Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has urged Russia to stop importing raw materials from Africa for processing in Russia.
He suggested that Russia should work with African countries to enable the processing of the resources in the continent towards boosting their economies.
The Ugandan leader held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday on the sidelines of the ongoing Russia-Africa Summit in St Petersburg which being attended by numerous African leaders.
''My main proposition to Russia is that they discourage, by policy, the importation of raw materials from Africa and instead work with Africans to add value to their raw materials at source,'' President Museveni said on Twitter which now called 'X'.
He called on Russia to ''take interest in a number of business opportunities in fields of oil and gas, agriculture, production, the pathogenic economy, industry and space science.''
President Museveni hailed Uganda-Russia military cooperation which he said has helped his country to ''become an island of peace in our part of the world.'' He said this was made possible through procurement of equipment from Russia over the years.
The Russia-Africa Summit taking place from Thursday to Friday, is the second of its kind. President Putin had held bilateral talks with several individual African leaders on the sidelines of the summit.
During his speech to the summit, he promised more support to Africa in terms of food security and expressed hope that the continent will soon join the G20 economic bloc.
