His Excellence Upender Singh Rawat, the High Commissioner of India to Uganda, has commended EPRC for its work in policy analysis, formulation, and guidance to Government of Uganda.
This was during a courtesy visit to EPRC on October 3, 2023, where he interacted with the Centre’s senior management and researchers. Both parties shared areas of potential corroboration that could strengthen India-Uganda ties.
He said: “We look forward to [working] with the EPRC and its executive director on themes of mutual interests. Economic cooperation is one of the most important components of India-Uganda ties and organisations such as EPRC play a critical role in economic policy analysis, formulation, and guidance to the government etc.”
His Excellence Upender Singh Rawat
He added: “My colleague and I are happy to visit [the EPRC]. It is in very beautiful campus and surroundings.”
Dr Sarah N. Ssewanyana, the EPRC Executive Director, welcome HE Rawat to the Centre and said it was an opportunity to deepen partnerships with Indian think-tanks on critical issues that affect both countries such as trade, education, and technology.
“We’re an institution that embraces corroborative work. We have worked with the Brookings Institution, universities across the world such as Cornell, Denver university, Oxford among others,” Ssewanyana said.
EPRC has worked with the Global Development Network (GDN), a New Delhi-based network of research and policy institutes. India-Uganda trade have grown to see the countries some of the most inter-linked although the heavily tilted in favour of New Delhi.
In 2021, India exported $695M to Uganda, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), an annualized growth of 10%. The main products that India exported to Uganda are packaged medicaments, motorcycles, and industrial food preparation machinery.
Meanwhile, in 2021, Uganda exported $53.6M to India, growing at 16% annually. Coffee cocoa beans, and dried legumes were the main products exported respectively.
Deepened ties between the two countries could see Uganda exploit the Indian market.