Private Sector Development

Recognizing that the private sector is the key and main driver of economic growth while contributing to inclusive and sustainable economic development, our approach to private sector development is three fold: Promoting skilling and entrepreneurship among young people especially women, working to improve the business environment in rural communities and urban centers where majority of the youth in Uganda live and partnering to structure value chains to boast investments and involvement of young people in the private sector of their areas with an aim of reducing social and economic inequality which is currently a hallmark among the young people in the country.
We prioritize partnerships by working with likeminded Development organizations, Foundations, private sector entities Donors and the Government of Uganda. Our focus and entry points are around the following grounds.

1. Small Business Support and Development. We provide targeted training in starting and managing a small business in a rural community setting. We also provide seed capital for small business enterprises. Our training involves business record keeping, customer management, drawing long term business plans for expansion, registration of business and tax regimes, available financing options among others. This targets all young people in the community.
2. Skilling. We support the development of demand driven and marketable skills that create opportunities for employment and entrepreneurship within the communities we work. We are cognizant of young people’s needs as most of them are young mothers and fathers and have other responsibilities. We thus take an apprenticeship approach where we do provide skills without altering the young people routines. In addition to this, we provide mentoring and coaching to young people in progressive managerial and operational skills that ensure sustainability of business enterprises. Our approach does not stop at skilling and mentoring, but goes further to link young people to financial institutions to access funds that will support the development of their businesses.
3. Strengthening market functionality. Working with institutions, Government and development partners to provide market services for SMEs. This is mainly in spurring increased access to finance, Linkages with business support organisations, and linkages with Government programs that support youth and women development in communities.
4. Identifying opportunities to improve the implementation of public policy in the communities we work with, through the provision of targeted technical assistance and capacity building for policy-implementation and catalyze reforms and ways of working in order to attract investments.