Archive for month: January, 2020

KASESE: Welders in Kasese have been warned to come together to monitor and ascertain the quality of work of all their colleagues, as a way of insuring their work from being infiltrated by shoddy artisans.

The remarks were made by the Kasese Deputy RDC Joshua Masereka, while meeting a group of welders from Kilembe quarters, following several complaints by local consumers that materials made from their (Kilembe) quarters were substandard, and risked provoking mistrust of all welders in the locality.

Speaking to the welders, Masereka noted that they need to constantly adapt their skills to emerging standards in their trade, noting for example that people had moved on from using feet to using millimeters in measurements.

“Our country has advanced and many people no longer use feet but rather millimeters in their measurements but you may find that many of you do not know how many millimeters are in one foot. This undermines your ability to compete with other artisans in the country,” Masereka added.

Masereka, a trained Engineer himself, said he is disturbed to see people make substandard work in an area he has immense expertise and pledged to offer “free” training to the welders for the good of their work and the community.

He challenged the youth to stop despising their work saying that they were earning more than teachers who are certified with University degrees.

On average, a welded door in Kasese town fetches shs. 350,000 against an initial investment of shs. 250,000, and Maseraka argues that with a profit margin of shs. 100,000, a welder can earn shs.3million per month assuming one makes a door per day. “That’s way more than a teacher who earns shs. 400,000, or even a CAO(Chief Administrative Officer) who earns shs.1.8million,” he says.

He appealed to them to form amongst themselves a professional cooperative to strengthen their bargaining power and be able to market their work beyond Kasese’s borders.

Last month, on a visit to Kilembe secondary school, then State Minister for Gender Peace Mutuuzo revealed that government was to establish skilling schools in every district starting with the next financial year, calling upon the youth to embrace the opportunity to acquire tertiary skills from which they can earn extra income.

Through local Government efforts, Kasese District is already providing targeted training for a variety of vocational students and groups and is calling upon the Government to reinforce them.

“The major challenge is that most of these students have no money to push them through the course, which forces others to drop out. Others have no money to buy the safety gear,” Peter Muhindo, one of the trainers told theCooperator.

Muhindo revealed that the other challenge the active welders are facing is the failure by some government contractors to pay them in time. He pointed out the example of VS Hydro in Kyarumba, from whom he said the welders demand shs.20million.

Stanley Baluku, a secondary school teacher at Karusandara seed school who doubles as a welder told theCooperator that there has been a surge in the need of vocational skills in the district, and says he’s teaching his children to diversify their skill-sets.

I earn at least shs.1million from my welding workshop monthly, while my teaching salary is just shs. 600,000. I cannot then tell my children to exclusively aim for white-collar jobs,” he said.

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Kampala, Uganda: The Uganda Peoples Defense Forces Savings and credit scheme – Wazalendo has announced it is going to embark on an impact assessment of all loans given out to its members since the SACCO’s inception, as a way of appraising the SACCO’s performance in regard to uplifting the social welfare of its members.

In an interview with theCooperator, Wazalendo’s board chairperson Maj.Gen.Sam Kavuma noted that since its inception in 2005, Wazalendo has disbursed over Shs.890billion to its members and that it was now time to take stock of what the money had done.

“In Wazalendo, we don’t make losses because we lend only to our members in active service. But now we want to find out if our money is making a positive difference in our members’ lives, and if not, what we can do about it going forward. That is why we are thinking of carrying out an evaluation impact assessment on the cumulative loans given out so far since 2007,” he explained.

Kavuma said the army will conduct the evaluation exercise in even the remotest of villages, wherever its officers come from. He said he has always advised members who borrow money to desist from investing their monies on “things that appear nice, cost millions of money but don’t make any returns.”

“You find someone buying a very expensive phone at say shs.3million, yet if that person invested the 3million in goats, he would have purchased at least 30 goats. Considering that a goat produces twice in a year, he would have 90 goats in a year and over 900 goats in 10 years. Would that person still be poor?” he asked, rhetorically.

He warned members against investing their borrowed money on liabilities, noting that the essence of borrowing should be to invest in things that have long-term returns. “A member borrows money and buys a car and even before he drives it, he is told the tyres are old, he needs new ones, he needs fuel, third party and so on. The car starts consuming your money even before you reach home. The car may even be stolen before you reach home as you boast to friends in a bar,” he said.

He urged members to invest in assets – things that have returns, like poultry, cows, goats piggery. “Invest in things that pay you back, either daily, weekly, monthly or annually,” he advised.

With a membership of over 67,000 members, Wazalendo remains Uganda’s biggest and arguably most successful SACCO. It is also the 6th biggest on the continent.

At its annual General Meeting last year held in Lugazi, the SACCO announced it had made a profit of shs.31.1 billion that was given out as dividends to its members.

“We can’t say we don’t have issues as Wazalendo. But as a savings scheme we are doing well, save for issues such as deaths, desertions, and retirements that are unavoidable,” said Kavuma.

He explained that when someone dies, deserts or retires, it affects the SACCO’s numbers not only in terms of membership size, but also in savings. “When someone retires he/she gets all his shares and savings and goes away and that is automatically a reduction. When they desert, it means we’ve lost out on savings. And when a member dies, all savings and shares are offset. All these affect the growth of the scheme,” he noted.

As a buffer against such eventualities, Wazalendo has put in place a Loan Protection Fund (LPF) that acts us its internal insurance. “Any member who gets a loan is charged 2% to cater for deaths and desertions. That is why when a member dies or deserts, we don’t follow his/her family,” Kavuma explained.

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Bishop Stuart University(BSU) has announced it is moving to formally register an agribusiness incubation center, with a view of developing its student agri-business ideas for sale as commercial products.

The announcement was made by Prof. Mauda Kamatenesi, the University’s Vice-Chancellor following the University’s triumph as best exhibitor at the Regional Universities’ Forum for capacity building in agriculture (RUFORUM) expo in Ghana last month.

BSU beat 121 other African universities at the University of Cape Coast Ghana, from 2nd-6th December 2019, Dr. Rebecca Kalibwani, the principal investigator-in-charge of the BSU Agribusiness Incubation Hub (AIH) attributed the University’s win to their business incubation model, which he referred to as “unique.”

Kalibwani told theCooperator that with support from development partners, the University allows students to generate their own business ideas, from which it identifies outstanding ones that it then finances to fully develop and become competitive.

One such partner is AVSI. The Dutch foundation has partnered with BSU since 2017, and has since invested close to shs.200million in supporting the University’s agri-business programs. This year, it (AVSI) has pledged to offer startup funding of shs.5million to 10 students with the best agri-business ideas.

BSU is a member of the African agribusiness incubators’ network, and Kalibwani says the University is strongly oriented towards agri-business skills development.

“The foundation(AVSI) supports our skills development component. Together, we believe that imparting practical skills to our students is one way we can contribute to solving the unemployment problem, by producing job-creators and not merely job-seekers,” he says.

One of the University’s agri-business alumnus is James Katumbi, now a thriving producer of beetroot yogurt in Mbarara town. He uses local ingredients – alviera, mulling, beetroot, hibiscus, lemon, and milk to produce his yogurt, and says he’s already attracting a special market.

“Yogurt has been there but we have added a herbal aspect to it. In Africa we don’t have any herbal yogurt so I am fighting hanger but also catering for vulnerable people like girls who bleed a lot during their menstrual periods, who need to take a lot of beetroot. Here, they take it indirectly in the yogurt,” Katumba explains.

Katumba is unequivocal about the importance of practical education programs, arguing like Kalibwani, that only they can address the challenge of unemployment. To his fellow youth, he says:

“Stop lamenting about jobs just change the mindset to venture into practical courses because at the end you will not only graduate with a degree but also with a project that can earn you money.”

Kamatenesi now believes it’s high time the University and its students cashed in on their agri-business potential:

“We are processing URSB (Uganda Registration Services Bureau) and UNBS (Uganda National Bureau of Standards) numbers to register as a company, because we’re developing our students’ ideas into bankable agri-business solutions that should be paid for,” she says.

The vice-chancellor encouraged students to particularly focus on developing ideas that provide solutions for Uganda’s industrial needs, noting that industrial innovation was the future. “We must set our sights beyond BSU to the whole country now,” she says.

At the expo in Ghana, apart from the certificate, the BSU student exhibitors were awarded $200. “We’re motivated to aim for and compete at even bigger platforms,” Kamatenesi says.

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