Local Raw Material (LRM) and Skills for Life visit to Uganda's Kigezi Region
Last week was quite an eventful one for us, the climax of which was a visit to the Kigezi region, where we attended the graduation of four beneficiaries of the UBL Skills for Life program.
In Uganda, 75% of the population is below 30 years and yet the country faces one of the world’s highest youth unemployment rates in the world, which stood at 13.3% in 2019 and that figure has grown since the COVID-19 pandemic became a reality.
As a business that seeks to be a positive force in the environments where we operate, we tried to understand how we could create a more expansive and sustainable impact at the grassroots level.
And to help to address the youth unemployment challenge, we chose to partner with institutions like the African College for Commerce and Technology and Datamine Technical Business School, which offer Vocational and Technical education because the days where certificates and degrees mean too much are gone.
Nowadays, your real currency is your skill set and not so much what’s on paper. Skills can enable you to start an enterprise, build it, serve customers and so on.
So for UBL, because almost half of our barley comes from Kigezi, we wanted to embrace and give back to the region as a whole. Skilling the youth is just the beginning. We are going to bring water and environmental programs and more to provide end-to-end solutions that uplift the region more sustainably.
We appreciate institutions like ACCT and Datamine for providing a nurturing environment for the youth to grow in their chosen vocations and also their commitment to gender equality.
We hope to one day see 1,000 students graduate from these institutions through the Skills For Life partnership with UBL.
We also paid a visit to some of the farmers that grow our barley and listened to how they are managing with some of the modern equipment we have donated to increase their productivity. All this is done to make the region of Kigezi better.
Overall, it was a beautiful experience and we came out of it with a stronger zeal to contribute to a thriving Kigezi region in the long term.
