MTN Uganda in partnership with Makerere University Business School (MUBS) today unveiled a youth-centered entrepreneurship TV show, “Nsindika Njake” to support the youth with business-related skills to efficiently operate businesses. The overarching goal of the show is to inspire and stimulate entrepreneurship acumen among the youth as one of the ways to alleviate the high youth unemployment rates that are prevalent in the country.
Nsindika Njake is a TV show featuring budding entrepreneurs running small enterprises commonly referred to as ‘hustles’ —targeting both the educated, skilled, and the unskilled, with the goal of equipping them with the requisite business skills to successfully run their hustles. The show will air every Wednesday at 8.30 PM (EAT) on NBS with a repeat(s) on Sundays at the same time (8:30 PM).
While launching the show at a press conference held at the MTN Uganda Headquarters in Kampala, the telco’s CMO Mr. Somdev Sen said that Nsindika Njake will go a long way in addressing the unemployment issue that the youth are currently facing.
Youth unemployment in Uganda stands at between 64% and 70%, with up to 400,000 young people entering the job market annually for a mere 9,000 jobs. Based on these statistics, entrepreneurship remains the most viable way to provide immediate employment and job creation opportunities.
“Given the high rate of youth unemployment, many youths have taken the right path of starting small businesses but sadly, the majority of them have not had the opportunity to get the skills required to effectively operate a business,” Somdev said. “We believe the Nsindika Njake show will teach youth how to navigate day-to-day challenges that they face in their businesses and set them on a path to becoming better entrepreneurs.”
Dr. Diana Nandagire Ntamu, the Director of MUBS Entrepreneurship Innovation & Incubation Centre applauded MTN Uganda for this effort noting that tackling youth unemployment is a collaborative effort. “The Government of Uganda and many other actors in the past, have been working really different initiatives to support the young people,” she said.
Dr. Ntamu further told the press, “They’re a lot of young people that do not have any entrepreneurship knowledge or any business skills but they are struggling to make ends meet to earn a living as well as support their families.”
“92 percent of the young people that join the workforce in Uganda go to the informal sector and a lot of them are running SMEs yet they have no experience. At MUBS, we pride ourselves on supporting those young people through capacity building and mentorship so I must say that I am very excited to have worked with MTN,” explained Dr. Ntamu —concluding that “While MUBS fosters entrepreneurship, MTN Uganda wants to support young people.”
Nsindika Njake program is a very unique initiative by MTN Uganda focusing on both classroom and experiential learning aimed at harnessing the youths’ entrepreneurial potential.
The 12 hustlers selected for the show will be mentored and trained by the MUBS entrepreneurship and small business center for a period of 12 weeks and thereafter engage in solving business-related challenges based on what they will have been taught. While the top 3 winners will walk away with assorted cash prizes, the overall winner will get a cash prize of UGX60 million. The prize money will be issued over a period of one year upon the achievement of key milestones.
Opportunists can also tune in to Galaxy FM, Radio Simba, Radio Buddu, and CBS Radio to participate in the Nsindika Njake show to stand a chance of winning instant Mobile Money. This was tested by journalists who were tasked to come up with a business idea to solve the problems they were assigned for a chance to win UGX1 million instant Mobile Money. The winners of this challenge included our very own journalist.
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