PSFU to mark silver jubilee, commits to help youth

The Private Sector Foundation Uganda (PSFU) has committed to work with the young people more so as to help the youth establish businesses to support job creation, income growth and exports.

This was announced by the PSFU executive director, Gideon Badagawa during the media launch of events to mark PSFU's 25 years of existence.

The announcement follows a partnership between PSFU and MasterCard Foundation under the Young Africa Works strategy, which seeks to create dignified and fulfilling work for at least three million young people in specific sectors, over the next 10 years.

"The MasterCard partnership will be a game changer; leading growth from the realisation that for you to cause change to happen, you have to work with the young people. This is very important; Uganda is a young country and any intervention that comes focusing on young people is where the change will happen," Badagawa said.

He added: "We will focus on this over the next five years because until we leverage the effort of the young people, we cannot make any headway. The future of this country is in the private sector and the future of the private sector is in the young people."

According to Badagawa, the partnership will explore the Lead farm structure approach that will enhance linkages within the productive sectors by ensuring market focused production, based on the requirements of a Lead Firm.

Lead firms will work with the youth through the value chains to organise producer groups and do aggregation to feed the Lead Firms.

PSFU had a target to identify 12 Lead firms this year and so far, nine have been identified, according to Badagawa.

Talking about their successes over the last 25 years, Badagawa said that the apex body of the private sector has over the years build strong policy advocacy that has seen it strongly influence budget allocation.

Badagawa, however, said that while over 80% of their recommendations to government are taken up by public policy, they need to strengthen their advocacy to ensure that the allocated budgets are not diverted, but that they are implemented as proposed to enable the private sector compete favourably.

The other milestones are supporting the private sector through grants mechanism up to over $1b (about sh3.66 trillion) to enhance skills, capacity building, and business development among others.

This has been possible due to the strategic  partnerships it has built with over 10 development partners including the World Bank, European Union, United Nations in Uganda, GIZ and Mastercard Foundation, among others, to drive the private sector agenda.

"We are thrilled that over the past 25 years we have supported our members to improve business operations and competitiveness to support the overall private sector in Uganda," Badagawa said.

PSFU has also over the years grown its membership from 11 in 1995 to over 242 currently, comprising of business associations, corporate enterprises and public entities that support private sector growth.

Rajesh Chaplot, a PSFU board member said that several events have been lined up to mark the jubilee celebrations including visiting some members' premises over the coming weeks to listen to their success stories and future plans.

They also plan to launch the PSFU celebration booklet showing their 25 year journey, conduct several media engagements, undertake a tree planting exercise, an exhibition and the closing event that will take place in August next year.