US ambassador to Uganda, has urged President Yoweri Museveni’s government to crack down hard on corruption because it is turning away foreign investment and compared it to the country’s AIDS epidemic
Published
11 years agoon
DeLisi was speaking at country’s inaugural ‘Buy America expo’ at Sheraton hotel when he described corruption as the new “slim” (HIV/Aids) threatening Uganda’s future, reported The Observer.
He said corruption was already reducing the country’s international competitiveness, eroding trust and sullying corporate images.
“Twenty years ago, the government of Uganda saw [the] ‘slim’ disease, which we now know as HIV/Aids, as an existential threat to Uganda’s future. Corruption is now the new slim,” DeLisi said.
“We need to treat corruption as the pervasive and destructive evil and abuse of power and trust that it is, rather than allowing it to hide behind far less damning terms like ‘rent seeking’ ”
He also said that the country needed strong leadership from government to champion honest and transparent investments and to expose corrupt practices.
In the recent Transparency International’s index on corruption, Uganda ranked 140th out of 177 countries worldwide surveyed (with the 177th country being the most corrupt).
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