Make Youth Key Priority or Forget Development

© Ambrose Kibuuka 2009

 

The writer is a Human Development Consultant and Coordinator of the Centre for Youth Empowerment and Employment Strategies at

Human Capital Development Consult (HCDC) where is also the CEO

 He is author of two books, After University, What Next?(2003, 2008) and Remaking the Youth (2000)

 akibuuka@hcdc.ug Website: www.hcdc.ug

 

Overview

In the New Vision of July 10, 2008 Arthur Baguma wrote a pertinent article, “Population growth: can Uganda meet the challenge?”  My answer in this article is a yes. But this can only hold if we are prepared to radically change our current development paradigm as well as the economic and social systems it has generated. The key lies in positioning a comprehensive youth agenda at the centre of the country’s development strategy. Globalization and the knowledge economy represent a golden opportunity for countries like Uganda to exit the poverty entrapment within a short time and with incredible ease. For various reasons the young generation holds the key to this golden opportunity. But they also represent a huge security risk if not well prepared and provided the platform to effectively play that role.

 

Youth and the Numbers Game

The signal is clear and the message couldn’t be clearer. Mass poverty, a youth laden fast growing population, an escalating drug “industry” and an education system that falls short of preparing young people for real life challenges, is certainly a perfect recipe for disaster. Uganda’s population is now about 30.9 million people. Young people below the age 14 constitute a whole 48% of the total population. This added to 3.1% of the population who are above 65 years and above, makes a catastrophic 105 dependence ratio in a setting where the population is growing faster than the carrying capacity of the economy. Official figures show that 400,000 people join the labour market every year in Uganda. Of these, 20,000 come from universities alone. However, a miserable 8,120 new jobs are created per year. Underemployment stands at a staggering 65%, much of which is actually disguised unemployment. At the current growth rate of 3.6% per annum, Uganda's population is slated to hit 130 million in 2050. If this is not matched with rapid employment creation and supported by a labour force that is well prepared to compete for global employment opportunities, the country's demographic trend will precipitate a social and economic liability instead of functioning as a demographic bonus for sustained development. In the said article, Arthur Baguma analyzed that if this trend continues, in 2050 Uganda will have about 1,950,000 new job seekers every year, with only 40,600 jobs created per annum. Moreover, this excludes the influx of foreign job seekers.

 

The 2005/6 National Household Survey indicated that young people constitute more than 50% of the country’s work force, which stood at 10.9 million people. In this equation, the youth (18-30 years old) accounted for 40.8% of the entire labour force while 32.3% of the labour force is in the age bracket of 15-24 years. Though the 2007 Report on the Labour Market Conditions in Uganda holds that 80% of Uganda’s labour force is employed, I think it is important for us to know the definition of “employment” or “unemployment” used by the statisticians in order to put things in proper perspective. The standard definition measures employment by “the portion of the workforce who work for an hour or more a week for pay or profit, or who work unpaid in a family business or farm”. Imagine! How much can an average person earn by working one hour a week in Uganda? Good enough though, Uganda Bureau of Statistics hastens to observe that, “The ‘standard’ unemployment rate does not provide a full picture of the supply and demand balance of the labour market. It does not adequately reflect the degree of inefficiency that prevails in the labour market.” In other words, the problem could be worse than what these figures say. It is also important to note that of those who are considered unemployed, 51% are youth. And interesting still, the youth constitute 95% of persons with education level above secondary school but unemployed.

 

Change or Perish

Albert Einstein once argued, “The highest degree of madness is to continue doing the same thing in the same way and expect to get different results”. Putting the youth at the center of Uganda’s development strategy [in practice, not merely on paper or sloganeering] is an imperative we must respect if we are to successfully avert with the impending crisis. We need to question the conventional wisdom that has traditionally informed the country’s development paradigm and adopt new (and most likely, radical) paradigms and approaches. Looked at from either side of this population debate, both the pessimists and optimists are right. The important thing that will determine the kind of results we get is how we respond. Jack Canfield’s equation is always at work: Event + Response = Outcome. We are not a helpless lot. The future we will create is entirely dependant on the nature of our response today. From the pessimistic side, the population scare is an emergency that cannot be dealt with in a business-as-usual mode. On the other hand, if we look at it through the optimists’ lenses, it represents a special opportunity that can only be fully tapped through special, and outside-the box strategies. So either way, radical reforms with a preferential option for the youth is a must. And this is not just a matter of social justice (sympathetic inclusion). Perhaps more importantly, it is a matter of economic prudence and security strategy.

 

 

A Country of Paradoxes: Poverty Amidst Plenty

Today over 7 million Ugandans live in chronic poverty. But let’s consider this. In 1908 Sir Winston Churchill wrote about his tour of Africa in his book, My African Journey. Clearly, the book was addressed to the British audience. He summarized his key message (he called it “counsel”) in three words, “Concentrate Upon Uganda”. He went ahead to advise the British, “it ought, in the course of time, to become the most prosperous of all our East & Central African possessions, and perhaps the financial driving wheel of all this part of the world”. Churchill was particularly specific on the economic prospects of Uganda, “Nowhere else in Africa will a little money go so far. Nowhere else will the results be more brilliant, more substantial or more rapidly realized”.

 

Indeed the paradox of poverty amidst plenty is one of the most perplexing puzzles about Uganda. In the first place, one does not have to take the adventures of Churchill to know that we are not among the countries that should be suffering under abject poverty. And just like that, our story makes true the words of the philosopher Seneca who once observed, “A man who suffers before it’s necessary, suffers more than necessary”. It is now 100 years down the road and Churchill’s vision is still a mirage to Ugandans! Economic historians know too well that the world’s greatest economies were built by optimizing the productivity of their youth segments. Any society gifted with an idle youth force can only be mired in poverty by its own planning deficiencies. Uganda, like most countries in Africa, suffers unnecessary poverty due to the counter-productive systems and institutions that render the biggest portion of its population - young people - dependants instead of being the central productive force.

 

Youth and the Knowledge Economy

In the 21st Century economic dictates have tremendously changed. Only countries that recognize these new dictates and play by them will succeed at achieving sustainable development. Like many other African countries with a high population growth rate, Uganda particularly faces the challenge of converting the population boom into a demographic bonus instead of a disaster.

 

In the 21st century knowledge has taken over as the greatest factor of production, rendering to a secondary position the traditional factors of production [land, labor and ‘capital’]. Economic structures and systems are now under a rapid continuous change, in consonance with the rapid turnover of knowledge. Economies that do well in this new global order are those that will succeed at creating a knowledge-based economy advantage. It empowers virtually anyone to participate in the mainstream global economy even if they do not have significant access to land, labor and ‘capital’.  In this new economic order, young people are taking the mantle, building multimillion businesses across borders and creating millions of jobs, virtually overnight. India, Thailand, Singapore, USA, Hong Kong and China are clear examples. Intrinsically, young people in Uganda have all it takes to lead the way. And this is the hope for Uganda to escape the impending demographic trap and the rage of absolute poverty. All we have to do is ensure that at the earliest age possible, the youth are empowered through supportive frameworks to access and convert the ever-changing streams of knowledge into productive engagements that meet local needs and global markets. In one decade we can be sure to watch the Ugandan miracle unfold.

 

This has been dubbed the young people’s century. Some people have branded them the “dot.com generation”. Breakthroughs in information technology have broken the traditional tie between knowledge, wealth, and one’s age. Today what counts most is “connectivity” not longevity – the opportunities to access information rather than one’s age. For the moment there seems to be only one way out for Uganda - find a way of putting the youth at the centre of national development strategy. To me this is the most viable way of realizing Professor Jeffrey Sachs’ ideal of “making poverty history”. If well facilitated, the youth, by virtue of their characteristics: - open to rapid change, adventurous, energetic, largely ICT compliant (or high potential to quickly adapt), cultural flexibility, ambitious, imaginative, easily adaptive to technology - seem to be the only segment of the population who can best take advantage of the new global economy and convert Uganda’s idle resources into sustainable wealth in a short time. But to achieve this we have to engage radical shifts, first of all in our thinking, then in our economic and social systems, to make them youth-responsive.

 

Are We Doing Educational Investment or Mere Educational Spending?

The World Bank, in its World Development Report 2007, rightly identified the justification for reviewing national development strategies in view of the role of the youth. Titled “Development and the Next Generation”, the report is a revelation that it is so easy to get caught up doing many good things effectively without pausing to reflect whether you are doing the right things the right way. For “good” is not the same as “right”.

 

In the overview of the report, the World Bank noted, “Most policy makers know that young people will greatly influence the future of their nations. Trying to help they face dilemmas. When primary school completion has gone up so dramatically…why does illiteracy seem so persistent? Why do large numbers of university graduates go jobless for months or even years, while businesses complain of the lack of skilled workers…?” This question is a humbling point for reflection, especially that it follows a spirited global study by an institution reputed for research. Uganda cannot afford to take this report lightly.  

 

In 1999 CIA commissioned a global survey, which culminated into a non-classified report, Global Trends 2015 (GT 2015). In that report they observed that most of Sub-Saharan Africa will miss out on the opportunities that the global economy has to offer on two main grounds: First, poor governance, and second, because of disease, which will imply spending scarce resources on curative medicine. One key aspect of governance is the capacity to plan strategically as well as providing proper sense of direction. In the absence of this, it is easy to waste resources on mixed-up priorities, punctuated by mistaking liabilities for assets and vice versa. I suspect Uganda could be caught-up in the same mire. I hope the National Planning Authority can be respected and facilitated to get us out of here.

 

Like Uganda, if many countries in Africa are lagging behind, it is not because they have not spent enough on education. The critical question is how much of that expenditure is an investment in the true sense of the word? Education has since independence been a boom industry in Uganda. At the current 24%, it continues to dominate the national budget. But does it necessarily translate into a commensurate measure of youth empowerment? Conventional wisdom in development planning has always advised us to keep increasing “investment in education and training to increase employment opportunities for the youth.” Unfortunately though, in the process, two different concepts: educational investment and educational spending seem to be mixed up, and most times perceived and used interchangeably. Truth is, not every spending is an investment. Hence, to demonstrate how serious we are with “investing in young people” we quote how much we spend on the education sector as a percentage of the national budget. Where we miss the mark however, is to focus our eyes on the outputs rather than the outcomes and impact. For it is the latter that enable you to tell whether you made an investment or not. I have developed a lot of respect for the down town traders for their acumen at this game. That is why they easily grow from small businesses to big business networks. A much schooled business person focuses on the quality of furniture and TV set in his restaurant, while a down town trader keeps the eye on the cash flow. If the business of the former does not close soon, most likely it is because it is sustained by his salary from the formal job as a social show-case, not as a profitable business.

 

If the development industry has taught me anything, it is the fact that outputs, however accurate and plausible, do not automatically translate into the desired impact. Uganda may have unrivaled school enrollment rates, completion rates, number of classrooms built, number of universities, even revenues generated. But a critical question remains, how much of this is true investment and how much is mere expenditure. A good investment should be able to deliver optimum returns for each unit input. A good educational investment should be able to point at the final behavioral impact in terms of the self-image of the school leavers, how many young people are able to create jobs for themselves and others, how many seek and readily acquire productive employment locally and globally, how many contribute to social innovations, engage in critical decision making and leadership, and champion community development. The statistics we often quote are just a portion of the whole picture; not the whole picture.

 

Uganda, with the support of the international community, is working so hard to combat poverty through implementing the PEAP (national development framework) as a means of realizing the MDGs. But we need to observe that it takes more than good intentions to conquer poverty. It takes spot-on strategies. PEAP and the MDGs are just only a statement of good intentions. Sustainable success in our national aspirations will have to be preceded by a shift from just working hard to working smart. This implies re-thinking the country’s development strategies by putting young people at the centre, in a more business-like manner. Currently, the country seems to be merely spending on young people rather than investing in young people. Whereas the former is done in the spirit of social justice and political correctness (access to education as a human right), the latter is about economic prudence – making sure that every shilling spent yields optimum benefits. Concentrating on the former is about working hard, while the latter requires working smart.

 

 

 

 

 

Reengineering Economic and Social Systems for the Youth  

 

If we agree that the youth are our wining card in this game, then we ought to treat them as such. We have to quit just working hard and start working smart around the youth issue. In the said 2007 WDR, the World Bank implored countries to pursue strategies that can empower young people in three main aspects: broadening opportunities; developing capabilities to make and execute the most optimal choices, and ensuring second chances in face of bad past choices. Ultimately, we need to craft a National Youth Employment Strategy for Uganda, which I propose will need to focus on the following action points:

 

1. Implement radical educational reforms. Economies that will reap big in the 21st century knowledge-based economy have to depend on three aspects of their people: (a) Talent; (b) creative application of Knowledge and Skills; and (c) an adventurous mindset galvanized by an entrepreneurial spirit that seeks to maximize the beauty of everything in any environment accessible to them.

 

Unfortunately, these three ingredients are conspicuously lacking in Uganda’s educational processes. Parents and educationists exhibit a scandalous reductionism that equates quality education to examination grades. The media aggravates this scandal by orchestrating the same misleading mindset, of course for its own commercial interests. Every year, when UNEB releases exam results for candidate classes, you never get to read about the most creative students in the country, the best student leaders, the most innovative science student, or the most entrepreneurial student. This way, schools are discouraged from offering all-round and life-empowering education that would groom job creators and peak performing professionals. The system forces them to concentrate on merely schooling the students to excel in examination grades. To say the least, the outcomes of this dehumanizing approach will make it absolutely impossible for Uganda to balance the demography – development equation.

 

As many commentators have articulated, we are in a situation of demographic emergency, and conventional gradualism won’t help us. A calculated radical educational reform is what we need to balance the equation. As is the case with emergences, we don’t have much time at our hand to indulge in intellectual romanticism. We just have to be pragmatic, and this will mean among other things:

(a) Reorienting teachers so they can change from just teaching people to pass exams to helping each learner towards an empowering self-awareness, personal development, and developing the ability to apply the knowledge and skills learnt in class to exploit the resourcefulness of their environment.  We have to radically switch to teaching and learning practices biased on developing individual talent, creativity, and independent thinking. The problem is not necessarily the curriculum as many people think; much of the problem has to do with teaching and learning methods. In turn, these are influenced by the prevailing philosophy of education, which we must also change. And this is where the reorientation of teachers and parents needs to focus. Education for what? For examination grades or for real life?

 

(b) Move away from judging students by a few hours’ exam and adopt a comprehensive assessment of their learning achievements. This might necessitate a quick shift in the focus of the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB). I think the concept (not the institution) of UNEB is one of the biggest liabilities to this country. It is the one big reason why schools know the right thing to do but they fear to do it. Because the institution that is supposed to judge whether they are performing well or not, has the wrong yardstick. So they choose to follow the misleading boss because he is the one who pays the piper. If the exam is the tail and the education system is the dog, Professor Senteza Kajubi has eloquently argued that in Uganda’s case, we are witnessing the tail wagging the dog. Administering exams is not the same thing as assessing the student’s learning achievements. We need to move away from concentrating on the former and find creative ways of resorting to the latter. This could for example mean a radical renaming of the National Examinations Board to Board for Assessing Learning Achievements. This title suggests the concept that you have to find ways of assessing the students’ key learning achievements, not excluding those learnt outside the set syllabus or even the classroom. Some of these even count most in real life functionality. For education is not only what happens in the classroom – it is the entirety of life’s experience. If we make this count, we shall succeed at making every young person count. The reason we have “failures” now is because the system itself is a failure. If we correct the system we shall not have failures; we shall only have young people who are useful in different ways. We need to ponder, if exams are the answer, then what is the question?

 

(c) Everything taught should be given a built-in entrepreneurial interpretation. If there is any land of opportunity on the African continent that I know of, it is Uganda. Largely, we are just limited by socialization systems, especially the schools, which do not help us to develop the capacity to recognize and seize opportunities. As a matter of fact, they unknowingly concentrate on killing that potential. There is no subject without an entrepreneurial dimension (social entrepreneurship or commercial). Failure to understand this simple truism is why some people, unfortunately including teachers, think that some subjects are useless. I propose that instead of teaching entrepreneurship as a separate examinable subject, we are better off training teachers on how to give everything they teach an entrepreneurial interpretation. That way, young people will find it easy to apply in real life whatever knowledge and skills they learn. Moreover, it will provide motivation for self-education since students will have developed the interest as a result of seeing value in the subject. You don’t have to force people to do sciences; you just have to inspire them to get fascinated and they will definitely go for it. Dr. Carter Woodson rightly observed that “if you determine what a man shall think, you do not have to concern yourself with what he will do” You can coerce people’s actions but you can’t coerce their will. Ironically, even vocational institutions, which are assumed to prepare job creators, are in practice passing out job seekers. They may have the technical skills (hard skills), but they conspicuously lack the soft skills needed for job creation.

 

Uganda can longer afford the luxury of having young people living up 21 years, leaving school and failing to find something productive to do because of lack of ability to apply knowledge and skills. What was the purpose of the educational investment in the first place?  A central aspect of entrepreneurial interpretation of subjects is the idea of teaching people to learn how to learn. It is based on the understanding that you cannot teach someone everything they need to learn about any subject. So the best thing you can do for them is to teach them to learn how to learn so they can learn on their own whenever there is need to learn a new dimension. It is a proven fact that formal education can get one a job; but it is through self-education that people build prosperous careers. If we can improve in this area, especially at post-secondary level, particularly in universities, we will also be able to cut on staff costs and the time required to complete some courses. I know for example, from my experience of teaching and consulting in universities that many of the humanities courses can be taught in far more effective ways within two years instead of the current three years. In many faculties within our universities, there are too many subjects (papers) repeated under different names. Lecturers are hired to teach things that students can even learn better on their own if introduced to the discipline and practice of self-education. This means there is still room to achieve better results, in less time and at less cost. Moreover, lecturers should not be scared of loss of jobs. If they are trained on how to use this framework, it teaches them to - become more effective; save more time to advance their careers through research and consultancy (which in turn enriches their delivery); and of course, make a lot more money. It’s a win/win thing.

 

(d) Consolidate and mainstream deep career guidance and mentoring. Traversing the school system in this country since 1998 as a career mentoring consultant, I have been appalled by the too many unanswered questions that students harbor throughout their schooling. It is this that prompted me to write the book After University, What Next? in 2003. Questions that ought to have been answered in Senior One remain unanswered until one leaves university. Most of them remain unanswered all through life. A lot of what goes for career guidance in schools is actually reductionistic combination guidance. And even then, in many ways it is misguidance due to the fact that it is based on out-fashioned opinions rather than being evidence-based. Some, if not most schools, have relegated the function to the now mandatory careers day once in a year. On a lighter note, in all the workshops I have conducted for teachers over the years, there is always a humble admission by many teachers that they themselves are in dire need of career guidance, perhaps more than the students they guide. Some of them feel misplaced in the teaching profession but do not know what to do about it. Ironically, even some of those specially trained as careers teachers are not immune to this enigma. As a result, students study and specialize in things that are not aligned to their personal aspirations, talents and dispositions. As I have usually argued, there are no bad courses; there are only course misfits. This is how we end up with educational spending instead of educational investment. The career guidance function should be given a lot more attention both at the ministry and school levels. Perhaps the National Council for Higher Education can help at post-secondary level.

 

As a matter of emergency, these reform imperatives cannot wait for intellectual romanticism. If there is will, we can embark on them the way we did with UPE and USE. Let us avoid the paralysis by analysis fever.

 

(2) Customize Economic Institutions and Systems for the Youth

It is ironical that the mainstream of Uganda’s economic system alienates the biggest, most energetic and most resourceful segment of the population – the youth. Over thirty years ago, when 2006 Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus tried to convince commercial banks to extend financial services to ‘poor’ women in Bangladesh they just laughed at him. In the traditional mindset of commercial bankers, poor women were “un-bankable” and not credit worthy. Why? Simply because they were poor! Yunus, perplexed whether being poor automatically meant not being credit worth, asked the bankers to provide evidence to back up their argument but they were adamant with their opinionated bias. Anyhow, as it turned out, Yunus proved that poor women too were credit worthy and their repayment rate was even higher than that of the rich who the commercial banks trusted more. Today, the rest is history. The Grameen Bank that Yunus began as a small women’s fund in Jobra village has helped to catalyze the microfinance industry worldwide. His model was even borrowed by USA. All that was needed is financial services tailored to the peculiarities of these women. Grameen is now a multibillion global conglomerate built on the whims of the so-called un-bankable women.

 

Similar to the “un-bankable” women of Banglash, most youth in Uganda, have had no business history of course. Most of them don’t even have a bank account or any tradable collateral by the time they leave school. But I have met quite a number of them who possess unlimited volumes of the most important factor of production in the 21st Century – well developed globally tradable concepts waiting to rot on paper and in their brains. Chances are very high they will never live to implement those concepts because of systemic limitations. Frustration soon pushes them into mediocre employment for basic survival. These would-be job creators end up getting caught in the survival game for the whole of their working life. Yet, all they needed is a two-month practical business mentoring programme to sharpen the practicality of their concepts, a little financial push on commercial terms tailored to their peculiar needs, and some institution to run to for continuous business support services appropriate to their circumstances. To make matters worse, a score of the frustrated brilliant young people will tell you one common experience; their concepts have been shamelessly stolen by a highly placed official somewhere, and in most cases, wrongly implemented – talk about kiwani society!

 

I am aware of the various initiatives that have been established to address youth entrepreneurship. But I am also aware of their limitations. Most of them are interventions by tokenism. What we need are sustainable institutions open and accessible to all who are eligible. Business plan competitions as we have witnessed before, are not necessarily the answer. How can we rely on an initiative that gets thousands of applicants and ends up financing only 10 contestants? Whereas these are good in their own right, they cannot be the solution we are looking for. The reason the rest of the contestants do not get the money is not because their business plans are not viable. It is because you have a win/lose game where a handful of winners take it all and the majority are sent back home. We need to have institutional frameworks where every viable plan counts and gets due attention. We need creative use of the money by collaborating with financial institutions. Instead of giving 150 million shillings to five contestants you can use the same amount of money to guarantee over 50 projects to get financed by commercial financial institutions or development banks on appropriate terms. But this cannot succeed unless it is augmented by complementary institutions that offer on-going business mentoring and supervision to ensure the success of young people’s enterprises. What is funny and annoying in this country is the fact that it is many times easier to get information about an American or European institution without having to travel there than an institution in Uganda, especially public institutions. You need to know somebody in order to get information. By virtue of their limited exposure, the social networks of youth are limited. They do not know many people in institutions. So they need institutions that they can go to and access the information and support they need without having to know anyone there.

 

(3) Entrepreneurship Mentoring and Work Orientation

Each year Uganda passes out over …youth as Senior Six leavers. These stay on long vacation for 8 full months, majority of them seated at home doing nothing  but consuming, and a couple of them brewing trouble for themselves and the community. How can a needy country like ours afford the luxury of maintaining such a huge portion of the population in a non-productive and parasitic state for that long?

 

The entrepreneurship guru, Mark Twain rightly observed, “You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus”. We have too many unexploited resources in Uganda. But the young people have not been prepared to recognize and tap that resourcefulness. Otherwise, how on earth can we justify the irony of armies of job seekers in the midst of a lot of undone jobs? I am not saying that everyone can and should be a job creator; we have different dispositions and we must respect that. But we must ensure that those who have what it takes to create jobs are deliberately mentored and supported to do so at the earliest stage possible.

 

Senior Six vacation is a good time to mentor young people in practical entrepreneurship. This will enable us to groom a generation of social entrepreneurs and commercial entrepreneurs who we can rely on to transform our society. Through entrepreneurship mentoring camps, community service placement programmes in both rural and urban areas, as well as placements as interns and volunteers in corporations, these youth can learn a lot about development in practice. By the time they go for post-secondary studies some of them will already be engaged in productive employment. Hence, reducing the dependence burden. This orientation to the world of work will also enhance their Immediate Employability Value at the time of graduating. At the Centre for Youth Empowerment and Employment Strategies we have piloted this with plausible results.

 

(4) Special Initiatives for Specially Gifted Youth

The Philosopher Seneca remarked, “The greatest tragedy of a person’s  life is not death; it is what dies in the inside of him while he  lives”. By Seneca’s measure, Uganda is certainly a storehouse of tragedies. If there is a society that I know where special talent seems not to count at all, it is Uganda my country. But we ought to remind ourselves that all societies through the ages have relied on a few specially gifted individuals to make the critical breakthroughs in various fields. Uganda will not be an exception. If others have attained this by accident, Uganda can learn from their experience and accelerate the process by establishing a special initiative to deliberately scout for and promote the various geniuses in our midst. In many cases, the most disastrous social deviants are actually frustrated geniuses. I imagine what Kony could have been! You must be a genius to sustain such a horrible thing for twenty years in the midst of all the 21st century modern war technology available to a powerful government with an experienced army! I read somewhere that Hitler wanted to be a painter but did not get support from his father in that direction. His father wanted him to be a lawyer. To be optimally productive, specially gifted people need special attention. They have no time to waste in processes of struggling for resources in order to realize their idea. They want to be consumed by the creations they intend to bring to reality. Someone else (institutions) must be there to take care of the logistics.

 

I am not just talking about scholarships here. I am also talking about such things like extended exposure, intensive mentoring, and logistical facilitation. For example I was so disturbed when in 2005 the Weekly Observer featured an article about a secondary school boy at Kitante Hill School who had invented a machine that can plait women’s hair in just three hours but he could not get adequate support from the relevant government institutions. He even got invitations to exhibitions in Japan and German but could not get the support to facilitate him to go. Are we waiting for Japanese to take him and the next thing we will see is hair plaiting machines “made in Japan” flooding the Ugandan market? Likewise, in 2003 I met a secondary school Physics teacher who had mentored two boys, both of them Senior Two drop-outs, and they had made a power generator based on the steam engine principle. They had also made a water pump based on the same principle. Everything was mathematically calculated from the diameter of the water tank to the resistance of wires used in the step up transformer which they had locally made too. Their workshop was a bent grass-thatched house, deep in Mpoma village in Mukono. It was the size of an average rural homestead kitchen. With their generator, you needed seven liters of water and a handful of firewood to produce electricity for four hours. They had tried to contact various offices in the relevant departments to know avail. According to the teacher, the best they got was a visit by the CID police officer from Mukono Police Post on suspicion that their project was a security threat. (Well, at least the police did their job).

 

Each school I have been to in this country (and I have been to schools in all regions of this country), I have met at least one specially-gifted student. What happens to their special talents? We have to develop initiatives with clear methods for specifically identifying such people and giving them the necessary support. We need these talents to generate innovative solutions to our dilemmas and litany of stubborn problems and challenges.

 

At the end of the day I think we need a more facilitated, better recognised and amplified Ministry of Children and Youth to seriously ensure that all our development strategies are youth-informed and evidence-based. This calls for interventions based on action research. Planning by speculation won’t take us far. Otherwise we should long have realized that we are missing a key point by unknowingly sidelining the young generation.