Ugandan scientists demand govt intervention in co-op industrial enterprises
KAMPALA-Many Ugandans still believe in the power of cooperatives; that they can create positive change in the plight of the country’s dominant, yet largely-unemployed youth population. A mini-impromptu online survey conducted among some category of Ugandans found that they think Uganda needs to prioritize funding for small-scale industrial production cooperative enterprises, to cause transformation in majority and most-energetic citizens.
Deborah Wendiro, a scientist specialized in industrial research and value-addition, says Government should prioritize a carefully-studied, efficiently-managed cooperatives-anchored on small-scale agricultural commodity enterprises, to absorb both skilled and semi-skilled youth.
Wendiro, Chair of Ugandan Women in Agricultural Research and Development (UGAWARD), proposes that the country first needs to implement an innovation systems approach to job-creation and enterprise-development. Such a system, she argues, shall solicit and look out for innovations that translate into small-scale productive enterprises. “My argument is that we need an innovation systems approach. Cooperatives actually are purveyors [who attract and promote innovative ideas]. [They’d] bridge gaps in the system, that’s why they succeed, when well-planned out, especially within a defined system,” she adds.
Deborah, a former senior scientist based at the State-run Uganda Industrial Research Institute (UIRI), has for nearly 30 years demonstrated value-addition to a diversity of natural resources and incubated many innovative industrial concepts. There’s, however, little uptake or scale up by foreign investors/industrialists of most innovations, yet such innovations would translate into industries to employ the bulk of youth from the rapidly-expanding urban areas! Youth unemployment is a growing and critical policy challenge in many Sub-Saharan African states, including Uganda. And vibrant cooperatives-based enterprises could help out, believe most of the respondents in the recent survey.
According to the World Bank and Ugandan Ministry for Gender, Labour and Social Development (MoGLSD), more than 75% of Uganda’s population is below the age of 30, with the country having one of the highest youth unemployment rates at 13.3%—the number of youth actively looking for a job as a percentage of the labor force—in Sub-Saharan Africa. ”The youth bulge and high levels of unemployment call for urgent action and innovative solutions. The MGLSD with the World Bank, commissioned consultations with youth in local communities. The purpose was to collect the views of young people, ……. on youth unemployment, to inform job and employment policies and programs,” states Nasikiliza, a World Bank-based youth bloggers’ platform https://blogs.worldbank.org/nasikiliza/we want to be heard’: The voices of Uganda’s young people on youth unemployment (worldbank.org)
Uganda has one of the youngest and most rapidly growing populations in the world and preparing them for productive jobs is a social and political challenge for the Government. About 53% of Uganda’s population is younger than 15, well above Sub-Saharan Africa’s average of 43.2%. About 500,000 people are expected to enter the labor market every year and most analysts forecast this will grow even bigger in the current decade. Today 64% of the unemployed youth are aged 24 and under.
Deborah Wendiro, who today mentors young female scientists via UGAWARD [a chapter of an African female scientists’ mentorship organization], says industry in our country [and other investments that have potential to impact widely], are actually facing an unresponsive innovation systems. Critical sectors of the system are instead opposed to development…. Cooperatives are a political force!….. Industrial growth in any sector requires political organization, because politics determines where resources are allocated, she contends.
Wendiro’s counterpart in the agricultural research sector, Dr. Andrew Kiggundu, recalls that pre-independence Uganda was more developed than South Korea due to marshaling high production and manufacturing especially cotton [spearheaded by cooperatives]. “That is what I expected Operation Wealth Creation (OWC) was going to do. Instead of [Government] offering huge tax holidays and waivers to investors; we should agree production is not there…. and that’s what OWC should prioritize to create,” Kiggundu opines.
He, however, asserts that commodity cooperatives are feared in Africa [by governments] because they are strong political forces. But Kiggundu opposes any Government funding to co-operatives. “If a cooperative is profitably making money why then would government fund it? Government funded co-ops were havens of corruption.” He, however, cites absence of government in the agro-production industrial sector as a flaw. Yet it could make a great difference if it got directly involved, than funding fake entrepreneurs.
“I have not seen Government ventures that are processing agricultural products. From Irish potato in Kabale, tomato in Luwero, mango in Gulu, pineapple in Masaka, banana in Kawempe, the stories are endless. They are all private investments. The problem is that the Government does not have data on agricultural production to guide it. Kiggundu agrees with Deborah: “The solution is for Government to help build a system-wide approach like out-grower schemes. The only Government agro-commodity project I know of is the banana-flour [through the State-run Presidential Initiative for Banana Industrialization (PIBID)].”
In analyzing factors that influence the functionality or dysfunctionality of industry-based cooperative enterprises, Deborah argues that there are both internal and external. “My argument is that causes of failure may be external, but also [internally] organizational factors, nature of enterprises. Either we don’t have skilled managers or political patronage consumes them because they don’t serve their interests,” she opined. We’re not ready to operate large scale enterprises within existing social, economic and political milieu. There are many small scale enterprises that have existed for long. “How? Why?” Deborah asks.
Many Ugandans establish multiple enterprises producing a variety of even unrelated products, she observed. “Why? Is it possible to manage the system such that their collective output can satisfy demand? So that the products act as brands?” She sees this phenomenon in the bushera [sorghum/millet porridge], herbal remedies, bread etc. For this matter, the regulatory agencies would develop a system of support. A case in point is the yoba yogurt where the promoters of the inoculum even printed labels and developed polythene satchets to distribute to the manufacturers. Even a micro-enterprise with 20 liters of milk, would make high quality yogurt and package it very attractively!
One woman said she now doesn’t have to walk several kilometers looking for a market for her milk. The very locale where there was no market for milk now has market for the yoghurt. Why? The neighbors who couldn’t afford to buy a liter or 1/4 can buy the 1/4 or 300mls of ready-to-drink yoghurt. The liter of milk requires more investment in firewood etc, yet the packet is consumed by the person (her child) immediately.”
Dr. Kiggundu on the other hand, argues that most industrialists prefer to import concentrates, dilute and pack them, and call it manufacturing. “I arrived from Kenya yesterday [April 14] same thing was also going on. Government officials [from Africa], need to go to Bangladesh and borrow a leaf on how to marshal farmers to produce and form commodity production cooperatives.
He underlines the role cooperatives would play, in Government ventures that don’t work. “Yes there are private sector investors who put money in fake investment and need support. Both ways we need to do something about it,” contends the senior agricultural scientist who until recently was based at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Centre (DDPSC), in Missouri, USA. The South Africa-trained scientist is also a consultant specialized in Agro-ICT, Ag-Biotechnology, Project Management and Stewardship.
On tax holidays Uganda Government offers to large-scale enterprises, Kiggundu argues that they’re meant to attract foreign investors to a landlocked economy, in competition with Kenya and Tanzania. “Without tax-holidays, how else would we attract them—with the expensive transport, electricity and a poorly-skilled labourforce?” asks Dr. Kiggundu.
He hailed Buganda Kingdom’s Central Broadcasting Service (CBS) radio SACCO POWESA as a robust and firmly-growing small-scale cooperatives, currently running an annual public exhibition of members’ [POWESA] products and services at Lubiri, Mengo. “The organizers are happily making money. The next stage is to help members start to explore wider markets. In DRC for example, you can sell almost anything. POWESA should organize exhibitions in eastern DRC, Rwanda and Northern Tanzania.”
On building a strong and sustainable indigenous industrial and services base, Dr. Kiggundu recommends characterization of successful enterprises in our midst? Such as Coca Cola, Pepsi, MTN, Fortune Buto, Nile Breweries, Safe Boda, Kakira Sugar, Maganjo Grainmillers. “They’re all making millions; can we learn from them?” he asks passionately. Food fortification is an area production cooperative enterprises would take root and conduct big business.
Sometime ago, Dr. Kiggundu recalls, Government sought for some support and got it under GAIN Project where [food-processing] firms were helped to improve micro-nutrients in their products. “My suggestion was that we develop a dispensing tool that would have been widely distributed and used to dispense the additives into millet and maize flour at Miller level in small scale hammer mills (I argued that there is no trading centre where there is no hammer mill). That way the target group would benefit since those who are suffering micronutrient deficiency don’t buy Maganjo products but products from hammer mills! To cut a long story short Maganjo was chosen and hence benefited from marketing promotion by Government and early improvement of their production process plus free consultancy from highly-skilled people (like me). So many monied people who are health conscious buy Maganjo products. Are you surprised? But do majority of Ugandans truly need the micronutrients in food?
According to the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), 1 in 3 people worldwide are malnourished. The GAIN project under the UN’s WHO, has a presence in 20 countries, operating around nine themes – all looking at how food systems can improve diets for the most vulnerable.
Fortified foods are major contributors to apparent intakes of Vitamin A and Iodine, but not Iron, in diets of women of reproductive age in 4 African countries, Uganda | Home (gainhealth.org)
Food fortification is implemented to increase intakes of specific nutrients in the diet, but contributions of fortified foods to nutrient intakes are rarely quantified.
Report by Peter Wamboga Mugirya
https://thecooperator.news/cooperatives-in-the-cotton-industry-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/
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