Govt should create bank out of all the youth programmes
Parliament has granted leave to the Western Youth MP, Mwiine Mpaka (NRM), to introduce a private member’s Bill intended to support the development of the youth in Uganda.
The Bill titled ‘The Uganda Development Bank (Amendment) Bill, 2018’, intends to support development financing for the youth.
It also seeks to amalgamate youth empowerment programmes under the Uganda Development Bank (UDB), to facilitate organised access of the funds by the youth. In its current form, the Uganda Development Bank Act, doesn’t provide for special interest groups such as the youth.
Since 2011, government has rolled out several youth empowerment programmes in terms of funds, including Youth Venture Capital Fund, Youth Livelihood Programme, the Presidential Initiative on Skills Development under State House, and other initiatives under Naads, etc.
The Youth Entrepreneurship Venture Capital Fund, introduced in 2012, was the first government flagship programme for youth empowerment. It was rolled out in all the then 110 districts. The initial investment by government was Shs32b ($15m).
The modus operandi was that government had a memorandum of understanding and the money was deposited in the bank, which spread it through all its branches across the country.
According to an evaluation report titled ‘Youth Entrepreneurship Venture Capital Fund’, done by mentors Nathan Fiala and Nicolas Serriere between July 2015 and today, only, 6,780 youth had received the requisite training and, therefore, eligible for training.
There is no any other source that shows the number of individuals or groups that benefited from the programme. By any measure, the programme fell on all its expected deliverables.
On September 4, 2014, Cabinet passed a resolution for the establishment of the Youth Livelihood Programme (YLP), a Shs265b rolling fund programme for a period of five years. On January 24, 2014, the President launched the Youth Livelihood Programme.
This programme had relaxed rules, for example, it doesn’t require collateral security for anyone to access the money, it gives a grace period of 12 months for interest repayment, requires no formal registration of the applying businesses and there are no administration fees levied on the applications.
As per the government policy on promoting and facilitating the private sector investment, the programme was targeting the unemployed youth (ages between 18 and 30) and it covered all the districts and municipalities, including Kampala, at its inception.
However, according to the findings of the evaluation report as at January 20, 2017, 8,391 projects had been funded to the tune of Shs59,835,511,589 and the interest due was 14,818,413,522. Only 47 per cent of this had been paid back.
Alongside this, the President has been running his own parallel initiatives, including the Presidential Initiative on Skills Development. These are multi-pronged and include the tailoring lessons for the girl-child in Wandegeya, the defunct Najjera carpentry workshop.
On the January 30, the President presided over the graduation of 661 girls from the Girl-child Skills Development Initiative. During the ceremony, he revealed that his office had spent Shs1.2b over the 6-month course.
Other interventions included the President personally delivering cash to washing bays and furniture workshops within Kampala.
A private investigation after the President had delivered Shs100m to Mulago Car Washers, the chairman-elect revealed a day later that the Sacco had been formed a day before the President’s visit and it wasn’t legally registered.
The latest beneficiaries of youth groups Rukungiri have allegedly been apprehended by the relevant authorities over presenting fake youth groups or over fights that have erupted after disagreements over sharing the money.
The Presidency should accept public criticism that the handouts only present a knee- jerk solution to the unemployment challenge. They lack the basic monitoring and evaluation mechanism to even track the handouts dished out to several ghost groups.
For starters, the Presidency needs an incorruptible monitoring and evaluation team. Uganda’s unemployment rate still ranks as one of the highest in the world.
Averagely, there are 40,000 graduates coming out of our tertiary institutions annually, and only 30 per cent are absorbed into formal employment. Majority vanish into the informal sector where they face the challenge of access to credit as the biggest challenge.
These do not include the millions who drop out of school at various levels. Therefore, to address the chronic unemployment challenge, and to increase availability of access to affordable credit, the government should amalgamate the several interventions and transmute them into a youth bank under the auspices of Uganda Development Bank.
Mr Mafundo is the executive director of Citizen
Concern-Africa. [email protected]
