An Entrepreneur’s Efforts in Fostering Upward Mobility and Combating Covid-19 in a Local Community in Uganda
In the past few months, we have witnessed the coronavirus pandemic ravage the world and this has led to various organizations like the WHO and different countries’ governments rolling out preventive measures to tackle the pandemic. It is no news anymore that maintaining social distance, frequent hand washing and the usage of nose masks in public spaces are the new normal in the world today. In the midst of this pandemic, many people across the world continue to come up with creative and innovative ways to reduce the spread of this virus. Last week, we caught up with a young African leader, Noah Walakira from Uganda, who takes us through his entrepreneurship venture, his work in contributing to the fight of COVID-19 in Uganda and his thoughts on the importance of vocational and formal education in accelerating the rise of Africa in this century.
What is your name, and where are you from?
My name is Noah Walakira and I’m from Uganda.
Could you please tell us about your passions and long term interests?
I am passionate about creating a change in my community, my country and eventually, the entire continent through solving the problem of unemployment among youths as I see the youths as literally the biggest representation of the continent. I do that by skilling people through sewing and knitting. Namirembe Sweater Makers is one of the ideas I came up with to solve the unemployment issue in my community because I know that getting access to jobs can help people get out of poverty as this provides an avenue for them to work and lead better lives. This is what I am passionate about. For my long term interest, I see myself creating several other companies that help me reach my goal of creating jobs and opportunities for people to get themselves out of poverty.
Great! Tell us about the ventures you have started and why you started them? How have these impacted your local community?
Along my entrepreneurship journey, I have embarked on several ventures. One of the ventures that stands out the most is Namirembe Sweaters which is an organization that is working with youths to make uniforms, sweaters, and other forms of clothing. Currently, our main customers are the schools. Through this venture, people are in a position to transform their lives and develop their careers/ Some others are also able to raise funds to go to school, take short courses and learn some skills, like catering and other different skills they are really passionate about. For many people that work or has worked here, this venture is not like the end goal or dream but it helps you get to the dream. It is a pathway. It helps you support yourself along the way as you head to your dream.
Namirembe Sweaters is a community based organization which is built around community members as we try to create a sense of community among the people we are working with. We are currently 20 people but we have trained more people in the past years. We’ve trained over 150 people specifically targeting the most vulnerable people like young mothers, school drop outs, girls and we’ve also organized several projects in this regard. We also train them with entrepreneurship skills and how to get more customers and grow. We’ve also supported those who want to start up their own ventures in knitting and sewing and they have launched out. My driving force is my passion to solve unemployment and to help youths to be gainfully employed and get decent work to support their lives and to get out of poverty.
We’ve been seeing the news about you doing something great within your community during this period. Tell us specifically about your work during COVID-19. (What made you come up with the idea; how did you get a team; how did you get funding? etc)
COVID-19 has affected several businesses including ours. One of the challenges for us is that schools in Uganda were stopped from opening because of the risk of infection and these are our main customers. As a result, this has affected our business as schools won’t order school uniforms during this period. Also, we’ve lost the opportunity to make clothes for festive seasons and different functions and this hit our production lines just like some other businesses. In light of the pandemic, we thought of ways in which we could fight back and what we could do during this period to slow down infection. We saw a chance of creating masks while supporting other ventures and people.
In my community, we have a population of many young and single mothers working in the market. They are doing a great service to us as they cannot close their stores because people need their food. As a result, they need to keep selling. Since we are all at risk, we tried to find a way on how we can support these mothers to reduce their risk of infection. We also have delivery guys who ride motorcycles to deliver food around the community and they also cannot stop working because they need to support their families.
As a venture, we reached out to several organizations that have managed to fund us to produce masks and give them out to these people. Masks in Uganda are around a dollar. Some people do not have that money to pay for this. If someone is making $3 a day, they have to feed the family and by the time they finish their core expenses, they can’t spend a dollar off that money to buy a mask. Thus, we decided to support them by providing them with a reusable mask that is washable. In addition, we’ve also managed to cover our monthly costs as we’ve also been able to pay our employees to produce these masks. We’ve so far made around 14,000 masks and we hope to do more as we reach out to more organizations to partner with. This is a major project we are onto and we see that we’re fighting back against the virus in a good way by providing free masks to people who have a high risk of catching the virus.
What would you say has been the impact of education (both formal and vocational) in your entrepreneurial journey so far and how has your education influenced the success of your venture? (E.g., connections, skills acquisition, labor, partnerships, funding, etc).
In starting up Namirembe Sweater Makers, I didn’t have to learn these things at school as I learnt them from home through my grandmother who taught me how to make them. Overtime, I learnt how to make them myself. Now, I train other people as well and I can see how it has helped support other people’s lives.I am in full support of vocational training and skilling. Even if you’re into formal education, you can have an extra vocational skill. It could be anything: sewing, cooking, building, woodwork; anything that you find easy to learn. Anyone can learn anything to have another extra skill that can help them earn an income and this can even be hobbies or something you can do outside your formal work.
I personally think education has played a huge role in my success. I had the opportunity to attend the African Leadership University and through that experience, I was able to make strong connections to improve my company’s growth. I was also able to learn things like book balancing and how to market, how to build your company, entrepreneurship skills, etc. You may just be in vocation and learning a skill but you also need this other formal education knowledge. You might not even need to go undertake a four year undergraduate course as they are sometimes offered in accelerating programs and incubators. Going through formal education is crucial as you get to learn how to teach yourself some of the skills that you need to build and successfully run a company.
What role does education play in achieving economic progress for the African country? How can we create more access to education for people that are economically marginalized?
Education has a great role to play in our lives as most of the time we spend in developing ourselves is in education. Given the amount of time we give to education in our lifetime, it is important that the kind of education we are receiving is of high quality. We also need to understand if we are gaining from the time we give it. We learn so many things in school like languages, how to interpret and imagine things, as all these things are developed through the educational system. We also get the connections, and the skills needed for us to be relevant in today’s job market.
An example of my experience is that there was a time when I wanted to expand my business to another environment but we had a language barrier and we didn’t have a common language to communicate. I am from a different tribe, and the person I was meant to do this with are from a different tribe. Most of the people I work with, even though we are from different places, because we have a common language like English through which we have achieved through education, we can communicate. For this particular experience, I had to get a translator which was quite expensive and was not very effective. If we both understood a common language which could have been fostered by education, this wouldn’t have been an issue. Hence, education plays a huge role even beyond language like how to interpret things such that we all understand the same things.
Oftentimes, Namirembe Sweater Makers go ahead and educate themselves after working with us. They don’t see themselves working with us full time, or permanently but as a way to get to whatever careers they want to achieve. Education shouldn’t stop but rather, be an opportunity for someone to achieve that which they want. That’s why it is important to focus on the quality of education that we receive. I have friends of mine who have graduated from university tell me that they want to come and work; to sit on the machines and sew. Some of this work is taken to be the work of unqualified people or people that haven’t gone to school. Maybe the quality of the education they (my friends) have received hasn’t enabled them to be gainfully employed. Hence, why the quality of education is pivotal to the success of young Africans which eventually will lead to the prosperity of the African continent.
Profound! Thank you for your time Mr Walakira.
My Pleasure.
To find out more about Mr Walakira’s work, you can check out the videos below:
