Joseph Mawejje

Uganda, with one of the biggest youthful population also has one of the highest levels of youth unemployment.  This means that unemployment is extremely high and that the most affected are the youth. Now, we all know that the youthful years are the most productive. This implies that Uganda's unemployed youth are a hindrance to national development. The unemployment problem seems to be getting worse despite the impressive economic growth. In short, Uganda has experienced jobless economic growth! Ofcourse some people will be quick to point to the high population growth. May be they have a point. May be not. One only has to look at China to read my mind. What is surprising is that whereas as we have a lot of "qualified youth" waiting for their first job, the private sector is struggling to find suitable employable talent. Or better, the business managers are struggling to match the available skills and attitudes to their jobs!  So where is the problem? Could it be that the

Natural resource management and governance often ignore the needs, fears and concerns of the local communities to both the government and the people’s detriment.   Too often the needs of local communities are overlooked when such great economic opportunities arise.   While local communities often expect great things from new natural resource discoveries, they also fear and anticipate marginalisation by the government and the incoming corporations, according to a study by the Economic Policy and Research Centre (EPRC) that examines how prepared Uganda is to accelerate growth and maintain intergenerational equity, the impact of the burgeoning Ugandan oil sector on the lives and concerns of the people most directly affected by this new industry. The last decade has seen resurgence in interest of the vast natural resources in Africa. Oil and gas resources have been at the forefront of natural resource exploration in many countries in Africa. It now widely believed that Africa is the new

The recent developments have seen a surge in inflation from 3.4 percent in April to 7.3 percent in August 2013. The surge in inflation has come on the backdrop of a prolonged drought that affected food production and resulted in poor harvests across the country. This food supply shock has been exacerbated by the seasonal demand for seeds as the planting season starts. Thus food and cereal prices have started to increase and this has fed into higher inflation. For example the average price for a kilogram of beans is now Ushs 2,500 compared to Ushs 1,500 two months ago.   However, food inflation can feed into core inflation (that excludes food, energy and utilities prices) directly through its effect on the prices of processed food, cost push effects and inflation expectations for example through hoarding and speculative tendencies. Indeed increases in food inflation from -7.5 (minus 7.5) percent in April 2013 to 13 percent in August 2013 have been followed by increases in core inflatio