Boosting Innovations
The Agribusiness Development Centre (ADC) executive director, Anja de Feijter, tipped farmers on the use of modern farming methods such as mechanization to increase production quantities.
KAMPALA – The Uganda Development Bank (UDB) is to inject sh6b to empower innovators to enhance their skills, acquire more machines as well as market their innovation products.
This, according to Prof. Samuel Sejjaaka, the UDB board chairman, is aimed at creating more jobs and enhancing economic development.
Sejjaaka, during the I-Growth Accelerator awards for 2017/2018 financial year, said the bank will invest sh5b as equity in viable projects, meaning they will partner with innovators until they break even, while the other Shs1b will be venture capital. The event took at Hotel Africana in Kampala.
Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe, the vice-chancellor of Makerere University, noted that there is need for the Government to offer interest-free loans to innovators so that their products can compete on the globe, saying they were laying strategies at the institution.
We at Makerere University have started new strategic plan to transform Makerere into a research-led university,” he stated.
The Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, who was represented by Gabriel Ajedra, the state minister of finance in charge of general duties, noted that innovations in the agriculture are necessary for economic development of Uganda.
He reiterated the Government’s efforts in boosting innovation through the innovation funds, which are channeled through the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.
The Agribusiness Development Centre (ADC) executive director, Anja de Feijter, tipped farmers on the use of modern farming methods such as merchanisation to increase production quantities.
She said farmer trainings of literacy and entrepreneurship skills are necessary for transformation of agriculture. Last year, ADC got a boost of Shs10.8b for training community-based farmer organisation on train farmers in governance, financial management and risk management, among others.
We have trained 75 farmer organisations and we are going to scale up the number of individual farmers in Hoima, Mbale and Kampala,” she stated.
