Youth in Agriculture

Uganda is currently grappling with high rates of youth unemployment. The media has recently been awash with youth demonstrations most notably the yellow coloured MPigs youth who stormed parliament. One of the solutions that has been fronted is to engage them in Agriculture. This option however, presents its own challenges for most youth for instance access and ownership of land, finances, equipment and quality inputs. To this date, youth involvement in Agriculture has remained more or less a wishful thinking by the government.

Well aware that agriculture is the backbone of this beautiful country, there is a lot that needs to be done to attract the youth into agriculture. Some pragmatic measures includes among others sensitization campaigns to change the mindset, exchange and experience sharing like the popular Farming magazine (Monitor newspaper) does, easing access to finance, equipment such as tractors and small scale irrigation notwithstanding access to reliable market information. Its also paramount to distinguish between youth involvement in agriculture and politicking.

Agriculture if fully harnessed has great potential to alleviate the unemployment dilemma. It is argued that passion is the key driver for success in any business agriculture inclusive. The big question is "Do the Ugandan youth have passion for Agriculture?". As long as the youth do not consider agriculture as a viable employment opportunity, we are still distant from the winning formula!

My Education Journey

Growing up in the rural parts of Uganda, schooling was not really a priority. The limited interest was was partly because of the longer distance to school, little motivation and unfavourable school environment i.e. lack of school feeding programs. 

I did not have the privilege to attend nursery school simply because they were not hard of.  I straight away joined Okude Primary School from 1992-1995. We later moved to Obalanga were i enrolled in Amoni Primary School from 1996-1998. I sat for Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) but astonishingly, i had no idea about post primary school. When results were returned, i passed in Div II with 22 aggregates.

Given the socio-economic status of our family, i could not join a prominent boarding school. I instead joined Amuria High School, Amuria district in 1999. It was at this time that i heard of something called interviews. I can vividly recall the type of questions i was asked and the teacher who interviewed me. While in Amuria High School, my mind started to open up and i started to believe in my self and also see the value of Education. Regardless of my background, i only missed position one once (S1 term 1). I sat for Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) in 2002. I obtained 20 Aggregates (Div 1) and this made me even believe in myself the more.