Trials of skilling young Ugandans

Strategic. Under the programme students are placed in strategic sections of manufacturing, agriculture and construction to get hand-on skills. Photo by Dorothy Nakaweesi.

What you need to know:

  • Skilling Ugandans. Placing students into internship and industrial training remains a challenge in Uganda. The Skilling Development Fund is seeking to address this challenge.

The monster of unemployment is getting real and with it, it has presented numerous challenges that make employment in Uganda a real hustle and a privilege rather than a right.
But with this, is the enormous lack or real absence of hands-on training for students that would otherwise help them to turn their basic and theoretic skills into practical works.
With the need to turn theory into practical skills, higher institutions of learning had thought wisely and introduced mandatory internship or industrial training for every student so that they can be introduced to a working environment before they get into the job market.
However, this has had some challenges as many companies, small and big, have been reluctant to take on students for such specifics due to lack of adequate resources or the fear of expenses that might come with such commitments.
This, according to Ruth Musoke, the head of the Skills Development Facility under Private Sector Foundation Uganda, is the real monster that Ugandans need to take heads-on to assist students get out of higher institutions with valuable knowledge that they might otherwise not have attained inside a lecture theater or the classroom.

Only hope
“Many higher institutions of learning have no machines or equipment to give students the much needed hands-on experience. Students only have the theory part of what they study but with no experience. They can only get this through industrial training or internship,” she says.
The Skills Development Facility, which is funded by the World Bank, is a government-funded programme that seeks to enhance skills among young Ugandans, especially those in higher institutions of learning.
The facility is part of the five-year $100m (Shs358b) Uganda Skills Development Project that is aimed at promoting employer-led short term training, especially in the areas of agriculture, construction, and manufacturing but with specific considerations where need might arise.
The project, according to Musoke, will be key in improving productivity and competitiveness in both the informal and formal sector.
It seeks out partnerships with companies, service providers and industry association in which students are placed in order to address prevailing skills imbalance and shortages that are currently bedeviling Uganda’s job market.
The programme has already been implemented and the first batch of 60 students that had been placed at Sugar Corporation of Uganda Limited (Scoul) was passed out on Tuesday in Jinja District.
Initially Scoul had taken on only 40 interns from different vocational institutions but through the Skills Development Facility, the number was raised to 100. Sixty of the students would be facilitated by the Skills Development Facility.
Scoul, according to Musoke was the first large scale company to accept a request to increase the number of students and last Tuesday’s pass out was testimony of the critical shortage of partners who are readily willing to take on students, especially from vocational institutions.
At the pass out in Jinja on Tuesday, Kenneth Barungi, the assistant to the Scoul general manager, said the programme lifts the burden off companies with assured assistance to fund student’s learning and experience.
“Companies sometimes have no funds to facilitate interns. But at least someone (government) has come up with a good idea. The private sector and government should be working together,” he said.
Through the fund students are given basic facilitation such as meals, transport and insurance for a period not exceeding six months.