Uganda is a youth nation. Fifth of the world ranking of countries with the highest percentage of their population under the age of 15 years, Uganda's demographic character is both a problem and an enormous opportunity. With over 80% of Uganda's young people living in rural areas, and countless more engaged in smallholder agriculture, the future of Uganda's economy its food security lies in our hands as to how we engage and equip this generation to be leaders in agriculture.
And yet with so much potential, far too many young Ugandans are abandoning the farm. Smallholder agriculture is still synonymous with low incomes, backbreaking manual work, limited market linkages, and traditional technology.
It is not typically seen so much as a platform for wealth as an expression of poverty. Consequently, 45% of Uganda's internal migrants are young people, many from rural areas who move to seek perceived better opportunity in urban settings often encountering underemployment instead of wealth that they seek.
This urban-rural migration is founded on systemic problems. One of the most long-standing of these is the land tenure regime. Although an estimated 50% of Ugandans have access to land, ownership of land is out of reach for most of them particularly women and young people.
Without guaranteed access to land, youth are unable to invest in long-term agricultural enterprises. Far worse, restricted access to credit and agribusiness loans traps most youth in a vicious cycle of low productivity and subsistence-level agriculture, as opposed to flourishing Agri-entrepreneurship.
Though, there is urgent need to reverse this trend. Uganda's population is growing 3.3% annually while agricultural output lags behind the rate of mere 2% per annum expansion, according to the World Bank. This slow pace poses grave threat to food security, living, and financial stability.
Its neighboring countries have registered up to 5% yearly growth in agriculture levels Uganda can also achieve or outstrip through youths' agricultural innovations.
Having understood these challenges, the Ugandan government and development players have developed several frameworks to resuscitate the sector.
Initiatives like the Agricultural Credit Facility (ACF) and the National Agricultural Extension Policy (NAEP) aim to improve access to finance and capacity development. Specifically, the National Strategy for Youth Employment in Agriculture (NSYEA) aims to make the sector more appealing to youth through agribusiness skilling and facilitation services. But these policies' impacts are watered down by implementation fragmentation and poor rural penetration.
To change the course, Uganda needs a fundamental attitude shift a national awakening that positions agriculture not just as a survival tactic, but as a profitable, technology driven business enterprise. The young people must be seen, and see themselves, not as subsistence farmers but as Agri-pruners entrepreneurs, producers, processors, and marketers in a new agricultural economy.
Farm work today is not all hoes and hand tools. Through digital devices, mobile phone extension services, and regional and international market linkages, agriculture is now a career that is both high-impact and high-tech.
Precision agriculture, precision irrigation, and value addition (fortified food products) are giving way to agricultural practices that attract youth into utilizing science, enterprise, and imagination. Furthermore, the global food economy is evolving. There is growing demand for nutrient-dense, fortified, and traceable food products. Uganda's youth and land provide it with a strategic position to become a regional value-added agri-products powerhouse but only if young people are equipped with the right tools, capital, and incentives to innovate.
It will require intentional inter-sectoral collaboration to win. Banks must extend farm credit to young farmers. Education systems must integrate agribusiness and e-literacy. Land reform must prioritize youth access for young farmers. Most of all, young people must be empowered not just with land, but with ideas, enterprise, and policy agendas.
Reclaiming the land does not mean going backward. It means harnessing tradition with transformation, culture with commerce, and land with leadership. Uganda's youth do not have to flee from the farm they need to own it, innovate on it, and profit from it.
The country is crying out. And the fate of Uganda rests in the balance of how boldly this generation of youth answers that cry not with a hoe, but with a business plan, a cell phone, and a vision for sustainable change.