Sh32b Graduate Fund will transform Uganda forever!

By Matsiko Kahunga

Facts and figures speak louder than words and arguments!

This is how I cooled down tempers among pessimist peers at my workplace, as hot arguments criss-crossed offices over the latest version of the Youth Fund: Sh32b for graduates to start business. The most argumentative was  a young intern, who, prior to joining the company, had participated in all the sponsored competitions to win start-up capital, and had come out empty handed, frustrated, cursing the day she was born Ugandan, and envying her course mate, who upon graduation, moved to the Middle East for domestic work.

As luck would have it, the next day, I was granted dispensation to use my slot during an in-house training retreat to give my facts and figures about the magic in the sh32b, instead of my scheduled module: Planned, Disciplined Selling in a Competitive Environment.  Below is an abridged version of my profession of faith in this fund.

Elephants to Arrest the Rat-race

‘…, as I promised, here is why I am so excited about this fund’s capacity to transform Uganda forever. You know that since February this year, I am always away the last two days of the end-month week. I was priviledged to be part of a team which Private Sector Foundation Uganda put together to implement its Financial Literacy Programme among Ugandan entrepreneurs, supported by Centenary Bank and aBi Trust Uganda. Its content includes such mutually reinforcing modules as Agriculture as a Business, Business Costing, Records Management, Managing Family Business for Posterity, Personal Finance Planning, Agricultural Marketing, and Effective Use of Agricultural Value Chains.  I train on the last two. And our experience so far where we have been is the same: the rat-race nature of our agricultural sector. You see, we may have oil, we will study ICT, na kadhalika, but our transformation lies with agriculture. It is the engine of these other sectors, as it holds the key to disposable income among the majority Ugandan households. Only if, we are able to arrest its rat-race nature.  Presently, peasants engage in the sector as an instinct, the elite as a hobby, and academicians leave it in the laboratory. Few Ugandans, if any, engage in the sector as a profitable, self-sustaining business.

‘In the course of the PSFU programme, we encountered an instructive scenario in Iganga that is typical of Ugandan agriculture everywhere. Enumerating the challenges to the sector, an official of the District Farmers Association poured out his heart thus ‘... tulima inho, tulima duuma, aye akatale wazira... bbee, wazira...!’, meaning, we grow a lot of maize, but no market. Asked how many schools are in the district, his reply betrayed his rat-race business: ‘...mangi... gaweraku...!’, meaning ...they are many...several. Innocent as it sounds, this is the bane of the sector: a maize farmer does not know the number of schools in his district, yet he laments ‘...no market...’! Typical instinct, rat-race agriculture: no structured, managed, predictable value chain. And herein lies the secret to its transformation’.

‘The most inspiring government strategy I have so far read is the Agricultural Zoning Plan. Guided by this and allocating sh8b per region, we shall establish four Regional Elephants that will serve as innovation and incubation centres, research and demonstration farms, nucleus farms anchoring structured, managed, predictable value chains, and national manpower planning and patriotism inculcation centres. They will support smallholder farmers in all sectors to engage in profitable, self-sustaining transformative agriculture. Farmers   will be assured of quality inputs, technical support and a constant market. No haphazard, blind business as the Iganga case shows. These centres, in the theory of Charles Handy’s model, will become the elephants onto which the smallholder farmers and entrepreneurs will hold fast, thus ending the rat-race, for mutual prosperity.

Acts versus Lamentations

‘...but this is what we have been through, with nothing tangible’, the now incensed intern broke the hitherto dead silence of my spell-bound listeners.

‘You are right Ann, but this is a new approach, couched in Vision 2040. In the course of our PSFU training, our closing Action Plan is ‘Acts versus Lamentations’. These are two books in the Bible that are diametrically opposed, and we ask the participants to choose where to belong: Acts or Lamentations. Nobody moves to Lamentations. The catch in choosing to go Acts is the resolve to undergo what Peter, Paul and their colleagues go through as narrated in the Bible.

‘The implementation of this Elephant model will be through a compulsory three-year stage in our education system. Three years of practical internship at the regional centres for everybody before joining tertiary education. Everybody. Each paid a stipend that will finance their tertiary education. We will need skills and expertise of all types as we move to an oil economy, to run this country and region, despite the current hype of ‘self-employment’.  The Ugandans rendered prosperous will then form a viable market to attract investment in other sectors, thus a virtuous cycle of prosperity.

‘The detailed implementation plan of this strategy is among my most treasured assets, tucked away under lock and key’.

...but you are not a minister or MP, how will you access that money’, shot Sam, our head of department.

‘This has been taken care of. Our President is already benchmarking the new Kenyan strategy of poaching expertise from the private sector, to spearhead the implementation of key government programmes.

  ‘Our Future is Bright Guys. Thanks a lot’.