By Arthur Musinguzi.
Ugandans are positively aggressive and have a determined nature for entrepreneurship. With the right investment and partnership opportunities I strongly believe Ugandans will be able to grow and scale their businesses.
In fact I was very happy when I closely followed a promising program dubbed Next Innovation with Japan (NINJA) Accelerator Uganda meant to take high growth startups to the next level of business growth to attract investment worth US$0.5m that will be implemented by The Innovation Village, Hive Collab and Outbox launched on 6th August, 2021.
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2019/2020 ranked Uganda one of the most entrepreneurial countries in the world with 30% of Ugandans starting businesses annually. In the United States of America and Japan, that figure stands at 7% and 11%.
In 2020, the President of Uganda, H.E Yoweri Museveni took off time and listed fish farming, shoe making, vegetable oil extraction, and maize milling as the top areas youth should engage in to get themselves out of poverty. He added that government has played its role of creating a number of initiatives aimed at giving youth loans and startup capital to get them out of poverty, but most of them are lazy and want free things. So to transform this narrative, we the youth have to embrace risks and be part of the startup owners.
Knowing the struggles these startups face, we must collaborate with one another and work together with the government, private sector, investors and customers for whom we are innovating. Let’s put in place incentives for startups to thrive, facilitate one another to refine their business model, tackle the actual market challenges, put in place the right teams of expertise to grow cash flow and raise capital.
I believe With this, the sky will certainly not even be the limit towards the growth of Uganda’s ecosystem
The Writer is a Government Citizens Interaction Centre- State House, Communications Officer
