JOBS FOR GRADUATES IN UGANDA

Someone said that the most visited websites in Uganda are those to do with job offers. I would love to lecture to graduates on how to generate own employment, however, I would also love those who can access the Internet to get my write-up the reason why I have used "Jobs for graduates in Uganda." Thank you William Kituuka Kiwanuka --------------------------------------------------------- HOW THE GRADUATES CAN GO ABOUT WITH OWN EMPLOYMENT CREATION The Theme: ‘Unemployment of graduates could be a blessing in disguise’ “Graduates should eventually have the dream of employment under their control.” WHAT UNEMPLOYED GRADUATES MUST BE PREPARED TO DO: 1. Cultivate Trust – and be Trustworthy; 2. Improve Communication Skills; 3. Learn Project Proposal Writing Skills; 4. Change time spent on Social media to more productive time; 5. Ready to Venture with Minimal Financial Resources; 6. Ready to Learn and thereafter Implement; 7. Make their existence and abilities known 1. Graduates MUST cultivate trust before getting involved in any self employment initiatives. People MUST trust you to be able to work with you. Stop the greed of being rich too soon. “What grows very fast dies fast.” Graduates MUST equally “Cultivate hope” in what they venture out to do. 2. Graduates MUST improve their Communication Skills. It is a fact that a number of graduates have poor spoken and written English language. When you write something and it is so poorly made, the one to whom the communication is made loses interest in reading poorly constructed sentences which at times don’t bring out the meaning the writer intended to portray. Whenever possible, be straight to what your subject is about, not beating about the bush. 3. Project Proposal Writing Skills is a MUST for anybody who wants to generate own employment. There is a lot on Internet Search Engines regarding Project proposal writing skills. In fact some Calls for proposals make illustration of how the project write-up should be made. 4. Graduates ought to get from the time wasting on social media because it does not have ready returns, and instead use such precious time to dig for opportunities. Once in a while it is possible to make some appointment with executives who are in the area one wants to venture into. However, one has to be careful as some people are not positive to innovators, wherever you can grow your idea alone or as a group the better. 5. Venture out with minimal resources, but focused knowing that some party somewhere may be interested in the information/research you may have undertaken, and may be ready to pay a token to support your work. 6. When one is unemployed, one MUST be ready to learn or even read on one’s own if learning new ideas has the capacity to boost the graduate’s knowledge of venturing into the unknown. 7. If people get to know about you, even if you are not paid for that type of work, there are chances that they can take you on. It is a real disaster to keep in the dark because you are not viably employed. At worst open a blog and post something sensible on a daily basis. In this respect, a digital camera is a necessary equipment. This can help you take images whenever you wish and also record voices, which add taste to your work. 1. Most companies or organizations start small, but determination and continued innovation helps them to weather the times: “Lamans s.a Management Services says, “Lamans was established in 1980, with registered offices in Athens, Greece. The company commenced its business activities focusing on the agricultural sector with the provision of services to cooperatives and private individuals, and subsequently expanded its services to Regional Development, undertaking projects for Local Administration. Having established its presence in the private sector by providing the entire spectrum of consultancy services, at the end of the 1980’s, the company began to develop activities selectively in the public sector.” 2. Think of an MSME with multiplier effects and has capacity to attract funding: “The vast majority of countries – developed and developing alike rely on the dynamism, resourcefulness and risk taking of private enterprise to trigger and sustain processes of economic growth. Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) represent perhaps one of the best vehicles for grassroots economic growth in Uganda; according to the ILO/JASPA African Employment Report, MSMEs are the emerging private sector in poor countries, and thus form the base for private sector-led growth.” 3. Government programmes which need players to implement: i. The Premier Executive, A Quarterly Newsletter of the Office of the Prime Minister, Vol.7, 2011 has the story, “Government Earmarks shs 1.2trillion for Peace, Recovery and Development Programme (PRDP) 2012 – 2015. The amount is (US$455million). A graduate from Northern Uganda from one of the 55 districts and nine beneficiary Municipalities can reach out to his/her district and find out the possibility of designing a project that can benefit from the funding. ii. Many Local Governments have financial resource constraints. You may however come up with a strategy that can boost incomes of the locals and thereafter increasing the tax base of the Local Government. It is very possible for the Local Government to buy your idea and may be you will have a role in its implementation. There was a time when land on which Kajjansi market lies was for sale after the owner of the land defaulted on loan repayment. Someone reached out to the district, and the district bailed out the land and it currently has a better market infrastructure. 4. Donations for work on ground: “Uganda Science Journalists get Canadian dollars 12,000.” Uganda Science Journalists’ Association (USJA) got Canadian dollars 12,000 which was donated by the World Federation of Science Journalists (WFSJ) to strengthen the Association’s ability to sustain its programmes.” What this brings out is that if graduates can sit down, organize themselves against an identified problem, work on its solution, their work can get rewarded through support which may be in form of grants solicited like in the case of (USJA).

5. Have you ever known that it is possible to train people in Practical Banking so that when they get to apply to financial institutions, they have an idea of how transactions move? It is indeed possible. I write from the fact that I am a professional banker. I know that if one organized two retired bankers or those who may have left the bank for one reason or another, with these people, it is not a big deal training graduates from the initial steps when cash is delivered to a financial institution up to the balancing of the day’s books. With this innovation, graduates applying to financial institutions can be knowledgeable of what they are expected of, instead of learning after they are recruited. 6. Have a big idea? Write your proposal very well and the financial implication. If possible make a website (after all there are free website hosting organizations), then look out for possible funding for the idea. It can be great if you have started some work on ground. Emails where to send your idea can be accessed on the Internet. You can search for organizations which are doing similar or related work. In fact there are some that call for big ideas where you can submit yours. You may be lucky and you get funding. i. A case in point is UN WOMEN – (United Nations Entity for Gender Equity and Employment of Women). This organization has priority areas as: a) Increasing women’s leadership and participation; b) Ending violence against women and girls; c) Engaging women in all aspects of peace and social processes; d) Enhancing women’s economic empowerment; e) Making gender equality central to national development planning and budgeting. If women graduates form Community Based Organizations (CBOs) with some of the objectives above, what about getting to mobilize women and eventually seek funding. Possible contact: Florence.butegwa@unifem.org ii. Graduates can venture into analyzing the diets of the people. They may through research establish the deficiencies in the diets. This may be the basis for the intervention they may propose for the concerned community which can be funded if they labour to look for funding ( say from SIGHT & LIFE: info@sightandlife.org) 7. Project Ideas in most cases are developed from Research Findings: “According to the 2005/06 Uganda National Household Survey, there were 5.2 million households in Uganda, out of which 4.2 million were directly engaged in Agriculture. (Uganda Bureau of Statistics 2006), representing 81% of the total households. The farmers in Uganda are categorized into three broad groups. The smallest group (5%) is that of commercial producers – highly specialized, utilizing improved technologies and producing mainly for profit. The 2nd group (27%) is that of semi – commercial producers who produce both for home consumption and for the market. The largest group (68%) is that of subsistence producers. They are rural, poor farmers, producing mainly for domestic consumption.” Given the above background: a. A graduate can get into the rural area and organize people into productive groups, the concept of single sex Self Help Groups (SHGs) is becoming common as a vehicle to help enhance savings of mostly the women and hence get them into productive entities as well, reduce on their dependence on men. b. A graduate can help communities to boost production and share in the revenues realized; or c. Could lease temporarily land from those with excess land they are not using and get it to produce for the market; d. Can mobilize the community into savings groups to acquire increased capacity like a Milk Cooling Plant, Maize Mill, name it. 8. You can exploit the scarcity of a good and look for prospect investors: It is possible to reach out to Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) and establish the items that are most imported. One can use this type of information to interest a potential investor to come into the country to take advantage of the capacity, and hence process locally. I am told someone played that role before MTN ventured into the country, so you too can fish for a potential investor given your research findings which may be unknown to many out of URA circles. 9. The Innovation of Model Villages: You can get involved in starting a Model Village idea locally in your village are other convenient where you may see it possible to work from. You may then get involved in demonstrating Best Practices to the communities. A graduate may read information regarding what a Model Village is all about and set out to implement one. This may be well done if such a one registered a CBO. The initiative in this case may be aimed at among other things promoting food security, empowering people to fight poverty and increased household income; improving water and sanitation and ensure improved quality of life of the people and training in cooperative skills. Can also incorporate water harvesting skills, etc. 10. Locally Grafting Fruits: Starting the grafting of better fruits for increased and better fruit production at local levels. This undertaking can be done locally and productively. 11. Environment Management is a big industry: Environment Management is a major industry in which graduates can get involved together with local communities. The major objective in this case should be to promote Sustainable Environment Management. 12. Putting Sociology to work: The graduates who read Sociology can get into work on family trees and produce equivalent of albums or have the work in some other form. Many people may wish to have family trees done for them, and some graduates should make the initiative.

13. Charcoal dust is a waste at many charcoal outlets: Graduates can venture into making Charcoal dust briquettes from the charcoal dust which is a waste at many charcoal outlets.

14. Making Bio Gas Plants: Some people may not know that it is possible to make Bio gas plants and have the bio gas compressed into cylinders. Alternatively, may are still ignorant about the way bio gas is manufactured. A venture out to make these bio gas plants for domestic use can be good business. I have seen a bio gas plant at some ones home at Kajjansi Trading centre where the ripe sweet banana peels are the raw material out of which the gas is manufactured. 15. Graduates from Buganda can reach out to Katikiiro to explore possibility of having short term projects on unused Kingdom land: We have time and again heard about some people encroaching on Buganda Kingdom land. The main reason being that the land is redundant. Assuming a group of graduates reached out to the Katikiiro of Buganda with projects, say to produce vegetables on this type of land, I am of the opinion that if they are serious, he is bound to get to some terms regarding how they can get income from such venture as the kingdom benefits in form of some revenue as well as having land in better security. 16. Promotion of International Networking: There is an organization like SERVAS International – it connects people from different countries and they network and benefit from various experiences worldwide. Graduates should think about measures of getting such networking, and thereafter, they may be able to mobilize resources to see some projects taking off ground. 17. Scaling Out what your parents are doing: It is a fact that one’s parents generate income from some economic activity. It is not advisable to ignore the tasks or work out of which one’s parent’s income, when one has the capacity to scale out such work and also improve on it. This may be easy depending on the relation a graduate enjoys with his or her parents. Or it may call for educating the parents about the possibility that the businesses they are doing can be in some instances improved on by the graduate children. I however know of one case where when children were put in a shop to help the parents, they actually contributed to its collapse! 18. Graduates with Legal Training can promote Legal Clinics locally: Organizations centered on helping the legal matters of the rural communities can also be able to get funding given that the rural and urban people equally have legal problems yet the courts of law in most instances make the justice process very expensive. I remember when Major General Elly Tumwiine said he badly needed lawyers who were ready to work in rural communities so as to help the legal matters. 19. Efforts to Promote Women’s Health: The problems women go through regarding health are not news. A graduate who seriously thinks out a strategy that can boost women’s health has chances of generating own employment sustainably. 20. Graduates with a Chemistry Background: We have medicinal herbs into which area such graduates can be relevant. The problem is that some gradates see those people in such business as low status persons with who they may not wish to be identified, yet a graduate can get good pay if he is ready to help a dealer in herbal medicine better preserve his product. 21. Skills Training: Skills in both the rural and urban settings are in short supply. It is a fact that majority of the players in business in Uganda have not got that high education, yet their skills can be boosted from training. 22. Funding for Technological Innovations in Developing Countries: “The Clean Technology Fund provides new, large scale financial resources to invest in projects and programs in developing countries which contribute to the demonstration, deployment and transfer of low carbon technologies. The projects or programs must hold significant potential for long term greenhouse savings.” 23. What about writing about people? It is interesting reading about people and their ambitions or their experiences in life, and some can pay money to get publicized say on Internet. People’s biographies, their ideas and visions are fascinating. If a graduate can get adverts on a website which puts out such information, he/she can surely make a living out of it, and may be some people may get to know about him/her and could offer better employment. 24. Mobilize to better the conditions of the Elderly: While in the rural area, you can identify a number of elderly people in need of support. You may work with a few youth who don’t have employment. You may make a Work Plan to see how to improve the conditions of these people. You can be sure that on publicizing your activities say on a blog, you will eventually get support and will then make a living out of that work. If you grow food for the elderly, you may be able to have surplus for sale out of which you may be able to get a token. 25. Exploit Stiff Competition in Schools: You can exploit the stiff competition in schools and start a periodical magazine where schools are covered. Once you are able to get adverts, such magazines are easy to sell in schools as long as the quality of the setting is good. 26. A Blog – ‘IN LOVING MEMORY’: Many people have lost their dear ones, and would love information and photo impressions of their dear ones run on the Internet. A graduate can open a Blog to post “In Loving Memory Messages,” then solicit for information from those who may have lost dear ones, and charge them accordingly. In some instances, some people may want a blog for only one deceased and pay for it.

27. Cultivating Using Cattle in Buganda: If cattle are used in cultivation in Busoga region, there is no reason why the same cannot be used in Buganda. Graduates can venture into this innovation given that even if tractors were available they are expensive. 28. Making of Hay: When it gets to the dry season, cattle keepers in Uganda hunt for grass, this is because we have not had a culture of making hay. Graduates can make some trial of hay making and have the cattle keepers taught how to go about it, and where possible store hay for sale to cattle keepers in the dry season. 29. Putting Content on the Internet in Local Languages: Many organizations want the local communities to appreciate the Internet, however, the locals have a communication problem. If content can be put in the language they understand, chances are that such work can be supported and the players will get a livelihood. 30. Collecting Information which may Attract Investors: Unemployed youth can generate information from around the country which may attract investors to their areas. A case in point is the parish where I grew which is really backward, but if the circumstances were made known to prospect investors; chances of making a big kill are a sure deal. One can start a shop together with a grocery and hardware, then, provide mobile money services while at the same time buy local produce without any serious competitors. By William Kituuka Kiwanuka wkituuka@gmail.com