The new facility will produce starch, glucose, and maltose for the pharmaceutical and food industries, with plans to generate over 100 by-products from cassava, maize, and potatoes.
Kamuli, Uganda: President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has commissioned a $50 million (about Shs182 billion) starch processing factory in Busambu, Namasagali, rallying Ugandans, especially those in Busoga, to embrace innovation, support industrial development, and abandon infighting that frustrates progress.
The factory is owned by Dr Matthias Magoola, founder of Dei Biopharma, whom the President praised for his innovation and contribution to Uganda’s emerging biotech sector. The new facility will produce starch, glucose, and maltose for the pharmaceutical and food industries, with plans to generate over 100 by-products from cassava, maize, and potatoes.
The investment is part of Dr Magoola’s wider $10 billion (Shs394 billion) industrial plan to develop a biotechnology hub comprising a sickle cell and cancer treatment hospital with 1,000 beds, and a vaccine manufacturing complex.
President Museveni revealed that he has personally supported Magoola’s pharmaceutical work, including a malaria treatment formulation he has been developing. “I met this young man through his uncle, and I helped him when he had issues with India. Now we appreciate his innovation and should support him,” he said.
Mr Museveni criticised tendencies of internal sabotage within Busoga, urging residents to rally behind innovators instead of fighting them. “I don’t know why Africans don’t like innovation; they are used to sleeping. Africans like to criticize. Congratulations, Magoola, but forgive everyone disturbing you. That’s how I also started fighting, and people thought I was mad,” he told the crowd.
Dr Magoola said the investment is aimed at making Uganda competitive in drug manufacturing by reducing reliance on imported pharmaceutical ingredients, which currently stand at about 99 per cent.
“We are among the first companies in Africa to manufacture our own pharmaceutical ingredients,” he said. “The facility aims to make quality medicines affordable for Ugandans and Africans, creating jobs and driving industrial growth.”
He added that the plant will require at least 500 metric tonnes of cassava daily, opening a stable and lucrative market for farmers across Busoga, Bukedi, Lango, and Teso. A farmer growing cassava, he noted, stands to earn three times more than one growing sugarcane on the same acreage.
First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for East Africa, Rt. Hon. Rebecca Alitwala Kadaga applauded the project but urged government to accelerate key infrastructure to unlock its full potential. She called for a dedicated power line from Isimba Hydropower Plant, the gazetting of Busambu as an Industrial Park, and immediate tarmacking of the area’s access roads.
“Mr President, declare and gazette this facility as an industrial park and have the road network tarmacked for market access,” Kadaga appealed.
Development Consultant for the Butansi Elders Forum, Mr Henry Munaaba, hailed Dr Magoola for bringing world-class investment to rural Namasagali, saying the project will spur economic transformation, reduce unemployment and empower youth in Busoga and beyond.
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