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BY RICHARD DRASIMAKU
ARUA: WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2025
The West Nile Development Association, an umbrella body bringing under a single platform the district local governments in the West Nile sub-region, is banking on a newly forged friendship with the European Union to accelerate the region’s development.
Officials who recently visited the different embassies of the EU members sates in Kampala have expressed optimism that a bright future awaits the region once the various commitments that were secured during their visit are fulfilled.
“One of the issues we fronted was the establishment of a leadership and governance institute at Muni University,” said Alfred Okuonzi, the Arua district Chairman who led the delegation.
“We also extensively talked about cross border trade enhancement, improvement of the quality of education and waste management,” he added.
“This is good news for West Nile because we met all the key members of the European Union diplomatic corps, we had rich discussions and we explored areas of potential cooperation,” he explained.
Moses Akuma, the Executive Director of WENDA concurred that their meeting with the EU envoys and heads of development cooperation agencies was a significant step towards achieving some strategic development objectives for West Nile.
“We articulated our mandate as the coordinators of regional development,” asserted Akuma.
He disclosed that one of the issues they discussed was the need to review refugee policy to include voices of the local governments in the hosting areas.
With six settlements of refugees, West Nile has the largest concentration of refugees, mainly from South Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo impacting the socio-economic development of the region.
The leaders have also appealed to EU member states to support cross-border peace building efforts to which funding commitment was reportedly secured from the Germany embassy.
This is aimed at stumping out cross-border tensions that have periodically flared up along the Uganda –South Sudan Border and the Uganda DRC border.
Environmental conservation and social inclusion of the local population in mitigation measure to bulwark against the effects of climate chance was yet another priority area, Akuma added.
In this regard the partnership would promote modern agriculture, and renewable energy options to minimize destruction to the environment where over 70% of the population relies on firewood and charcoal for energy.
Logistical support for the leaders’ downtown trip to Kampala was offered by VNG and ACCORD
