Invest in agriculture to achieve sustainable middle income status

Youth unemployment is a serious problem in Uganda. And if unattended to, might be a drawback factor to the attainment of the middle income status. I begin getting worried when I look at the population of young people between the ages of 15 and 25 that is rapidly growing, yet there is no similar growth in the job market.

Uganda has in the recent years undertaken an investment push purposely to position the country into a middle income status by 2020.
With the exception of human resource capital, heavy investments are being undertaken in the infrastructural development - priority being given to sectors such as works, transport, energy and mineral development- while ignoring agriculture.

However, agriculture is the sector that employs majority of Ugandans. Therefore, to achieve a sustainable middle income status by 2020 with everyone on board would mean targeting growth of agriculture sector (National Development Plan II, 2015/16-19/20).
In Uganda today, youth unemployment stands at 64 per cent where about 400,000 youth are released annually to the job market to compete for approximately 9,000 available jobs.

The challenge here is that, only 30 per cent of the youth who are qualified, are able to find jobs, and the 70 per cent is either under or not employed at all (The Uganda Youth Survey Report 2017).
The situation is even made worse for semi-skilled and unskilled rural youth, who remain unemployed and are often associated with high incidences of drug abuse and gambling. This is one of the reasons gambling is on the rise yet unproductive, which puts the economy at a risk.

It is a fact that Uganda is an agrarian economy, with agriculture accounting for more than 22 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employing more than 75 per cent of the country’s population, majority of whom are rural women, who account for 65 per cent, while the youth account for 30 per cent of the country’s labour-force respectively (UBOS 2016).

Whereas commercial agriculture (in this case agribusiness) has been identified as one of the key sectors that can potentially generate wealth, with high employment potential (Uganda Vision 2040); statistics show that majority of young men and women who are unemployed, stands at 53 per cent (The National Youth policy 2016). The question here is why?

The government has to rethink its strategies for increased public investment and promote public-private partnerships to finance youth agribusinesses, build capacity of the human resource base with technical and agripreneurial skills.
Cognisant of the fact that youth are energetic and an excellent source of ideas, building their capacity, equipping them with the right knowledge and hands on-skills, will greatly contribute to not only fostering gainful employment, but also attaining a population that is self-sustaining thus leading to an improved quality of life.

Important to note is that youth are the future to food security and they have a high potential in transforming Uganda’s agriculture sector. But this can only be achieved by increased government spending and investment on youth initiatives along the agricultural value chains.

At the moment, the youth whose agribusiness ventures are in the incubation or start-up phases, often lack the necessary collateral, verifiable credit history and steady employment requisites to access formal financial services (EPRC, 2013).
Access to formal financial services remains limited in Uganda. The costs of those financial constraints for young agripreneurs starting businesses are very high.

This factor alone discourages and frustrates many youth, who end up dropping their brilliant business ideas. Consequently, they remain a “liability” to the economy.

For Uganda to attain a vibrant youth-led agribusiness movement that creates employment and inclusive growth and thus realise a middle income status by 2020, the following actions must be undertaken:
Investing in deliberate youth focused initiatives to attract youth in the entire agribusiness value chains such as production, processing, transport and marketing.

Provide gender responsive programmes and policies that promote equity and economic empowerment as both young men and women get involved in the agribusiness to maximise benefits of the market share.

Increase investment in youth exposure field visits within and outside their mother horizons. This will help in addressing their mindset with a high impact on the individual youth, who definitely have the potential to become future agribusiness change makers.

With this, we can realise a total mindset shift from a more pessimistic view to a positive view of opportunities gained through practical knowledge and experiential learning. In my opinion, there is no success without a story. Let us expose them.

Mr Mugisha is the country network
facilitator, AgriProFocus Uganda.
[email protected]