Wealth creation begins with understanding family expenses and assets – Museveni tips youth

President Yoweri Museveni continues to spice up his campaign speeches with lectures on wealth creation and as he met youth leaders from Kigezi at Nshwere Primary School in Kiruhura District, he told them that wealth creation begins by assessing one’s needs, assets and how to utilize them.

“Poverty in your homes can be addressed by asking yourself how much your family’s annual expenditure is, which assets your family has and how to use those assets to generate more income than your expenditure,” the NRM presidential candidate said.

He urged youths who are educated to help the illiterate people in the villages understand these ideas so they can copy them, to move away from subsistence production to commercial production, especially in agriculture.

“If you don’t advise them on what to do, they will make many mistakes. They have food and non -food needs but if they only work for their stomachs but forget the pockets, how will they address the non- food needs?” he wondered.

“I was born in Ntungamo and by 1966, I had started realizing there was a big problem with our people who were nomads and used to move from one area to the other with their cattle. Their solution for diseases and pest was to run away from one place to the other with their livestock but in 1966 I held a meeting with them and they understood the problem,” Museveni went on.

“When they understood the problem, they stopped moving and copied what the government stock farm in Mbarara was doing.”

Proper calculation

According to Museveni, one can only benefit from what they do if they do it with proper calculation.

“The people here used to have local animals. Those cows have value but you need to be with many cows like 1000 and you can sell like 200 per year to earn a lot of money out them. Because of this, I advised them to rear exotic breeds that require little space but give higher yields in form of milk. Animals like pigs and chicken don’t require a big space,” he said.

Explaining the four-acre model that was introduced in the 1996 manifesto, Museveni told the youth leaders that they can grow coffee on one acre and that it can fetch not less than shs18 million but also has market everywhere.

“The number of coffee bags bought on the international market increases day by day and if you grow them, you are assured of market. It is not like maize or sugarcanes whose markets on many occasions goes down,” he said.

The President noted that on the second acre, food can be grown whereas the third and fourth aces can be used for growing fruits and pasture for animals respectively.

“This is the message you need to take to your villages and become change agents. You should know that jobs are not only in government but in commercial agriculture. Remember the government has only 480,000 jobs but as I speak, factories employ 700,000 people and the services employ 1.3 million people,” he emphasized.

The youth leaders told the NRM presidential flag bearer that they would put into practice the message given to them but asked for another lecture at the President’s demonstration farm in Kawumu that he accepted to do after the election.

The President today continues with his campaign trail in Kigezi sub-region where he will hold engagements with party leaders in Rukingiri District.