Recap of The CEO Summit 2020

The 2020 11th edition of the CEO Annual Forum is a dynamic platform for promoting robust dialogue and action commitments from the public and corporate sector top executives, senior level accounting officers and development practitioners to make young Africa transform successfully.

Uganda with a 41 million population of which 70 percent are youth, faces a challenge to create about 600,000 jobs every year for the next several years just to absorb the youth who are entering the labor market every year. Gainful employment for the youth will not only enable them to realize their dreams but to also substantially contribute to national economic growth and transformation and enable Uganda to reap the youth dividend- i.e., a large productive youth dominant contribution to economic take off.

CEO Summit, Uganda is most appreciative of the great support and collaboration received for the CEO Forum from the Government and public officials in Uganda, the donor and development partner community, the private sector and especially our lead partners, this year, MasterCard and The Innovation Village.

Participants of the 11th edition of the Annual CEO Forum that took place on 11 September 2020 in Kampala gathered together virtually to discuss how the youth can succeed in the worlds next big grow market -Africa, focusing on catalyzing the public and corporate Uganda partnerships for innovation-lead entrepreneurships by the under 30.

Recognizing the critical role of innovation in achieving Uganda’s development objectives and building a prosperous middle-income country as set forth in National Development Plan III and Vision 2040.

Emphasizing that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the limelight the importance of continuous innovation for inclusive, sustainable and resilient national development.

Cognizant of the critical role of young entrepreneurs in designing and implementing innovative solutions in various areas.

Convinced that Uganda needs a holistic ecosystem to support innovation and unleash and enable the innovative potential of the youth.

Declarations/forum resolves informed by very productive exchanges and common grounds among others:

• Urgently take action to promote and substantially enhance opportunities for the youth at all levels of society. This also calls for the active elimination of the current opportunities gap between boys/men and girls/women with emphasis on the latter. For we must create, evolve and exploit new mental ideals of new things in the post Covid-19 pandemic era. Hence the emergency of generation RE (Reboot, Rethink, Reimagine).
• Every generation has its own revolution. The revolution of this and the next generation is innovation lead entrepreneurship through by among other embracing the forth revolution. ‘It is up to me to show’. Therefore, every youth should have this mentality.
• We call on the public and private educational institutions to revise the current education systems and approaches and overhaul the curricula to promote, from the earliest stages of learning, development of capacities and skills for creative thinking and innovation. In doing so, we invite educators to work closely with public and private social and economic agencies to expose students to real life problems and encourage their solution-oriented learning.
• We encourage Uganda’s corporate sector to engage with the educational system through learning partnerships offering new opportunities for young men and women to start and expand their business through a system of internship and apprenticeship, grants, innovation labs and other facilities to unleash their innovative potential.
• We invite the government and corporate sectors to work closely together to create stable and sustainable value chain partnerships through strategic linkages and well-defined opportunities right from the grassroots by leveraging market spaces in the industrial parks around the country.
• We further encourage the government and corporate sectors to create conditions for the youth to leverage platforms and pipelines by harnessing productive synergies in the agricultural space: Agricultural production local champions, Productivity local champions Processing local champions,Peer to peer learning by financial institutions in regard to cooperative approach.
• We call on central and local governments to ensure local content prioritization for youth and preferential treatment for youth entrepreneurship in agri-business, mining, oil and gas, powered by rising youth led innovation corporate Uganda investments in these sectors and unlocking new food production, energy and wealth for Africa. The impact is to remove entry barriers for the youth. ‘The obstacle is the way’ this should be the youth mantra from now on.
• We urge the government to put in place Institute mechanism to scandal proof the collaborative journey by deciding on and committing to the doctrines of stubborn refusal; to accept or give bribes, to engage in acts of discrimination, bulling, nepotism, identity information theft and so on.
• We encourage international and national development financial institutions to establish (or expand the existing) facilities to support entrepreneurial activities and innovative solutions designed by young men and women by providing affordable ad patient capital.
• We call on multilateral and bilateral development institutions and the UN system in Uganda to accept support to an inclusive system of innovation in Uganda, targeting in particular young women and men, as its core business and extend relevant technical and financial support.
• We request the government to adopt a special program for youth-led innovation that would include a holistic range of measures to provide technical assistance and create adequate operating conditions for youth-led innovative enterprises.