Investment Minister Evelyn Anite has lashed out at the National Forestry Authority (NFA), accusing it of hypocrisy and misinformation over the controversial Entebbe Eco-Tourism City project; a planned hotel and leisure complex on land currently gazetted as part of a forest reserve.
Her remarks follow a series of reports and statements from the NFA suggesting that government had authorized the allocation of part of Entebbe’s Central Forest Reserve to a private investor for a luxury hotel project; a move environmentalists and civil society groups warned could amount to “state-sanctioned deforestation.”
Earlier this month, NFA officials reportedly claimed that the Ministry of Finance and Investment had backed an investor’s request to acquire forest land for commercial development.
The Authority argued that the move would violate environmental laws and undermine Uganda’s commitments to forest conservation and climate action.
NFA officials, speaking to the press, hinted that they were under pressure from political leaders to approve an illegal project in a forest area that should be protected under the National Forestry and Tree Planting Act, 2003.
In a strongly worded response on Wednesday, Minister Anite dismissed NFA’s statements as false, hypocritical and misrepresentative of facts, insisting that neither she nor President Yoweri Museveni had authorized the destruction of any forest.
“First of all, I need to speak to the National Forestry Authority. They should stop acting in a very hypocritical way,” Anite said. “That forest has been de-afforested to the extent that the trees you see are countable, there cannot be more than a hundred trees. They should go and re-afforestate that forest before jumping up and down.”
Anite emphasized that the Entebbe project in question was not about deforestation but about creating an eco-tourism city that integrates natural conservation with sustainable development.
“This investor wanted to build an eco-tourism city; meaning the forest must remain there. There is no cutting down of any single tree,” she said. “I remember President Museveni clearly telling this investor that the forest must be conserved and that more forest cover should be planted.”
Without naming him, Anite described the investor as a credible developer who has built 73 factories at Mbale Industrial Park, the tallest building in Kololo and hotels employing over 6,000 Ugandans.
“He is not a fraudulent investor as people have said,” she asserted. “Before you label investors, first understand who they are and what they want to do.”
The disputed forest land along Entebbe Road has for years been at the center of a tug-of-war between environmental agencies, private developers and political leaders.
Previous attempts to allocate parts of the area for hotel and infrastructure projects have been halted by public outcry, leading to a presidential directive in 2020 for stricter protection of forest reserves.
However, with Uganda’s push for foreign direct investment and tourism infrastructure under Vision 2040, some government officials have argued for smart development that balances conservation with economic use of underutilized public land.
Anite maintained that the government’s plan aligns with that vision and accused NFA of spreading propaganda.
“There is no way that the President directed that that forest should be cut down. It is to protect and build an eco-city within that place,” she said. “Nobody is interested in living in forests unless they are monkeys and I am not, as you can see.”
The minister concluded by calling on NFA to do its job and restore degraded forests across the country instead of peddling lies to frustrate investment.
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