‘Agribusiness right formula for youth jobs’
With about an estimated 30 million youth in Uganda expected to be looking for a job by 2030, creating employment and business opportunities is the right way to address the dilemma that the country continues to face.
“We must look at the right formula to find a solution,” said the State minister for economic monitoring, Kasirivu Atwooki. “And the incubation and promotion of agribusiness innovations has come at the right time.” This was during a high-level meeting on agribusiness, which was held on November 25 in Kampala.
It was organised by Consortium for enhancing University Responsiveness to Agribusiness Development (Curad) and its partners in conjunction with Office of the President.
“The aim of the meeting is to hear from each other so we can see the value of having a collective knock,” said Apollo Segawa, Curad executive director, who is also chairman, Agribusiness Incubation Alliance of Uganda (ABIAU). At the same occasion, ABIAU was also officially launched by the minister.
There were a number of presentations by representatives of different organisations on business incubation as well as progress made.
These included AfriBanana, which focuses on value addition of banana, Texfad, which offers hands-on training in its business incubation,
Uganda Industrial Research Institute, Potential, which encourages business start-ups among project beneficiaries, UN Industrial Development Organisation, and Uganda Development Corporation, as a revived government’s investment arm.
In his discussion of the various presentations, Okasai Opolot, the Maaif director for crop resources, noted that while youth would get involved in agriculture, the tendency is to view this as being on farm yet they can be at different points along the value chain. He also observed that there are several initiatives on incubation that need to be harmonised. “The question is how this can be institutionalised. It is important to have a common platform where we will have to answer the pertinent questions.”
