As Ugandans living abroad, if we are to do anything back home to help our brothers and sisters in Uganda , the most critical question is how to create quickly hundreds of millions of jobs for the poor with limited purchasing power and limited capital for investment. The idea that most of these jobs could be created in the corporate sector or by government-sponsored activities has already been put to rest, because it has been tested and it has not worked out in several developing countries. For any strategy to be successful, it must give central importance to self-employment and entrepreneurship, with emphasis on agriculture, agro-industry and small firms in the informal sector.The most important thing is to encourage people to become self employed instead of moving from one job to the other. We must start by creating jobs which are agro based rather than putting more emphasis on the so called corporate world. By the way, there is money in anything somebody wants to do in business as long as one is determined and planning very well. People like Mukwano, James Mulwana(RIP), Wavamuno, Sudhir(without the nasty side of him) and most Kampala genuine tycoons, did not make money by starting with corporate business plans. They started with something small and representing local interests. They are actually richer and more useful to Uganda than most politicians that occupy most of our debates. The professionals abroad can help us to lobby their organisations to give outsourcing contracts to fellow Ugandans at home because that’s how Indians and Chinese have benefited from globalisation. Most corporate companies in USA and other big economies can now outsource jobs that can be performed remotely such as website creation, link building, article submissions, Blogs, data entry, programming, virtual assistants and many other online tasks. Those Ugandan professionals abroad could also help us in developing new ideas within the existing industries or attract more foreign investment in agro-based industries. For example, we have got a lot of ‘KASASILO’ or ‘rubbish’ that can be turned into bio-fuel. Bio-fuels in Brazil have created about a million jobs and there are plans to expand bio-diesel production to benefit hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers. China has a large-scale programme to reduce methane emissions from animal husbandry which is creating a whole new industry of biogas equipment manufacturers and producers. In South Africa, energy upgrading of housing in slum areas avoids emissions and creates more than 100 new skilled jobs for every 100 units of buildings renovated. Such projects could expand to large-scale operations because they can attract significant funding from industrialized countries through the Clean Development
Posted on: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 17:06:11 +0000
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