President Yoweri Museveni has urged the youth in the country to wake up and contribute to the development of Uganda so that they are able to come out of poverty and joblessness.
The President was this afternoon addressing the National Youth Council meeting at the Uganda Manufacturers Association (UMA) Conference Hall at Lugogo in Kampala Kampala.
“I want the youth to wake up so that we develop our country in order to come out of poverty and joblessness,” President Museveni said.
He asked the youth to familiarize themselves with the ideology and strategy of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) as this will make it easy for them and him to work together.
Museveni encouraged the young people to form groups and undertake different production activities with a view to adding value to products made locally in the country as a way of reducing import expenses.
He revealed government’s plans to provide maize processing machines in different areas of Masindi District, among others, where a lot of maize is produced.
He urged them to pick interest as well as convince their parents to get involved in commercial agriculture.
The President advised the Youth Secretariat to engage scientists from Makerere University so as to get scientific explanations on what to do to improve production ventures. He proposed to the youth in the country to have action plans geared towards stopping the haemorrhage of their country’s annual expenditure on imports worth US$7 billion.
“You are very lucky in a very rich country and your parents are rich because they spend money to enrich others by importing these things. I want an action plan by the youth so that we stop this haemorrhage of spending US$7 billion on imports every year,” he said.
The President further asked the youth to know how to defend their interests and what is good for them so that government can support them better.
He also warned them against land fragmentation practices and only work to consolidate families’ pieces of land keeping in mind that they should embrace shares and parcel out the monetary proceeds from the activities carried on other then parcelling out land into uneconomic units.
