Be agents of positive change, Museveni tells Kigezi youth

Young people must strive to use their energy to transform their communities, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) party flag bearer, President Yoweri Museveni has advised the youth of Kigezi sub-region in western Uganda.

The NRM leader, who has been on a scientific campaign trail in the region since Friday, met party youth leaders from the six districts of Kabale, Kiroro, Kanungu, Rubanda, Rukungiri and Rubanda. 

During the meeting, Museveni asked the youth to be agents of positive change and ambassadors of his campaign to promote commercial farming.

"You should be agents of change. I was a change agent in my family and my campaign against subsistence farming in this area worked well," he told the youth leaders during the meeting held at Nshwere Primary School in Kiruhura district, near his country home. 

As a youth activist in the 1960s, he led a campaign in the area to influence cattle keepers to move away from a nomadic lifestyle, helped improve production and transform communities.

"The people of this area were worse off because they led a nomadic lifestyle. They moved from place to run away from livestock diseases but in the process suffered so much," he said.

"On Christmas day in 1966, we held a meeting here and discussed the challenge. We calculated that it was cheaper and prudent to keep cattle in one place and adopt exotic breed instead of indigenous ones which require a lot of land and produce less milk per cow," he explained. 

His advice to the youth leaders followed requests from Kigezi leaders for his intervention to move more households out of subsistence production.
 
The NRM leader advised the youth to embrace commercial agriculture to fight poverty, create jobs, and increase household income. 

He also told the youth leaders to conduct thorough research on the agricultural enterprises they seek to establish to ensure that there is a ready market and value for money.

In order to get out of poverty, Museveni asked the youth leaders to ask themselves three questions: what is your annual expenditure? What assets does my family have from which I can generate income that is equal to or higher than the expenditure? How can I use those assets to earn income that will get me out of poverty?

Museveni asked the youth to elect legislators who will work with him to ensure that wealth funds receive more money to support income-generating projects.

Unemployment 

The youth leaders requested the President to tackle unemployment in the region and host them at his model farm in Luwero to teach them about modern farming practices. 

Museveni agreed to host the youth for a farm tour and stressed that commercial agriculture was one of the sure ways to fight unemployment.
 
"All my children completed school and they are doing different things. None of them is working in government, save for my son (Muhoozi) who decided to join the army. There are 146 districts. Even if you appoint youth as RDCs, where would the others go? The real jobs are in factories, ICT, services and industrial parks," Museveni explained. 

Door-to-door campaigns

The youth leaders pledged to secure an overwhelming win for Museveni in Kigezi. 

Doreen Kiconco, the secretary for female affairs at the National Youth Council, said women party leaders were eager to play a more active role in canvassing for votes for Museveni. 

Museveni is scheduled to wrap up his scientific campaigns in Kigezi with a series of engagements in Rukungiri district on Monday.