President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has said that he will meet with youth leaders to discuss funding for their innovations. The President was officiating at the 4th Youth Business Forum and Expo held at Kololo Ceremonial Grounds under the theme: “Building Sustainable Strategic Partnerships and Policy Frameworks for Supporting Youth Innovation and Startups.”
“I’m glad that you have now woken up and you are not going to be like your ancestors who were asleep and that is what the National Resistance Movement (NRM) has been trying to do right from the time of the bush; to wake our people up. We said you people you can do it. “This is the way to go, it is not always politics oyee.. No, let us solve problems especially problems of poverty and lack of jobs,” Museveni told an attentive youthful audience in yet another inspiring speech .
“The moment you wake up and understand the two; understanding yourself and your natural surroundings and understanding society, then now you need to focus on economics. What determines economics? Because what you do should be profitable in order to be sustainable,” he stressed.
“With economics, you should start with human needs like food growing, processing and storage. You cannot go wrong there If you are anywhere in that chain. The second human need is clothing. The next one is shelter. I’m happy the young people have woken up, they are making construction materials. Another need is health. This is a huge area, we call it pathogenic economy starting with vaccines, disinfectants, among others.
It’s a huge business. Then you come to mobility. This is an important human need. People in the past used to walk on foot and now they are moving around in vehicles. Then there’s security. When Africa lagged behind on gunpowder, that was our biggest mistake. We are not going to lag behind again, we are now making our own weapons and we shall continue improving.”
“We had to work from 1980 at the Lagos Conference. This had been 20 years since independence; our leaders woke up and said if we don’t create one African market, we shall never get out of poverty because you can have a continent of a lot of natural resources but if it is badly organised economically and politically, it will never get out of poverty. We started with COMESA, the East African Community and now we are talking of the African common market,” the President disclosed.
“Look at Latin America, it has got more natural resources than the United States, but you watch on TV people from South America are walking on foot to go to the United States because of the misery in Latin America. Latin America is disorganised politically and economically.”
