BUSINESS | FINANCIAL | ACUMEN

There is no knowledge you will just find on the tree and pluck it off and use. 

Financial acumen is not floating in the air as some people suppose. If you want to improve your financial knowledge, you need to be deliberate about it.

Fortunate Orushaba, a business data analyst and project coordinator at Uganda Small Scale Industries Association (USSIA) advises you to attend some training regarding your business focusing on the areas you have shortcomings and inadequacies. 

Unfortunately, some entrepreneurs might not have the funds for the training, which matches their business aspirations. On that note, Orushaba advises them to join associations, which fall in line with their businesses.

“It becomes much easier when someone joins these associations because a person has this training that is subsidized or of free cost,” she says.

Perhaps you do not have time to go back to a formal setting and have some training. 

Orushaba advises you to hire someone to solicit services of an expert who can take you through that entire process of doing finances. 

“It ranges from book keeping and all that you need to know about proper running of a legal business.”

Additionally, Aloysius Kityo, the manager Uganda Revenue Authority Staff’s Savings and Credit Cooperative Organisation suggests that you should increase your financial acumen through apprenticeship. 

“You can go under someone who can mentor and coach you so that you can be able to excel in your company.” 

While someone can mentor you from afar, with learning from the job, you actually put in sometime say ranging from a month and sometimes years as you learn the nitty-gritty and gist of the business. 

In the same breath, Kityo advises you to go for training if you have time. You can also get financial knowledge in form of magazines, newspapers, and books. 

Kityo says these should be symmetrical to your enterprise in order to fully grasp the knowledge that you need.

Even though you are not a fan of business, you need financial knowledge in your personal finances.  

Kityo says financial acumen can help you in your daily life as a person. 

“Whatever transaction you are handling as a person, it needs financial knowledge,” he says. 

“If you are going to buy property, you need to do a cost-benefit analysis?” Kityo says having adequate knowledge will help you to make sound decisions and avoid being fleeced of your hard-earned money.