The industrial sector was believed to shoulder a large number of employments to maximize the country’s import substitution, diversify export and eventually transform the entire economy. The sugar sector was one of those that players said had been neglected and left in the hands of foreign investors. David Kafuko one of the sugar technologists in Uganda said Uganda needed to borrow a leaf from Tanzania. “They have looked at the different types of farmers, there are farmers that have grown in acreage, and they are big. You find someone is commercially growing sugarcane and this person’s aim is no longer to supply sugarcane to a particular miller. He is going into the next level of adding value onto their cane, so they have an affirmative action for industrializing their country.”

Unfortunately, local sugarcane farmers were not encouraged to add value to their cane with the government not supporting them to start small and create employment. “We need to start sugar juggleries. You know sugar juggleries is the beginning of the sugar industry. When we start sugar juggleries, we are going to have technological transfer. The sugar sector is such a nice industry, it is so plural that we can pass on knowledge from the high tech to the low technology people.” Kafuko claimed Uganda’s industrialization policy encouraged trade more than production. “The sukali gulu is being taken to Kenya and the Kenyans are adding value and bringing it back as brown sugar in this country. They buy a kilo at 3,000 they bring it back and we buy it at 9,000 shillings. So this country has not taken a step towards realizing that Agriculture can transform this country through industrialization.” The sugar industry mainly dominated by the Asian investors and countries like India where they came from already took this path. “And because of population explosion there and land is not getting big, they have encouraged heir people to go into industrialization and you find India is now the biggest exporter gulu sugar; it’s a brown sugar which is very nice in terms of diet and people are buying it all over the world, why can’t we go that way?” Said, David Kafuko – Sugar Technologist.