This year, the Summit will be help at the Kampala Serena Hotel and the discussions will focus on how to enhance East Africa’s competitiveness in the global market.
“There are new challenges in today’s business environment like the emergence of new markets like India and China and several others that business leaders will debate and share ideas about,” said Mr Tom Mshindi who represented Nation Media Group, one of the convenors of the conference.
He was speaking on Monday during a press conference at which Stanbic Bank and Celtel Uganda announced their sponsorship of the conference.
Others include KPMG, Deloitte and Touché, Citibank, Kampala Serena Hotels and PricewaterhouseCoppers.
Competitiveness is particularly important, he said, because more than ever companies needed to find new ways of reducing costs in a world facing an inflationary bubble.
Mr Mshindi thanked Stanbic and Celtel for sponsoring the first ever East African Business Summit in Uganda and called on other companies to take up the challenge as well for the success of the conference.
Companies in East Africa still face basic problems like derelict infrastructure that makes the cost of doing business here high and puts them at a great disadvantage in the global marketplace.
The Summit will have speeches from some of the world’s best authorities on business competitiveness like Prof. Michael Porter and Dr. Alexander Osterwalder. About 200 CEOs from Kenya, TZ, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi are expected to participate. This year’s Summit will be the fourth since the forum was started in 2004.
Stanbic’s MD, Mr Phillip Odera said past summits had produced some excellent ideas including the East African Submarine cable system, EASSy currently being laid along the East African coast to link the region to the world’s internet networks.
Celtel’s Justina Ntagoba said they had decided to support the Summit because of its regional vision and impact which she said reflects their own ambition of providing services that have a regional reach like Celtel’s One Network.
“We are always happy to partner with events and initiatives that make the lives of East Africans and the regional economy better and this Summit is such a one,” she said.
By Erias Biryabarema
From monitor.co.ug
