Busoga youth agripreneurs in China for benchmarking exercise

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Whereas the majority of the youth despise farming thinking it is for the elderly and illiterates, Busoga kingdom youth minister Veronica Kagona is among the young entrepreneurs reaping from agriculture. Kagona set aside her degree certificate for mixed farming.

Besides growing a variety of vegetables and fruits like lettuce, spinach, cabbages and watermelon, the youth minister owns a banana plantation, two fishponds and a piggery all sitting on her seven-acre- Amelia agro farm at Kikubamutwe village on the outskirts of Njeru municipality in Buikwe district. Njeru municipality is a stone's throw away from Jinja city.

She operates a restaurant in the city, sourcing produce from her farm. Additionally, she supplies various hotels, restaurants, and local eateries around Jinja.

However, despite producing for sale, Kagona says her clientele base has remained low due to a lack of marketing skills.

It was because of her agricultural background that she was among the 10 individuals selected by the Busoga Consortium for Development (BCD) to travel to China and study modern agricultural practices geared at acquiring new technologies and skills to combat poverty through the Village Agricultural Model (VAM) in the region.

Veronica Kagona, the Busoga Kingdom youth minister who also owns a mixed farm in Njeru municipality said she lacks enough marketing skills for her produce. (Photo by Jackie Nambogga)

Comprising kingdom officials, BCD secretariat and young entrepreneurs, the delegation left for China on Saturday, November 2, 2024, to learn new innovation experiences and technologies at the China Agricultural University (CAU).

According to the BCD director general Anthony Mula, the team would be essential in applying the knowledge, technology and skills to implement the VAM programme.

The VAM programme, which is expected to officially kick off in January next year, was launched in August this year by Vice-President Jessica Alupo in Namayingo district.

It will be piloted in selected three villages of Mashaga, Namayombe and Busana in Mayuge, Namayingo and Kamuli districts, respectively.

To achieve this, Mula said they partnered with CAU and Tencent, the country’s main social media brand which is used as a marketing tool to promote agricultural produce.

Championing the skills

Mula said their flagged team was expected to understudy new experiences from China using agriculture as their catalyst for community transformation in Busoga.

He added that they expect the delegation to be their champions in implementing the skills and knowledge and be able to change people’s livelihoods.

“Busoga would see a new face of life in terms of transformation. As a consortium, we believe in this team and we are very hopeful that new hopes and times for Busoga have come,” he said.

In tandem with national goals

BCD came up with a 2020-2021-2030 Busoga Development Agenda (BDA) as its regional framework with key intervention policies and programmes to spur the social-economic transformation in the communities.

When it comes to unpacking the National Development Plan, Mula said Busoga was moving faster than other regions by localising it when they unveiled their first regional BDA in the country.

He said the BDA was in tandem with the national aspirations of the country with a main focus on leading social-economic transformation lined with those of the national programme which is the Parish Development Model (PDM).

He said VAM was among the key programmes being implemented under the BDA for the transformation of the 12 local governments in the region.

“We dream that transformation should be able to spread like fire while emerging from the VAM across the entire local governments,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Jinja city mayor, Alton Kasolo who flagged off the delegation at the Jinja Civil Service College, commended the approach which the BCD had taken in fighting poverty in the region.

“With VAM, the communities are mobilised and organised on selected enterprises to be undertaken and we have all been involved as local leaders, technocrats in local governments to actualise its intention,” he said.

Employ agricultural scientists

The mayor, who was also among the first lot of individual local leaders that went for a similar benchmark in China for a month, implored the Government to use its agricultural scientists to conduct research in poverty-stricken villages and come up with write-ups from communities for solutions.

“After appreciating challenges affecting their respective communities, China which was among the poor countries came up with CAU with technologies in value addition such as harvesting and packaging their maize without middlemen, this is how it was declared a developed nation in 2020,” he said.

With five years to 2030, Kasolo doubted if it would be possible for Uganda to attain a middle-income status as it had projected noting the need to spread its research centres across the country.

The team would be trained in promoting production using modern agricultural practices, value addition and how to brand products to enable them to be attractive and competitive and earn a receptive presence in the market, including, market access and penetration strategies among others.

Kagona was optimistic that she would get more skills to not only promote her enterprise but also support the VAM programme.

Samuel Mwesigwa said he was expecting to get more skills and knowledge in producing and packaging his animal feed project from maize.

Meanwhile, Johan Kayemba said: "We have seen people going for benchmarking but stop at talking about their experiences without documenting them, we shall do so for future guidance".

The delegation is expected to spend two weeks in China and continue with online studies for three months.

During their last month, a delegation from CAU and the Food and Agriculture Organisation would be joined by Uganda’s officials from the agriculture ministry to assess their performance and readiness to take their roles.