Nakitende first attempted to do business when she was six

What can you do with Shs1,000 – buy a bottle of soda, a cake? Probably not much. Today’s Ugandan shilling is not as valuable as it was three decades ago. But Catharine Nakitende, just eight years ago, used Shs1,000 to start a business that has grown to win her a prestigious award, the Commonwealth Youth Award for Excellent Development Work.

The light-skinned slender 24-year-old says entrepreneurship is in her blood and, that this, together with her passion to reach out to the underprivileged, is her source of strength and drive. Then, while staying with her aunt in Kyetume, Mukono, six-year-old Nakitende asked to sell some of the pancakes the aunt made at school. She sold pancakes at Kyetume Church of Uganda Primary School.

Nakitende did not stay long with her aunt since she joined Gayaza Junior and later Buddo Junior School. But her zeal to make her own money continued wherever she went. In her Senior Four vacation, she got a job as a cashier at a petrol station in a bid to make her own money, even though she lacked nothing.

Her parents, however, disapproved of her job, so she sought another with a telecommunication company. They still refused. “That’s when I said I should try something different,” she says. She cooked and sold food for builders at a construction site. She got money, which she used to buy scrap that she piled in one of the stores at home, hidden away from her parents.

“When they eventually found it, they told me to sell it off and focus on school. Their issue was that I needed to focus on school first,” she says. Maybe they were right but Nakitende believes she was born for business. Some people advised her to buy clothes using the money from scrap, which would be appealing for a girl but she had other ideas.

She ventured into making liquid soap. When she enrolled for high school at Hillside International Cambridge School, she entrusted her business with a person she thought was faithful. He was not. On her return from school, there was not even a penny. “I knew I needed to start somewhere.”

Nakitende had heard about the business of making briquettes, the materials that substitute charcoal in cooking stoves and thus save the environment. She borrowed Sh1,000 from a sister to buy cassava flour that she would mix with banana peelings and other items to make briquettes. Her initiative would be called KingFire Briquettes Uganda.

She managed to sell her products at Sh70,000, making a killing. But they were of poor quality. At first she thought she was the only one making briquettes in Uganda but comments of her products being of poor quality made her realise there were probably other people in the same business making better products.

She bought some of them. Together with intensive research, training with Enterprise Uganda and networking with other small scale entrepreneurs, Nakitende improved her products. In 2014, her efforts paid off when she emerged Africa Winner for the Seed Initiative, supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN) among others partners.

A recognition for her effort
This experience made her realise she could do a lot more. She also won $5,000 (about Shs14m) which she used to buy machinery. She renamed her initiative KingFire Energy Solutions Limited. In addition to making briquettes, she would train young people, especially girls, in saving energy.

Nakitende has been to schools and women community groups in Kampala, Mukono and Iganga and provides internship training for students.
She has so far provided training for students from Makerere University Business School with help of Wasswa Balunywa Foundation. And her desire to reach out to the disadvantaged led her into donating one of her machines to Dorna Centre for Autism, located in the vicinity of her office and workshop premises in Ntinda Ministers Village so they could make their own products.

It is for these efforts that Nakitende is set to receive the Commonwealth Youth Award for Excellent Development Work in UK this month about which she is delighted.

“I just love business. Entrepreneurship has always been in me. I have never wanted to be employed. Even when that time comes to get married, I want a man who will not refuse me to work,” she says.

Her business makes gross sales of at least Shs2.5m per month. When I visited her workshop, there was more demand for her products than what was in stock. The 24-year-old smiles at tomorrow saying by 2017, she projects to have trained 6,300 people in the making and use of briquettes and created 330 jobs.

Titbits
If you were to be anyone in the world, who would you be?
No one comes to mind.

Does physical appearance of a woman matter?
Yes. Sometimes your appearance reflects your personality. People in society can respect you because of your physical appearance. But it is not enough, since anyone can wear makeup, but not everyone is bright. What a woman carries in the head is more important.

Which woman inspires you?
Maggie Kigozi and Maria Matembe; Kigozi has excelled in the world of business, and Matembe fights for women cause.

Love notes
I not engaged but I know one day I will get married, of course to a man who is loving and caring. I also want a man who will not refuse me from work because I love work, I love to do business. Entrepreneurship is always in me. That man can be a Muslim or Christian. I don’t know now whether I am a Christian or Muslim because I grew up with uncles who are Muslims but I also go to church, after all, it is the same God. I shall decide when I get married.

My business tip
What does Nakitende point to as her reason for success? “Networking,” she says. “I have created many important partnerships both where I am a beneficiary and a benefactor.” Indeed, it is some of the people she has worked with, mentors and consultants from as far as USA and Belgium that nominated her for the prestigious Commonwealth award she won recently.