Museveni was speaking at the biennial Commonwealth Business Forum ahead of the 53-nation Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) that Uganda is hosting from Friday.

"We have confined ourselves to the export of raw materials such as coffee, where we have been getting $1 per kg while Nestle in London is getting $20 per kg," Museveni told delegates.

The forum, also attended by Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Commonwealth Secretary Don McKinnon, is seen as an opportunity for investors from member states to deepen trade ties.

Museveni said Africa's continuing poverty was due in part to its failure to escape being a producer of raw materials instead of finished products.

Industrialised countries have opened their markets to minerals and farm products, but tariffs and other barriers to manufactured goods are still punitive, poor countries argue.

Museveni said he was lobbying rich countries and multinationals to change that.

"If the Commonwealth Business Forum can play a role in this, it would be glorious. It will be mutually beneficial for all of us," he said.

Uganda is Africa's second biggest coffee grower, after Ethiopia. The east African country exported around 2.7 million 60-kg bags in 2006/7. But almost all is exported raw.

"I tried to talk to Nestle to come and do their business here ... They said 'no, just bring me the beans.' I said no: I am not going to continue donating money to you," Museveni said.

Uganda's coffee industry is sceptical of processing domestically, arguing that processed coffee goes stale too quickly for this to be viable.

Museveni said Africa's own industrial revolution, along the lines of many fast-growing Asian countries, could be around the corner.

"If the Chinese and the Indians have grown so much, what will happen when the long-suffering Africans burst onto the stage? There are 900 million (Africans)," he said.

Critics have doubted whether Uganda's hosting of CHOGM, which has already cost the impoverished country around $120 million, will pay sufficient dividends.

Museveni insists the foreign investment it will bring by putting Uganda on the map will pay off.

Commonwealth Business Council head Dr Mohan Kaul said investment in Malta, which hosted CHOGM two years ago, had tripled since the event.

But McKinnon admitted that trade between the Commonwealth -- a grouping of nations for the most part linked only because they were colonised then freed by Britain -- was becoming less significant than regional trade blocs.

Commonwealth countries export $170 billion to each other but $970 billion to non-Commonwealth countries, he said.

"Only 15 percent of trade is amongst ourselves," he said.