KAMPALA — Jinja City, in eastern Uganda, on Monday twined with its Chinese counterpart, Shenyang, capital of China’s northeast Liaoning province.
The leaders of the two cities signed a cooperation agreement via a virtual meeting. Rebecca Kadaga, speaker of the Ugandan parliament and patron of Busoga Consortium, said the cooperation between Jinja and Shenyang has long been awaited. “The cooperation established today is a manifestation of the deep diplomatic relations between our two countries,” she said. “We have not forgotten that China was among the first countries to establish diplomatic relations with Uganda.”
The twin-city cooperation is one of the first products of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, which was first held in Beijing, Kadaga said. “We commit to support efforts of the cooperation which will facilitate the mutual benefit at the people-to-people level, city to city and country to country,” she said. Zheng Zhuqiang, Chinese ambassador to Uganda, said despite the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, the comprehensive cooperative partnership between the two countries continues to grow steadily. “I am very confident that with joint efforts by our two countries, including exchanges and cooperation between sister cities, our cooperation will surely be further promoted,” Zheng said.
Titus Kisambira, mayor of Jinja City, described the cooperation agreement as monumental. “We are optimistic that this twining will usher in a new era of cooperation that is based on mutual trust and common values between the people of Uganda and China,” he said. Kisambira said the leadership of Jinja will play its role to actualize the objectives of the twining, cooperating in such areas as agriculture, minerals, and tourism. Chen Jiabiao, who spoke on behalf of Shenyang city mayor Jiang Youwei, said the twining will open a new chapter in cooperation between the two cities.
