On Thursday, 21 March 2024 at 9:00 a.m., Mrs. Arunee Hiam, Deputy Director-General of the Thailand International Cooperation Agency (TICA) welcomed H.E. Mrs. Betty Oyella Bigombe, Ambassador of the Republic of Uganda to Thailand with residence in Kuala Lumpur and have a discussion about cooperation for development between Thailand and Uganda at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Thailand. Honorary consul of Uganda to Thailand and officials from the Republic of Uganda based in Thailand with residence in Kuala Lumpur, Department of South Asia, Middle East and Africa and TICA were also present at the meeting.

The Ugandan Ambassador mentioned the issues that she had discussed with H.E. Mr. Sihasak Phuangketkeow, Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs on 19 March 2024 regarding the enhancement of Thai-Uganda diplomatic relations and the promotion of trade and investment between the two countries. They have discussed exchanges of high-level visits and trade and investment study visits for entrepreneurs/chamber of commerce representatives from both countries. She said that she admire the quality of Thai agricultural products, especially Thai rice, and expressed interests in conducting technical cooperation together in regards to agriculture, in the form of a short training course or study visits. She suggested the organization of training courses that is tailor-made for Thai-Ugandan agricultural product or cooperation in other frameworks of which Thailand and Uganda are members, such as the Non Aligned Movement (NAM), etc.

Deputy Director-General of TICA provided information on the currently supported human resource development cooperation, such as the Annual International Training Courses (AITC) and the Thailand International Post-graduate Programme (TIPP), which presented invitation through Royal Thai Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya every year. She also mentioned the Rice Production Technologies for Food Security and Sustainability of African Countries course, which was awareded from 2022-2023, that Ugandan officials had participated in both years.

The Ugandan Ambassador thank the Royal Thai Government for providing the said training course scholarship and request that TICA consider sending the invitation through the Ugandan Embassy in Malaysia. Both sides agreed that this is a good opportunity to initiate cooperation activities and to kick off cooperation under Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of the Kingdom of Thailand and the Government of the Republic of Uganda on Technical Cooperation), signed on August 1, 2013. Both sides agreed to discuss the details of the cooperation activities furture via correspondence.