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With support from Hanze University, in 2020, Uganda Christian University (UCU), Mukono, has started an incubation hub at the School of Business to offer entrepreneurial training and incubation services to students to counter the high graduate unemployment.
Elsie Nsiyona, the associate dean of the UCU School of Business, says the idea of the incubation hub was hatched in 2018 as a maiden step towards the realisation of the bigger dream of skilling students.
“This was after we visited the Hanze University’s ‘Cube 50’, the equivalent of UCU School of Business’ Incubation Hub, a centre where students’ entrepreneurial skills are guided and nurtured to fruition,” she says.
Armed with the idea of starting something similar to what was in the Netherlands, Nsiyona says they set off by revising the existing entrepreneurship curriculum offered by the then Faculty of Business and Administration at the diploma and degree level to inculcate a more practical element in the reviewed curriculum called the ‘Intra-skills training’.
“In line with the new curriculum, in teams of four or five, students are required to generate a business idea to solve a community challenge, and work with the market to identify solutions, develop prototypes and test them with the community and market through exhibitions,” she says.
Inception
In 2020, the UCU School of Business had successfully established a €14,600 (about sh60m) incubation hub that has since been used to skill dozens of students to use their university education in innovative and practical ways, creating new products.
Since then, the UCU School of Business has not looked back.
According to Florence Wanyenze, the manager at the UCU School of Business, the training given to students at the hub is comprehensive and practical in nature. Besides enabling the learners to develop feasible business ideas that are tested and turned into functional businesses, it also focuses on sustainability.
“The curriculum covers mindset and attitude changes, business idea development, prototype and feasibility check, plus implementing the business idea based on a business model,” she said.
In the process of revising the curriculum, Nsiyona says they were aware that Uganda ranks among the most enterprising countries and at the same time it tops the list of countries whose enterprises collapse before celebrating their first anniversary. This helped them to draft a curriculum addressing the challenge.
Success
Aston Aryamanya, a trainer at the hub, noted that the facility has made significant progress in the area of entrepreneurship and the creation of jobs for youth in Uganda.
“We have taught aspiring business owners how to be creative and develop market solutions that address today’s problems,” he said.
“We have also assisted these young people in realising their capacity to create work rather than look for employment.”
Victor Ssenabulya, a third-year student of a Bachelor of Entrepreneurship and Project Planning is one of the proud beneficiaries. Last year, after attending one of the exhibitions organised by the hub, Ssenabulya started adding value to his rabbit project.
“I had learnt that when mixed with manure, the rabbit’s urine could serve as a fertilizer,” he said, adding, “That’s how I started making the liquid fertilisers.”
So far, he says, he has sold 500 litres of the fertiliser mainly to his close family at sh10,000 (about 2.7 dollars) per litre. Ssenabulya says his plan is to increase the scale of production of the fertilizer in the near future, especially after school.
Formerly, he only dealt in selling meat products from the farm at Katabi in Wakiso District, Central Uganda.
Ssenabulya’s success story is just one of the many told at the hub. Such achievements multiply daily because of the eight-year partnership between UCU and Hanze University. In February 2023, the partnership attracted the Hanze University President, Dick Pouwels to visit UCU.
Strong partnership
During his visit to UCU, Pouwels commended the university administration for the initiative geared towards finding a solution to Uganda’s high graduate unemployment. Pouwels also participated in a number of activities geared towards bolstering students’ innovation including the unveiling of the proposed structure for the UCU School of Business Incubation Hub at the main campus in Mukono.
He noted that Hanze University had been working with UCU in different fields such as business, engineering, and social sciences for the last eight years and that he feels the commitment to strengthen the partnership even further in a bid to promote original business ideas.
Turning to UCU students, he said, it was important for them to just look around and focus on building their talents to come up with new innovations. “Entrepreneurship can be very good where you develop your own talent and strength,” Pouwels said.
In his remarks, UCU’s Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Aaron Mushengyezi, commended the partnership between the two universities and urged his administration to ensure that the projects benefit not only UCU but Uganda in general.
UCU staff, students and visitors from Hanze University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands pose for a photo outside the UCU School of Business Incubation hub recently. (Courtesy pictures)
The Dean of the UCU School of Business, Vincent Kisenyi, noted that the proposed structure for the hub, which was unveiled, would widen the scope of the University’s operation in training and empowering students besides creating an avenue for engagement with the outside community.
“We have registered a massive number of students and as well have made entrepreneurship a course unit across all the schools,” Kisenyi said, “This means that the space we have at the current hub is not enough, which is why we are collaborating with Hanze University to create more space.”
The move to address graduate unemployment in Uganda through innovations speaks to UCU’s Vision of being a centre of excellence in the heart of Africa. Already, dozens of UCU students and staff have benefited from the partnership between the two institutions through the exchange programme that allows them to go to the Netherlands every year for a study period.
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