Go to the farm and dig, Museveni tells youth

President Museveni has asked the youth to embrace farming instead of lamenting over their joblessness.

Speaking at the national celebration to mark the International Youth Day at Kaunda Grounds in Gulu City on Friday, the President said: “I will give you the addresses to wealth and jobs gaps, and stop really wasting our time because I really get tired when I come [to an event] and hear people talking and lamenting.”

“Everybody with a piece of land, engage in commercial agriculture and stop really wasting our time because in some of the meetings, I may turn up and become rude and say sit down because you are talking nothing,” he said.

Mr Museveni said by investing in commercial farming, the youth will not only create wealth for themselves but also create jobs for others in the process.

“If you come to my farms in Rwakitura and Kisozi, I have wealth like cows, crops, etc. But I have also created jobs for many people,” he said.

He added that establishing factories and investing in social services provision as well as embracing ICT in doing business is of the essence.

Mr Museveni was reacting to statements in speeches by the Northern Youth MP, Mr Boniface Okot; National Youth Council chairman Jacob Eyeru; and the UN Resident Coordinator, Ms Susan Ngongi Namondo. They all asked the government to decisively address the high rate of unemployment among the youth.

In her speech, Ms Namondo asked the government and other stakeholders to invest in developing an ecosystem that can better support young people to make their own jobs.

With a population close to 80 percent under the age of 30, of which 700,000 enter the job market every year to compete for 238,000 jobs available, Ms Namondo said the situation was worrying for Uganda.

Youth unemployment
Elsewhere, while asking President Museveni to reinstate a number of youth resident district commissioners (RDCs) and resident city commissioners (RCCs) who were dropped during the recent reshuffle by the Office of the President, Mr Eyeru said the government needed to do more to address unemployment among the youth.
On the sidelines of the Youth Day celebration, Mr Museveni also launched the Regional Communication Infrastructure Project (RCIP). 

The initiative—undertaken by National Information and Technology Authority (NITA) Uganda—is aimed at lowering the cost of the Internet to enable business and productivity and also extend Internet connectivity to all the regions of the country.

Dr Chris Baryomunsi, the ICT minister, said the cost of the Internet dropped from $70 (about Shs264,000) to $35 (Shs132,000) upon commissioning the project on Friday. 

He added that the adoption and use of ICT to impact service delivery is part of the big vision of transforming Uganda into a knowledge-based economy.

“We are working very hard to create an enabling environment to process the business process outsourcing where our young people shall continue to have jobs both domestically and outside the country,” Dr Baryomunsi said.