East African Business Week

KAMPALA,UGANDA - Farmers are expected to benefit when China becomes the market for their agricultural products, a leading brewer has said.
“Now is the time for the Youth in Uganda and Africa to consider Farming, because the Chinese will soon start taking cereals and milk for breakfast,” Mr Baker Magunda the East Africa Breweries Limited (EABL) MD told students attending a youth forum at  Kyambogo University in Kampala, recently.  
The forum was organized by AISEC, a global platform of university students that  prepares youths in school to gain relevant skills that will help them either get jobs or set up lasting businesses.
According to Mr Ambrose Kibuuka a human resource consultant, unemployment among the youth is high in Uganda even among university graduates  who find themselves without work for long periods after studies.The Aisec President Manuela Muller says her organization is concerned that most graduates neither find employment nor start their own successful businesses.
According to the Uganda Bureau of statistics (UBOS), 2010 population report, up to 400,000 graduates join the Labour market each year, but only 80,000 get employed. “There are all sorts of different reasons why you move on the streets with a shirt almost threadbare and shoe soles worn out looking for employment,” the report says.
“People do not have the necessary skills,” says  Penny Birungi, the deputy executive director of the National Council for Higher Education. He adds that in the 1970s, manpower planning which equipped employees started straight from university. People thought of it as a communist way of thinking, yet it was for the betterment of the individual. “Government then was able to plan for the population, which is not possible today yet the private sector is not expanding fast enough to absorb the graduates,” he says.
The youth have negative attitude towards what may give them income owing to peer pressure that despise work that does not look trendy. “ Forget about impressions and do work that gives you income and agriculture is the way, “says. Anthony Kiluuka of Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB). Youths were advised to utilize opportunities within the East African region.
Mr Kiluuka said commercial banks give agricultural loans at 10% per annum than 20% on other purposes. He said for instance one may venture into maize farming, use one acre and spend Ushs800,000 (US$340) seedlings and after three months harvest maize worth Ushs3.2m($1,350).
The challenge of not having  capital to start business is what bothers many youths who find it difficult to get help from banks.
Nigel Bell of Mara Foundation cautioned the youth to drop the assumption that they  need huge capital to start a  business. “All you need is an attitude to succeed.”