‘Uganda a better tourist spot than Spain’

FORGET the “hot and humid” tourist favourite of Spain. This is the country you should head to instead, and it’ll surprise you.

The serene beauty of Uganda. Picture: Rod Waddington

UGANDAN President Yoweri Museveni thinks his country is a better tourist destination than Spain because it has a very mild summer climate, unlike Spain’s, which he called “very hot and humid”.

“In Europe, people go to the Mediterranean coast. I visited Spain, it is very hot and humid in summer. I think Uganda would be a better destination than some of those destinations,” Museveni said in an opinion piece published in the daily New Vision. According to the leader, his country is a “good place on the globe where you can go and have a nice life”, because the weather there is “very mild”. President Museveni could hardly have forgotten that in 2012 Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy remarked that “Spain is not Uganda” during negotiations over the European Union bailout of his country’s financial sector. Rajoy’s words offended and angered Museveni and many ordinary Ugandan citizens, who launched a social media campaign with the slogan “Uganda is not Spain” to defend their country. In his opinion piece, Museveni acknowledged that “the biggest problem with tourism is poor promotion”, and he criticised those responsible for not marketing the potential of Uganda “correctly”. The Ugandan president, who has been in office for 29 years, has repeatedly criticised the attitude of European countries towards west Africa, accusing them of trying to “slow down progress” on the African continent.