per Megabyte and the maximum inter-operator tariff of US Dollars 7 Cents per Megabyte.
The Summit reiterated its commitment to ensuring the private sector participation in all key integration projects including through the facilitation of innovative financing of infrastructure and ease of trade.
Northern Corridor is a transport link that connects the East African Community landlocked countries of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan with the port of Mombasa, Kenya. It also serves Northern Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia.
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