By Dr.Michael Jjingo
Are your children studying to fully be employed? Maybe yes! Once upon a time, a seven-year-old named Brian began mixing homemade glue using cassava flour in his backyard. It stuck literally and figuratively. Within weeks, he was the official supplier of “industrial” adhesive for the entire P.3 class. And just like that, another accidental entrepreneur was born.
In a world where degrees come with less promise than a boda rider’s phone battery, training for self-employment is no longer just good advice, It’s survival strategy. We must move beyond the “study hard, get good grades, get a job” chant. Instead, it’s time to start preaching, “Learn fast, start early, and solve problems profitably.”
Look around. The boy who fixes shoes behind the mosque is already employing two friends. The girl who started baking banana muffins in S.2 now runs a TikTok-powered meat-pie empire. Tendo, who started coding in P.3 is already CEO earning, while in S.3. Meanwhile, Uncle James is still sending job applications to UNRA that no longer exist.
The truth is: children need to start projects early. Not later. Not “after campus.” Not “when the time is right.” Time is like airtime in a communal house, it disappears quickly if you’re not alert. Why wait to learn budgeting, production, branding, and failure when you can crash and rise before age 14?
One big myth that must die is that self-employment begins with millions of shillings, a swanky office in Kololo, and a KCCA trading license. No. It begins with selling juice in used water bottles, repurposing old wire hangers into curtain rods, or making charcoal stoves from leftover tins. Small beginnings are sacred.
Training children for self-employment doesn’t mean overloading them with business books or forcing them to watch TED Talks instead of cartoons. It means giving them room to tinker, try, fail, fix, and repeat. If your child wants to dismantle your blender to build a robot, let them. You weren’t going to use it for anything besides juice and regret anyway.
Our education system has tried to cram everyone into white-collar dreams. But the dream has burst like a chapati with too much oil. The real magic is in passion-driven manufacturing, even if it’s of shoelaces or soap. Uganda needs more creators, not just consumers of other people’s success and innovations.
Do you know the joy of seeing a 10-year-old making liquid soap? Or our teenager designing handbags from banana fibre? It’s a kind of pride that even DSTV/ Man-U can’t provide. Parents must stop telling children to “first finish school” before they can start real life. School should be where they start life.
Let’s encourage primary school students to write business plans about biscuits. Let’s help P.6 pupils figure out costing for handmade candles. Let’s train them to understand that branding is not only for NBS, Centenary bank and Rotary; it applies to their invented jam labels too.
What if schools made “project days” about solving community problems instead of building matchstick houses? What if we rewarded students who recycled plastic into building tiles or who designed health-saving devices for home use? The future lies not in high marks, but in high impact.
It also means parents must stop being dream-killers in the name of safety. If your child wants to make and sell key holders, don’t dismiss it with “focus on real things.” That is a real thing. That’s how Apple, Tesla, TikTok and even Rolex (the snack) began, small ideas with big energy.
Even in failure, there are lessons. If the tomatoes rot, they learn inventory management. If they make losses, they learn pricing and cost control. If their friend runs away with the profits, they learn about contracts, or at the very least, productivity complemented with accountability.
By the time such a child finishes university “UNI”, they will already know that self-worth is not tied to employment. They’ll know how to pitch, produce, package, and persist. They will not fear losses, because they know how to create opportunities from scratch, just like they did in P.5 with recycled straws with passion.
In conclusion, here’s the bottom line: let the children start early. Let them get dirty with dough, clay, wires, soap, or whatever they’re passionate about. Because in Uganda, the future does not belong to the most educated, it belongs to the most resourceful. And if your child becomes CEO before teen-age? Even better. At least you’ll have someone to fund your retirement plan.
Michael Jjingo is the General Manager- Commercial Banking @ Centenary Bank and an Economist.