TRANSFORMING UGANDA’S WORKFORCE.

The biggest percentage of Uganda’s population youthful. Statistics reveal about 70-80% of Uganda’s population is basically between the age of 17-18 years and of this percentage over hundreds of thousands graduate from University. However, when you look at the available employment vacancies, the ratio of jobs compared to graduates or skilled youths available to work is extremely small. It’s not even close to half.

Interestingly, even the labor export business has become congested to the point that there are still Ugandans living abroad still looking for employment till this day in the United Arab Emirates and Canada. Worse still the cost of living in Uganda is becoming unmanageable.

With all this one would question, as a young person living in Uganda, what could be the problem and how it can be resolved. Well, here are some issues Ugandans struggle with and are never addressed.

You can’t harvest apples when you planted maize. Many have been trained to be employees and not employers. Entrepreneurship is something many adopt as the last option and yet where we are right now entrepreneurship should be the very first option for every graduate in Uganda. Start by being your own boss before someone starts bossing you around.

As youths we need to adopt the spirit of collaboration. It is through collaboration that we can build capacity to market beyond Uganda. Unfortunately, collaboration and partnerships is not something Ugandans easily embrace. Every one has their own bag and their own niche leaving us struggling with small businesses that can’t even live to see their next birthday, worse still with no money to build capacity to sustain a business.

The illusion that there are so many things you can do as a person. As young people, in Uganda we like quick gains and instead of building expertise in a field we are quick to jump on whatever shows potential in growth. This simply makes you a jerk of all trades with no expertise, leaving you as a mediocre in your field.

Building expertise in something will help you have diverse information and solutions regarding the format of trade you are trying to deal in. It may take a lot of time but the more one digs deep, the more you gain street credit for what you do and the more you discover the diversity of what you are trying to do.