Make agriculture paying to attract youth — Mugerwa

By Billy Rwothungeyo    
        
Prof. Kisamba Mugerwa, the Executive Chairperson of the National Planning Authority has admitted that more needs to be done to attract youth into agriculture as one of the ways to address the agonizingly high unemployment levels in Uganda.

“You cannot make attract youth to unless you make it paying. And for it to be paying, you have to invest in research, to get high varieties, breeding, better seeds, so that we can improve productivity,” he said.

The agricultural economist and former agriculture minister made the remarks while chairing a session at the CEO summit which ended over the weekend at the Lake Victoria Serena Resort.

“Soil management, advisory services, value addition and processing and marketing also needs to be improved,” he said.
Mugerwa also pointed out that there is need to streamline agricultural practices in Uganda.

“The problem is that the agriculture we are practicing is not organized. We need to go into organized agriculture if we are to have security of food and also export,” he said.

“There must be a concentrated area which is known for producing a certain type of crops, so that that if one want, then they can for example go to Itendero or Kabowe, he knows that he will get a track of bananas, when we are scattered and yet we are not producing enough, the cost of production will always remain high.”

The CEO summit is forum of networking forum for the nation’s big decision makers in integral industries and sectors. This year’s summit ran under the theme “where is Uganda going 10 years from now.”

The focus was infrastructure, irrigation, agriculture value chains, productivity, processing, skilling Uganda, tourism value chains and technology.