When you hear that agriculture only contributes 21% of our GDP, you may take it lightly yet in actual sense it is the fulcrum that runs the industrial and services sectors which contribute 27% and 43% respectively.
For example, when a farmer sells his coffee, he supports the sugar manufacturers who again support their service providers including computer systems developers, cleaners, among others because of the forward and backward linkages.
NSSF management is one of the great funders of a popular agribusiness show “Seeds of gold” with their farm clinic which aims at promoting knowledge based farming. It is actually the corporates who save with NSSF that mostly benefit from this knowledge based farming that improves productivity.
According to the 2018 study which was aimed at finding out the quality of life of Nssf beneficiaries after receiving their benefits, majority of the beneficiaries did not have good investment decisions.
Out of the 402 respondents, 53% were unable to sustain their savings for a year. 98% of the respondents had no cash left at the end of first year. This means that NSSF investment in the farm clinic is in line of helping the Nssf beneficiaries who are their proud customers.
The study also showed that 15% of the beneficiaries started or expanded their businesses, 15% acquired land, 12% spent on self education or dependants while 3% spent on crop farming and forestry and another 3% spent on animal husbandry and poultry. This means that Mr.Richard Byarugaba, the MD of Nssf is making informed decisions of investing in the farm clinic. We the poor youth movement of Uganda applaud his actions because agriculture employs many youths of the country and therfore we implore many to attend this coming virtual farm clinic which is scheduled to take place on December 12th 2020.
The writer is an entrepreneur, author and Secretary General of Uganda poor youth movement.
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