Creating meaningful and productive employment for young people in Uganda is extremely important. In Uganda, every year there are 300,000 new entrants to the job market. But the formal sector can create as many jobs in only five years, meaning that in five years about 1 million Ugandan youths end up outside the formal employment sector, either in the informal sector or jobless. And this emphasizes the criticality of creating good and productive jobs for the youth, particular at this time when we have to face the consequences of COVID-19. Our own experiences as UNCDF and our own research shows that small and medium enterprises (and these are the majority of businesses in Uganda) experience a number of issues when it comes to access to finance in particular. So, I would like to call on other partners within the financial sector, outside the financial sector but working with the private sector in general to join this initiative and to help the Ugandan youth and Uganda as a whole to overcome the consequences of COVID-19 and to rebuild better.
