Stanbic Bank Uganda has announced finalists for the National Schools’ Championship (NSC) programme and given out seed capital to all semi-finalists amounting to UGx12.5million.
The finalists were picked from four regions of Uganda namely, Central, Northern, Western and Eastern after presenting their business plans categorized in different sectors.
The regional finalists are Kigumba Intensive S.S (Northern) dealing in bakery, Busoga High School (Eastern) with the ‘Feed the Earth’ pesticide project, Kyebambe Girls S.S (Western) dealing in ‘Breeding black soldier Fly Larvae’ project and Kings College Budo from Central who hit the finals with their shoe protection kit idea
The business plan presentations started with participants from Northern Uganda on June 01, then Eastern on June 03, Western and Central June 08.
The Western and Central events were held virtually and a few days after the government had temporarily closed schools for 42 days to tame the spread of COVID-19.
The winners were picked from categories of Startup Challenge (business ideas) and Biz- grow challenge (businesses in school still operating even now). The two categories are part of this year’s four categories that also include, Alumgrow challenge (our Alumni personal businesses) and Teach-grow challenge (teachers that have started projects but still teaching).
Barbara Kasekende, the Stanbic Bank’s Corporate Social Investment Manager congratulated the winners and urged the other competitors not to lose hope given that Stanbic Bank is here to support young entrepreneurs to become the future engine of Uganda’s economy.
Kasekende said, the regional presentations showed more innovations coming up especially in the agricultural sector.
She said, “These ideas speak to the sustainable development goals and feed into the planet, people and profit ideology thus we are teaching these children and communities how to do business sustainably which also speaks to what we want to achieve as a Bank.”
Seed capital was given to 20 projects that will be monitored weekly until the finals are held in August this year.
A total of 100 schools took part in this year’s competition. Overall, a total of 486 business ideas were summitted for the competition, in which 52% were male and 48% female.
Over 174 (36%) of the business ideas came from the Western region while 69 (14%) came from Northern region producing the least number of ideas generated.
Majority of these ideas fell under the manufacturing sector (38%), an indication of a high level of ingenuity among the youth. This was followed by agriculture with 24% and 7% in ICT sector probably due to low level of digital literacy among students in school.
Started in 2016, the National Schools Championship was started with the aim of empowering youth with skills and abilities to develop start-ups and become future engines of the economy.
Stanbic Bank Uganda is part of the Standard Bank Group, Africa’s largest bank by assets. Standard Bank Group reported total assets R2.3 trillion (about USD163 billion) at 31 December 2019, while its market capitalization was R277 billion (USD20 billion).