Youth in Uganda have been urged to embrace and grab existing opportunities in commercial agriculture in a bid to fight unemployment.
The latest survey dubbed ‘The Uganda National Labour Force Survey’ by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), reveals at least 41 percent of youth, which represents 9.3 million aged between 18 and 30 years are not engaged in any productive activity.
The survey indicates that 9.3 million youth are neither in education, employment or receiving training.
Joshua Laban Musinguzi, the President of Coalition for SDGs and founder of Agrofresh Uganda, said the agriculture sector has many opportunities which the youth can take up.
Musinguzi made the remarks during a media consultative meeting ahead of the 1st National Empowerment and Development in Commercial Agriculture conference scheduled for November 8-9 at Makerere Business School (MUBS) Nakawa.
He said funds for the youth have been availed by the Bank of Uganda through the Agriculture Credit Facility (ACF), and other programs but some have not fully embraced Agriculture.
The Agricultural Credit Facility (ACF) was set up in 2009 by the Government of Uganda in partnership with Commercial Banks, Uganda Development Bank Ltd, Microfinance Deposit-Taking Institutions and Credit Institutions to facilitate the provision of short, medium and long-term loans to projects engaged in agriculture and agro-processing at more favourable terms.
The scheme is administered by the Bank of Uganda (BoU) and the loans under ACF are disbursed through the Participating Financial Institution (PFI).
Phiona Naigaga, a Credit Analyst at Agricultural Credit Facility (ACF), said eligible entities include private sector businesses or individuals, partnerships, companies, SACCOs (whether small, medium or large) operating in Uganda and engaged in Agriculture, agro-processing and the grain trade among others.
She said the maximum loan amount is up to Shs2.1 billion. However, this can be lifted on a case-by-case basis for eligible projects that add significant value to the agricultural sector and the economy as a whole.
Naigaga said the fund is easier to get and called upon the youth to visit the relevant financial institutions to access the funds.
She said as the Bank of Uganda, they are ready to support the farmers and the youth in particular to solve their farming challenges.
Lawrence Totimeh, the head of Business and Service delivery at Yo Uganda, said close to one million farmers have been digitalized which has made it easy to find them, and know their challenges.
He said most of the Youths’ are on digital platforms and have smartphones which if they partner well, can easily get market for their products through online selling.
Commenting on the conference, Musinguzi said the conference will bring together relevant stakeholders in the agricultural value chain who will be engaged to create better opportunities for youth involvement.
“During the conference, the youth will learn how to engage in modern agriculture, access to capital and how to get market for their agricultural products,” said Musinguzi.
He noted that some of the activities at the conference include high-level dialogues where officials from institutions like the Bank of Uganda, YO Uganda Limited, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Agriculture and National Organic Farmers Movement of Uganda (NOGMU) among others will take part.