Enhance collaboration for youth innovators — Experts

Sep 23, 2020

Experts have called for enhanced collaboration among corporate companies, non-governmental organisations and the Government to support sustained entrepreneurship and innovations led by the youth.

Speaking during the virtual chief executive officers' summit, experts said a more focused approach that includes corporates would ensure enhanced youth empowerment to create better livelihoods through innovation and entrepreneurship.


The summit team leader, Peter Kimbowa, said the youth have often proven that they can do a lot and that with total engagement, they can achieve more.

Kimbowa said corporates should focus on creating shared value by supporting the youth through innovation hubs and industrial parks."Shared value is about relationship building; not as corporate social responsibility, which in most cases is event-driven.

Shared value is comprehensive integration of the mission and vision of the corporate entity with the community and based on the principle that a society that thrives is a society that supports a profitable entity," he said.

Kimbowa added: "There has been a lot of complaints that our education system is obsolete and irrelevant because it produces graduates that do not have the job market requirements."

"Lamentation is not a strategy; corporate Uganda needs to move fast and establish internships and apprenticeship programmes to harness the potential of the youth by creating opportunities that will enable them contribute to the value chain of corporate Uganda," he added.

Kimbowa said the present focus and future ready entrepreneurs will only happen through mentoring different groups of youth by CEOs in different organisations.The forum was organised under the theme "Giving young Africans Courage by Reigniting your company purpose" as a corporate company.

Open up your spaces
The Innovation Village team leader, Japheth Kawanguzi, also alluded to the need for corporate Uganda to support youth innovators."We call upon the corporate Ugandans and the private sector to join us to explore more sustainable ways to work with young people and support start-ups to grow the economy," he said.

Kawanguzi said collaboration would enable corporates to achieve their objectives such as driving an innovation culture, opening up new markets, reaching new customers or existing customers in a cost effective way and solving problems an organisation or its customers could be facing."

All the objectives of corporate Uganda can be achieved through collaboration between entrepreneurs and start-ups. This is to invite you to open up those spaces for innovators to come in and work with you in those spaces. Whichever challenge you have, there is a start-up that can help you solve it," he said.
Kawanguzi added: "There is enough evidence that entrepreneurs are solving existing problems, creating jobs and unlocking new opportunities using technology, but we need to work with the corporate Uganda to take this to another level."

The Absa Bank Uganda chief executive officer, Mumba Kalifungwa, said corporates have a role to play, especially through enhancing investment in research and development to support innovators' efforts and incorporating innovation in business models to build an innovation culture within organisations.

"Uganda has an enterprising spirit, which is why innovation becomes a key aspect in terms of how to grow this economy and tap into the different opportunities that can stimulate enterprise growth in Uganda," he said.

Buy local solutions
Kalifungwa said there was need to deliberately pursue localisation of supply chains to provide market for local solutions. He said this is key in supporting innovation and enterprises to enable the youth go into successful entrepreneurship.

Kalifungwa alluded to the need for organisations to provide seed financing to support innovations, partner with leading business providers to avail free skills training and development.

 He also called for the need to undertake enhanced awareness of the available support to innovators as well as organisations that provide a platform to drive innovation.

The United Nations Capital Development Fund Uganda head, Dmitry Pozhidaev, said the call for collaboration to enhance youth innovation-led entrepreneurs is more urgent now, given the high rate of youths entering the job market annually.He said creating decent jobs for the Ugandan youth is very important.

"Uganda needs to create about 400,000 jobs a year to be able to accommodate the demand for jobs but this is not happening. Supporting youth innovations will help bridge this gap," Pozhidaev said.

The National Planning Authority chairperson, Pamela Mbabazi, said the Government will support and work with the private sector on the established innovation hubs across the country that seek to nurture youth innovation and entrepreneurship skills.

She added that government incubation centres for invention and innovation will further support this cause.

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