I am honoured to have conceptualized and constituted my family into Company known as Bwengye Family Initiative Company Limited following the Ugandan presidential campaign of non-family fragmentation as the family expands and/or loses some of the members. I’m delighted that in our first discussions about staying together in form of company, the family members readily agreed and we spend much of our efforts in the first 5 years focusing on the greening the bare hills of Rukiga District and making an attempt to stage a challenge of decarbonising our planet, while creating jobs, and inclusive growth. We managed to plant trees in more than 100 acres of land that was largely bare.

In 2024, the world has entered the era of automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and the ‘rise of the robots’ that threaten to transform the world of work, and in many parts of the Uganda, inequality is rising while debt levels remain high in developing countries, this is truly an agenda that requires both the best of our thinking, and the best of our collaborative spirit as a company and nation.

In developing these answers, we will need to listen much harder to our young people. While so many of the hardest challenges of our time have the greatest impact on the young, their voices are gravely under-represented. I was extremely grateful to have the opportunity to form this Company and create some simple jobs. Through these small jobs, children of the Company employees continue to stay in school and their families remain emotionally stable – added advantage for employees.

This ground-breaking Company is committed to employing, low cost, cutting edge, go-green solutions in tackling the development challenges directly affecting its family members, young people, including youth employment, and the future of work. The biggest concern for this Company is preparing the next generation for the jobs of the future in an age of emerging technology. While this new era poses a range of challenges for young people that policy makers must meet, it is also clear that in broader policy development we must listen to younger people who, as digital natives, are best positioned to understand technology and use it to create opportunities for new skilled jobs and innovation in sectors like farming, greening the bare hills, disease prevention. The Company, will initiate digital apps for its services and over the next 5 years, implement some of the major activities in the plan. We hope to increase the number of female professionals employed by the Company.  To reduce current levels of unemployment in the face of automation and a growing gig economy, the Company will create 100 new jobs over the next decade based on farming – fish farming, banana farming, value addition. What is also clear, though, is the wealth of ideas and motivation within the Company Directors to meet these challenges. During the next 3 years, I hope to forge and nurture strategic partners, so we can continue to learn from each other and develop innovative solutions to the economic and social challenges a changing world of work poses to those that we serve. If we succeed in this mission, growing inclusive economies that create sustainable work, we will be able to raise living standards in ways that are faster, fairer and more sustainable.

Edward Bwengye Kahororo, BA (SWASA) – MUK 1984,   MPH – KIT, Amsterdam The Netherlands 1997,   MSc WEM – WEDC @ Loughborough University, UK 2007