Recent discourses within the Inclusive Policy Dialogue (IPD) and the Global University Business Club Limited (GUBCCo) community have surfaced an uncomfortable but necessary truth: Uganda’s/Africa’s youth crisis is not a failure of character, effort or patriotism. Rather, it is a failure of systems.
The emails, reflections and lived experiences shared are not mere correspondence; they are mirrors held up to our societies, demanding honesty, courage and decisive action.
Uganda, like much of Africa, is a profoundly youthful nation. Yet paradoxically, it is this very youth that increasingly feels locked out of opportunity.
Be that as it may, many do not dispute the hard-won gains from Uganda’s war to peace and from infrastructure to stability – gains well documented in the Greater Luwero Investment Forum Magazine, Greater Luwero Investment Expo, and the bedrock of President Museveni’s re-election slogan, “Protecting the Gains.”
Nevertheless, for many university and college graduates, development remains distant and abstract, failing to translate into guaranteed employment or dignified livelihoods.
Growth that is not broadly shared will always be felt remotely by ordinary citizens, however impressive its statistics may be.
Dr. Polycarp Musinguzi poignantly reminded us, borrowing from Rabindranath Tagore:
“Those whom you push down will chain you down.
Those whom you leave behind will pull you behind.
The more you envelope them under darkness of ignorance,
The more distant will your own welfare be.”
This is not poetry to comfort us, but a warning about development. The institutional exclusion of any segment of the population ultimately undermines socio-economic progress.
In Uganda, the continued mass release of graduates into the unemployment line is not a trivial matter, but rather a structural cancer threatening national welfare.
We train, mentor, and graduate young people only to funnel them into an economy unable to absorb them or reward their grit.
When education leads directly to unemployment, hope erodes, patriotism becomes abstract, and survival instincts take over.
Too often, frustration among young people is dismissed as ingratitude. Yet the real question is not whether gains exist, but who is included in creating, owning, and benefiting from them. Graduates circulate CVs endlessly searching for elusive jobs.
Hordes seek working abroad in the Arab World, Europe and America, often dangerous and dehumanizing, as the only exit.
Young Africans drown in the Mediterranean, endure exploitation in foreign labour markets, or quietly slip into despair at home.
The uncomfortable question is not why are they leaving? But why are they not staying?
This reality is tragically humanised by the painful story shared by Prof. Sebastiano Rutash-Rwengabo about a university graduate, Leo (RIP). Leo did not lack discipline or ambition. He laboured, applied for the elusive jobs, hoped, and endured.
He wasted away under exhaustion and depression. What failed him was not effort, but a system that could not translate education into dignity and work. His story is not isolated.
It is Ugandan. It is African. It is repeating itself in silence across households and communities.
Dr. Polycarp Musinguzi’s reflections further situate this crisis within a broader post-COVID context.
The pandemic destroyed both lives and livelihoods across all classes, elite and poor alike, and exposed deep weaknesses in health systems, labour markets, and social safety nets.
The aftermath has intensified mental health challenges, youth despair, and intergenerational strain. Lectures on resilience are no substitute for functioning institutions.
This is why the call for ACTION / AKISONI matters. Words, however eloquent, do not employ a graduate, finance an enterprise, or restore hope.
Patriotism today cannot be measured by rhetoric alone. It must be measured by whether young people can live, work, and thrive within the country they are urged to love.
True patriotism, as echoed by Rev. Canon Evatt Mugarura, is not blind attachment to land or nostalgia for sacrifice; it is deliberate investment in people. Empty-handedly blaming graduates for not being industrious is not patriotism, it is abandonment.
As Tagore warned, those left behind will eventually pull the entire system backward.
However, Rev. Canon Mugarura cautions that even as systems are rebuilt, African youth must also undertake an intentional shift in mindset.
Structural injustice explains much, but it must not imprison imagination. In constrained environments, the greatest danger is internalising exclusion as destiny.
A generation conditioned to wait exclusively for salaried employment risks surrendering agency in economies that increasingly reward adaptability, collaboration, and value creation over formal job titles.
Mindset change, therefore, is not submission to hardship; it is a deliberate refusal to be paralysed by it.
This does not mean glorifying suffering or justifying policy failure.
Rather, it calls on young people to consciously cultivate new orientations: from individual survival to collective enterprise, from credentialism to competence, from competition to cooperation, and from entitlement to stewardship.
Where institutions are weak, mindset becomes a form of provisional capital – enabling youth to organise, learn by doing, experiment, and seize emerging opportunities as systems catch up.
Only when institutional reform and youth mindset transformation advance together can Africa convert its demographic youth bulge into a durable development dividend.
GUBCCo was conceived as a modest but deliberate institutional response to this reality.
Its core proposition is simple yet radical: to convert social cohesion into productive capital. Instead of treating youth as passive job seekers, it positions them as co-creators of enterprises. Instead of isolating talent, it networks it.
Instead of romanticising grit, it builds pathways through which effort can translate into sustainable livelihoods, cooperative ownership, and value-chain participation.
Equally important is compassion. The story of Leo warns us against mistaking silence for laziness, fatigue for weakness, and struggle for failure.
When a young person says, “I am tired,” they may not need lectures; they may need systems that work, mentors who listen, and policies that recognise new economic realities.
The choice before Uganda, and Africa more broadly, is stark. We can continue celebrating aggregate gains while burying individual dreams quietly.
Or we can redesign our institutions, cooperative models, labour markets, and financing ecosystems to meet the world as it is, not as it once was.
If determination is to mean anything today, it must be shared grit: youth striving, elders listening, institutions enabling, and leaders delivering. This is the spirit GUBCCo seeks to advance. That is the ethic behind AKISONI.
That is the warning embedded in Tagore’s verse. And that is the work that 2026 and beyond must demand of all of us.
Direct article contributors
Dr. Julius Babyetsiza – IPD joint chair, and GUBCCo founder.
Dr. Polycarp Musinguzi – IPD joint chairman, retired but not tired Bank of Uganda executive director research & policy, economic advisor to the Governor, and the executive director, Bank of Uganda Governor’s Office, and founding president Musinguzi – People Empowerment Foundation (M-PEF).
Prof. Sebastano Rutash-Rwengabo – IPD joint chair.
Gen. Caleb Akandwanaho rtd. – chief coordinator of Operation Wealth Creation.
Rev. Canon Evatt Mugarura – IPD Joint chair, and public health specialist/consultant.
