Irish Aid supports private sector development in Uganda through the work of the Irish NGO Traidlinks which is assisting companies to improve their competitiveness and identify regional market opportunities within the East African Community. Irish Aid is also exploring opportunities to strengthen capacity and transparency in the energy sector in Uganda and ensure that the oil resources now coming on-stream will benefit the Ugandan people.
The first intervention for Irish Aid will be to strengthening the capacity of Ugandan institutions (public and private) to promote responsible and sustainable economic development. Irish Aid will support Traidlinks, an Irish not-for-profit organisation established in 2006 by a group of prominent business leaders in Ireland to support private sector development in Africa. Currently Traidlinks is assisting 12 companies to improve their standards, production capacities and marketing strategies. The programme will assist in identifying regional market opportunities for the participating companies and to assist them in increasing output and profitability by modernising their technical operations and financial and management structures. Traidlinks will expand its training programme to 60 companies over a five year period.
The second intervention will be strengthening capacity and transparency in the oil sector. The discovery of commercially viable reserves of oil means that Uganda needs to prepare to handle significant revenues. Transparency, strong governance and accountability institutions, including public finance and expenditure management are a must if the country is to benefit from oil revenues and avoid the resource curse.
Irish Aid has already allocated financial support to a number of international NGOs to conduct research on environmental impact and revenue planning. Ireland and the UK have also had discussions with the Ministry of Finance to explore possibilities for supporting longer term planning. Given the strategic position of Ireland in Uganda's emerging oil industry; with Tullow Oil having a majority stake in exploration and drilling of the reserves, the Embassy has set aside a fund for capacity building support to ensure that the worst risks of the resource curse are mitigated. The likely area of support is in viable civil society initiatives aimed at promoting transparency and citizen engagement in the policy dialogue on oil for development.
