WAKISO – Youths have been advised to work on their mindset change if they are to develop themselves, other than thinking of getting lots of money first before they can venture into businesses.
The call was made by Justus Rutaisire, a renowned fish farmer during Gudie Leisure Farm’s Aquaculture Cottage Industry Symposium on Monday.
“It is not that you must have lots of money to start fish but you need a mindset change that things can happen and with a humble beginning.”
“Also, collectively if they scale together, they can. They can also take up some of the farms that the owners aren’t able to manage,” added.
He went ahead to urge them to take advantage of government programmes supporting youth development model as a way of gathering resources.
Rutaisire noted that it would be equally wise for the youth to take part in the value chain service – like making a fishfingers, fishballs, among others, which are all profitable and require moderate funds to start.
Prof Gudula Naiga Basaza, Founder and Managing Director, Gudie Leisure Farm said they are building a network of youth that are committed to raising fish in 900 parishes where they operate. In each of the 900 parishes has 100 youths and each one of them can raise at least two tonnes of fish a year.
“What is exciting is that as a country 15.5% of our area is suitable for fish farming in terms of having freshwater and when we look at the per capita for fish, as a country, will consume about 11 kilos of fish on average in an entire year compared to 25 kg per person that is known globally.”
“…yet when you look at the advantages that fish has, fish is non fatty and has high quality proteins. Fish has some fatty acids like Omega three that are very important for brain development. But again, we also know that fish has minerals like phosphorus and calcium that are very important for bone growth. This is something that would be calling everyone to consume at least twice or thrice a week,” she noted.
According to her, fish would be the right answer for stunted growth and anaemic people.
She noted that the country has fish processing plants but a number of them are not working at full capacity due to inadequate supplies. “They don’t have enough fish to export consistently, so this linkage is very important.”
“We are also looking at post-harvest handling. We see that we are going to have a 12% increase in the lead of fish globally from now up to the year 2032. So this gives us an opportunity to invest in the value chain that is going to be having a lot of markets. It’s actually anticipated that 42% of the fish will be consumed by China…so we are positioning ourselves to be able to be the suppliers of these fish.”
According to Prof. Basaza, Fisheries continues to be one of Uganda’s highest income earners.
“While its contribution to Uganda’s GDP in the CY Year 2021/22 was only 2%, in nominal prices, the sector recorded a value addition of 3,298 billion shillings to the economy Fish and fish products were also the third highest value of exports in the CY 2021-2022, generating about USD $116.2 million for the country. It is one of our core value chains for our Company, and we are keen on promoting it because of the immense returns Uganda and its industries can generate from it, not just in form of profits and export revenues, but also in terms of food and nutrition security as well as employment.”
In 2017, the fisheries sub sector, according to Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries – MAAIF, employed about 1.7 million people directly and over 3.5 million indirectly.
Prof. Basaza says that further development through strategic investments can drive this number up which would be very beneficial to, as well, improving the livelihoods of local communities and especially the youth, hence their strong commitment to promote the sector for investment.
“We are proud to report that our Company’s network of agripreneurs in the sub sector has grown to about 70,000 Youth Agripreneur Champions (YACs), most of whom are involved in catfish production, value addition and trade.”
