By Julius Mugaga Tukacungurwa, Umoja Standard.
Kampala, Uganda: On August 13th, 2025, Hon. David Bahati, the Minister of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives, (MTIC) addressed the nation on the upcoming World Accreditation Day (WAD) Celebrations 2025 at Uganda the Media Center in Kampala.
He elaborated that World Accreditation Day is a crucial global initiative, jointly established by the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) and the International Accreditation Forum (IAF), designed to heighten awareness among all pertinent stakeholders regarding the indispensable role of accreditation; this global observance is celebrated in over 100 economies worldwide, each represented by more than 100 accreditation bodies, all collaborating with the unified purpose of promoting the benefits and importance of accreditation.
For 2025, the World Accreditation Day will be commemorated under the compelling theme, “Accreditation: Empowering Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs),” a theme chosen to underscore how accreditation, alongside the wider quality infrastructure system, can effectively support and strengthen the economic backbone provided by SMEs.
The Minister highlighted the profound global impact of SMEs, referencing World Trade Organization statistics which indicate that nearly 95% of businesses worldwide are SMEs, with most units employing fewer than 250 individuals; despite their size, these enterprises account for a disproportionately larger share of employment in the majority of economies, including developed nations.
In Uganda specifically, SMEs are a colossal force, contributing over 70% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and providing nearly 90% of employment across diverse sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing, trade, and services, emphasizing their vital role in the nation’s economic fabric.
However, despite this crucial contribution, SMEs globally face formidable challenges, as Minister Bahati acknowledged, including intense competition from larger organizations, significant hurdles in accessing finance, the pervasive issue of managing rising operational costs, the substantial burden of compliance requirements, and inherent difficulties in successfully breaking into new markets.
Consequently, the World Accreditation Day 2025 aims squarely at raising awareness and shining a bright spotlight on the essential role accreditation plays in enabling these Small and Medium Enterprises to not only survive but thrive in increasingly competitive markets, concurrently contributing significantly towards achieving sustainable development goals.
The Minister then ably outlined the manifold benefits of accreditation, emphasizing that it first and foremost “ensures that businesses have greater confidence in the accuracy of the testing services, because they have been generated by facilities assessed as being competent,” thereby building trust and reliability within the market.
Secondly, accreditation demonstrably “minimizes risks for business, as decisions will be based on reliable results,” a pivotal advantage that, he projected, will lead to a dramatic reduction in the rejection statistics of Ugandan products in export markets, shrinking from an estimated USD 700 million to USD 100 million by 2030.
Thirdly, and critically for international trade, accreditation “facilitates the free-trade goal of ‘accredited once, accepted everywhere’,” a principle that inherently grants enhanced access to international markets for Ugandan products.
Expanding on the market access benefits, Minister Bahati detailed how accreditation will tangibly improve Uganda’s market penetration into several vital regional blocs: the East African Community (EAC) regional bloc, which boasts an estimated population of 343 million in 2024 and a GDP of $349 billion in the same year; the COMESA region, with a massive population of 640 million people (2024 estimate) and a GDP of $1.0 trillion (2024 estimate); and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), a monumental market encompassing 1.3 billion people from 54 member states and an impressive GDP of $3.4 trillion (2024 estimate).
He then provided concrete examples of historical challenges and future prospects for Uganda’s exports, noting that the country’s current export figure stands at approximately USD 6 billion. A stark example he recalled was during the football World Cup held in Qatar in 2022, where Ugandan beef products exports were unfortunately rejected primarily due to the country’s lack of accredited halal certifications.
With the advent of robust accreditation, he projected significant gains in halal products export to the Middle East, estimating an increase to USD 1.09 billion by 2030.
Furthermore, in 2024, Uganda’s agricultural value chain export figure was USD 1.5 billion, and with the implementation of comprehensive accreditation, this figure is confidently expected to grow substantially to USD 3.5 billion by 2030, with these optimistic projections supported by data from the Bank of Uganda (BOU), the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development (MFPED), and Uganda National Accreditation Service (UGANAS) computations.
Addressing the current landscape of accreditation services within Uganda, the Minister informed that there are over 2,000 facilities providing testing and certification services across the nation. Out of these, 125 facilities have so far attained accreditation from foreign accreditation bodies, a process that imposes a significant financial burden, costing these facilities approximately $10,000 annually to maintain these vital accreditations.
Recognizing this high cost of doing business, he proudly announced that the establishment of the Uganda National Accreditation Service (UGANAS) is expeced to significantly lower the cost of accreditation by 35 to 40 percent. The Government of Uganda, he affirmed, has demonstrated keen interest and unwavering commitment to this critical infrastructure, evidenced by the development of the National Accreditation Policy in 2014 and the subsequent enactment of the Accreditation Service Act in 2021, which formally established the Uganda National Accreditation Service.
Minister Bahati expressed his satisfaction in reporting that, as of May 15, 2024, Uganda’s National Accreditation Service has already achieved a significant milestone by attaining Associate Member status with the African Accreditation Cooperation (AFRAC), solidifying its regional standing. To further bolster these services, the Government has established the National Accreditation Office at Makubya Road in Nakawa, specifically tasked with providing accessible accreditation services.
In a further boost to local capacity building, UGANAS will also commence providing crucial training services in the field of accreditation, a domain where previously Ugandans could only acquire such specialized knowledge from abroad.
Minister Bahati excitedly informed Ugandans that, for the first time, accreditation services can now be provided directly through the UGANAS Office or by visiting the website www.uganas.go.ug, marking a new era of accessibility and self-reliance in quality assurance for Ugandan enterprises.
