President Yoweri Museveni praised the outgoing Swedish Ambassador Per Lindgard for “strengthening ties between” Uganda and Sweden.
Lingard was at State House to bid farewell to the president.
His five-year tour of duty in Uganda ended.
Museveni said he “wished him good luck in his new posting” in a Twitter statement.
Uganda and Sweden cooperate in different areas of development, including trade, education, infrastructure, health and so on.
In 2019, Sweden exported $20.7 million worth of products to Uganda, according to a 2020 Uganda-Sweden Trade report.
The same report shows that Sweden bought goods worth $3.6 million from Uganda.
Uganda mainly imports machinery, electronics, pharmaceuticals, vehicles and plastics from Sweden, while the East African nation sells to flowers, coffee and some manufactured products to the Scandinavian country.
The Embassy of Sweden in Kampala is supporting the implementation of a Renewable Energy Challenge Fund (RECF), which aims at supporting 153,000 low-income customers transition to renewable energy, of which at least 50 percent are women and 50 percent are youth.
“RECF further aims to create 1,000 new jobs, of which at least 60 percent of these jobs are for women and 40 percent, are for youth (the women and youth groups may overlap e.g., female youth sales agent),” the embassy says on its website. “This will be done through the energy enterprises and also through new livelihood opportunities with renewable energy. Up to 160,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions is expected to be offset as a result.”
The Swedish government has since 2000 pumped about $73.3 million to support research cooperation between Ugandan and Swedish universities in areas of medicine, technology and innovation.
“The current research program (November 2015- June 2020) amounts to approximately 33 million USD. The program consists of 17 research projects where 11 Swedish Universities collaborates with 4 Ugandan universities with Makerere in Kampala as the primary responsibility for the program,” says the website.
The ambassador said, with the president, they discussed “bilateral issues, elections, the role of civil society and Covid.”
