Doing Responsible Business in Africa

From the left: Mr. Zou Xiaoming, China Commercial Counselor, Mr. Hu Xinxin, Deputy Director General (CEC), Minister for Trade, Tourism and Industry, Tori N Tveit, Director (NHO) and Martin Kasekende, Chairman (FUE)

The agreement for the second phase of the program was signed in Kampala, Tuesday 19th April 2011.

The 3 employer’s federations; Federation of Uganda Employers (FUE), China Enterprise Confederation (CEC) and Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO) agreed to continue the cooperation "Doing responsible Business in Uganda" into second phase from 2011-2014.

CEC, FUE and NHO started cooperating in 2007. We have, as the Chinese proverb says, been: "crossing the river, by feeling the stones". With the intention of reaching out to the Chinese companies in Uganda we have established a platform for social dialogue and networking both for the business organizations and for the companies.  

A local stakeholdergroup has been established, where representatives from the local Chinese community, the Chinese embassy, Uganda Investment authority, FUE, CEC and NHO are present. The stakeholdergroup gives advice and recommendations to the process of the cooperation.  

During the first phase of the program documents, local laws and other relevant material within labor relations, CSR and Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) have been translated and introduced to Chinese companies through seminars and training. Company visits, where companies serve as a case for demonstration and best practise, have been part of the training. 

An evaluation of the program was done in August last year and we are now ready to move into the next phase building on the advice from the stakeholder group and the evaluation.

A baseline survey of Chinese companies will first be undertaken. The number of Chinese companies in Uganda is increasing rapidly. A webside connected to FUE, in both Chinese and English, will be worked out where all the translated documents will be available. Two networkgroups of Chinese companies will be established and both Chinese and Norwegian experts will contribute to the network.