PREVIEW
Kampala is looking for a wider bargain with Washington, combining market access, investment promotion and security co-operation
President Yoweri Museveni has diversified his Washington lobbying network as he seeks to rebuild relations with the United States. He has hired Moran Global Strategies on a six month contract worth US$240,000, with a mandate to push for Uganda's readmission to the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) that would give its exports tariff and duty free access to the US market. Museveni has already hired Scribe Strategies, led by Joseph Szlavik, a Republican with close links to President Donald Trump’s White House, on retainer.
Moran, led by former Democratic party Congressman Jim Moran, has also been tasked to ‘design a programme for enhancing the volume of trade from Uganda to the United States and foreign direct investment from the US’.
Moran’s other African clients include the separatist movements in Ambazonia and Biafra (AC Vol 67 No 2, Tinubu and Biafra lobbyists join war for Trump’s ear over Christian genocide claims). Uganda was suspended from AGOA by President Joe Biden’s administration in 2024 following the enactment of its Anti-Homosexuality Act. That left it at the mercy of Trump’s ‘liberation day’ tariffs, with Uganda’s exports facing a 15% tariff.
Though Jim Risch, the Republican chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, lambasted the January elections, which saw Museveni obtain a seventh term and opposition leader Bobi Wine flee state attempts to arrest him, Washington said little on the repression (AC, 23/3/26, Bobi Wine takes to Capitol Hill to denounce election fraud). Risch described the polls as a ‘hollow exercise’ and called for a review of the US security relations with Uganda, and sanctions on senior government figures.
But some US officials want to build closer commercial ties. The Trump administration’s ‘American Edge’ campaign to mark 250 years of US independence included an event in May in Kampala to promote US business in the country.
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