Skip to main content

CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR GRADUATION, ITS NOW TIME TO WORK….


Thousands of students will be graduating from their respective universities in coming days and months.


Makerere, our country’s oldest university will kick off its ceremonies on January 15th and the other universities will follow.

The graduates have already had a taste of the real life, having finished their studies mid last year and tried to get employed.

Many know by now that the world can be harsh and unforgiving. I hope many are tightening their belts in readiness for the struggle ahead. Some may have decided to kick the tin down the road bycontinuing with school. And others may have given up altogether.

My prayer is that there are more of the first and less of the last kind.

In talking to young people, I find that what is needed is a reorientation of their minds – a mindset change. Let me share with you certain facts to help manage their expectations of the world and how they can fulfil their potential in our context.

First of all, the world owes you nothing. It was here before you. It has seen more brilliant or hopeless people than you are, right now. It can very well do without you.

Harsh? Yes! But it’s a truth we need to internalise. You might be the hottest kid in your class, in the country. Regardless, you are entering a stage in life where practical results are everything regardless of what you did at school.

All you have learnt at school will be turned this way and that, revised or even rejected by the real world.

Think of it as a reset.

Regardless of what course you have done, the biggest skill you must make sure you leave the university with, is the ability to learn and to learn continuously.

This is important, even critical and will be the difference between whether you survive or not, or better still, whether you thrive in the years ahead of you.

The world is changing at a faster and faster pace and to keep up or stay one step ahead of these changes, your ability to learn continuously will hold you in good stead.

As a businessman who has started from the ground, I have had to learn to grow from selling sugar as a teenager to currently overseeing businesses that range from retail outlets to power generation plants to hotels to real estate developments.

They say the knowledge that has gotten you to where you are is not the same knowledge that will take you to the next level.

And I am not talking about upgrading your academic credentials only.

You need to set upon an independent program of learning about the world around you -- how it came to be the way it is and where it is going. This self-initiated quest for knowledge will come by reading
books, exploring the internet and through regular interaction with mentors.

The world demands that you become an insatiable knowledge sponge.

If this is the only thing you take away from this, my work will have been done.

As a final thought, you are young the world is literally at your feet.

You have the advantage of time. Use it well, make every day count. One important thing you will need to learn is financial literacy. This will not only help you spend your money wisely but will eventually lead to having your money work for you, which is the ultimate goal of financial literacy.

In this regard I urge you to Google -compounding, which Albert Einstein called the eighth wonder of the world. Put very basically it is building on what you have, be it knowledge or relationships ormoney. Whether you will be financially secure in your older years will depend on whether compounding works for you or against you.

One of the smartest things you can do for your future well-being is to understand and employ compounding to your benefit. The sooner you start the better.

And my very last word is that you are lucky to be alive and well, in this country, at this time. The potential of this country is largely unexploited, which means that you will be getting in at the ground floor of whatever you do. Don’t be distracted by tales of how moving to this country or the other will be better for you. The action is all here.

There is a price to pay to unlock this potential. Bucketful’s of sweat and copious amounts of faith will be needed. From my experience I can promise you that if you stick the course there will be a pot of
gold at the end of the rainbow.

Congratulations to our graduates. Celebrate your success. But not for too long, because there is work to be done.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

FINANCING OUR ENTREPRENEURS, A CHALLENGE WE CANNOT IGNORE

In recent weeks the issues of financing for business has been in the news, in one form or the other. We have seen the challenge a past minister is facing with having to hang onto his home. The case is in court, so we can’t discuss its merits and demerits, just to say he may have fallen prey to some predatory practices, with the lender skirting dangerously on the edge of the law. Across the border in Kenya a cap on bank lending rates has been repealed. Three years ago Kenya’s parliament passed a law restricting lending rates to two percentage points above the rate at which the central bank lent money. In reaction banks pulled back their lending to businesses, depressing the economy and prompting the reversal. So now banks can “properly” price their loans, often to the discomfort of small and medium sized businesses. The two incidents are related and speak to the availability and cost of credit. In my business career I have benefitted immensely from credit. It is next...

OIL IS COMING BUT LET US NOT FORGET OUR GOLD

The country is operating on a time table that first oil will be seen in 2020. There is a lot of frenetic activity around building supporting infrastructure, getting investment approvals, ensuring local participation and any number of other things to ensure readiness the moment the oil starts gushing down the pipeline to the coast. And so we should. I was intrigued the other day to read in the Kenyan press how Kisumu County, just across Lake Victoria from us, has set upon an ambitious project to ensure egg and poultry meat self-sufficiency for the county within the next few years. Under the plan Kisumu County will train 100 farmers every month over the 12 month pilot period. The intended aim is to be able to satisfy the county’s demand for 25,000 broilers and 75,000 eggs daily. Whereas I would prefer that this was private sector driven deal, I like this plan for a number of reasons not least of all that it shows leadership by the county and secondly, it relies o...

LET US GIVE SMEs A CHANCE

Something is wrong when most of Ugandan business is shut out of the government procurement process. This is happening in Uganda today. Micro-, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) account for 90 percent of the private sector. These account for 65 percent of national output (GDP). On the other hand 75 percent of our now sh32trillion national budget is earmarked for public procurement but the MSMEs’ share of this action is only 15 percent. It does not take a rocket scientist to see that such numbers are behind the huge inequalities in our society and why the majority of us do not have hope of a better and brighter future. Thankfully this is not an insurmountable problem. If MSMEs had access to more opportunities accruing from the national budget the benefits to themselves and to the nation as a whole would be huge. These would include increased production which would lead to job creation, raise incomes at household levels, leading to reduced income ine...

WELL DONE UGANDA REVENUE AUTHORITY BUT …

Over the weekend President Yoweri Museveni commissioned the new head office of the Uganda Revenue Authority, an imposing structure that is set to dominate the Nakawa skyline for some time to come. Congratulations are in order to URA for the construction of such an aesthetically appealing building, which I hope wills set the pace for other developments not only in the area but in Kampala and even Uganda as a whole. I know the pride that comes with having completed such a massive build for the initiators and implementors. The new 22-story structure has allowed the tax man to fold back all his offices from around the city back to the head office, a move they estimate will save them sh7b annually. Using simple math the sh140b will pay for itself in 20 years. The move is seen as precursor to a government move to build a ministerial compound in Bwebajja, where all ministries will be relocated sometime in the future. I have seen comments that such actions are evidence that...

OIL: WE NEED TO GET OUR ACT TOGETHER… YESTERDAY

(Published February, 2017) We are on the cusp of an important period in the history of this country and whether we can derive maximum advantage from this will depend on our capacity to put aside petty rivalries and come together as the business community. Over the next three years at least $20b or almost the size of the entire economy will be spent in readying us for first oil. This money will be spent on building infrastructure in the oil bearing areas of western Uganda, on our side of the oil pipeline to the Tanzanian port of Tanga, on the oil refinery and any number of things that will be needed to support oil production. About $3b (sh11trillion) was spent during the exploration phase of which less than three in every ten shillings   or about sh3trillion went to local contractors and suppliers. But this happened over eight years. This despite our local disorganisation and ignorance of the industry and its dynamics. However we should not be content with t...