Ugandan students gaining from Japan

“I learned a strategy where we get to the customers directly which reduces on post-processing handling costs as products reach consumers faster without having to sit on shelves,” he says.

On returning to Uganda, Bwire formed a company called Saerd Centre Ltd and hopes to set up in Kalagi, Mukono in a bid to empower greenhouse farming through the production of organic fertilisers - Bokashi to improve soil nutrient content and biochar which also improves on water retention.

The journey
He hopes to do this in partnership with contacts he made while in Japan such as Institute of Environmental Rehabilitation and Conservation (ERECON) Japan and Japan Fund for Global Environment in collaboration with the Department of Agricultural Mechanisation and Irrigation Engineering, Busitema University.

He is also looking at launching climate smart film farming where together with his partners will venture into soilless farming, “We will start next year. However, that is as long as the structure and demonstration farm are in place,” he says.

Big dreams
Bwire is among Ugandans that have benefitted from the African Business Education (ABE) initiative that was announced at fifth Tokyo International Conference for African Development in 2013 and continues to develop Uganda’s human resource in both public and private sectors.

The initiative affords Ugandans an opportunity to study at Japanese universities as well as work at Japanese enterprises. Early this month, Japan International Cooperation Agency, the government agency that coordinates Official Development Assistance, on behalf of the government of Japan organised a homecoming reporting session to review what the third batch participants had achieved.

The objective of the programme, according to the Ambassador of Japan to Uganda Kazuaki Kameda, is to support young personnel who have the potential to contribute to the development of industries in Africa.
“The participants should have strong motivation to strengthen economic ties between Japan and Uganda which will also lead to Japanese private sector engagement in Africa’s development,” he said.

In this regard, Uganda has so far sent 26 participants in the last four years in the fields of agriculture, public Health, electrical and mechanical engineering, business administration, and international development, among others.

This year, one participant of the sixth batch will leave in September to study. Robinah Ajok of Saraya Manufacturing (U) Ltd, another beneficiary of the programme, graduated from Nagasaki University with a Masters in Public Health in September 2018.

“My desire to study this course stemmed from my visits to several medical facilities in Uganda and noticed that hand hygiene during patient care was highly lacking.” As such, for her research, she focused on four districts of Eastern Uganda to understand where the missing link was inasmuch as they were already supplying some of these centres with sanitisers.

Ajok is thankful for the opportunities afforded to her even while studying her course such as an internship programme at World Health Organisation collaborating centre, Geneva University Hospital as well as another at Saraya in Japan.

As one that sold sanitisers to medical facilities only, Ajok discovered that there were more areas that ought to be tackled such as hotels and restaurants as well as other products from Saraya Japan that would help in promoting proper hand hygiene.

“I desire to reach out to such establishments to talk to them on better hand hygiene to nip disease infection so that one does not even have to visit the hospital as well as market more of these hand hygiene products,” she shared. She also learned that there is more to selling to someone a product, “You have to explain to them how and why they should use it. I have taught those that I work with this technique. That way, you get compliance and better results.”