Efforts to turn Uganda into a self-sustaining entrepreneurial country are being jeopardised by people's mentality of starting businesses with huge initial capital, a business consultant has observed.

Charles Ocici, the executive director for Enterprise Uganda noted that the escalating employment in Uganda is almost by people's choices, because even a little capital as as sh200,000 can be used to start a business, but the mentality of kicking off with millions of shillings makes people wallow in poverty.

"Prosperity in business is not about how big or small the enterprise start, we need to help this country to struggle for a change of mindset among people especially the educated class that despises small star-ups in businesses," he said.

He added that most of the successful business tycoons in Uganda and elsewhere in the world had humble beginnings but with perseverance, they ended up growing their enterprises into heavily capitalised inspirational investments.

Ocici was addressing over 900 businessmen as Uganda joined the other countries across the globe to celebrate the Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) 2012; the events were held on Thursday at UMA exhibition hall Lugogo.

He said that Uganda's hope in the sphere of development only lies in the growth of entrepreneurship; he said that South Korea took the same trend and achieved out of the same to the extent that in terms of exports, the country was at the same footing with Uganda during the 60's. But because of emphasizing entrepreneurial focus, today, South Korea's annual earnings from exports stand at $1,000b against $5.0b for Uganda.

The GEW was intended to inspire and involve young people to challenge their brains to find solutions to society's challenges using resources and opportunities around them.

It further encourages especially young people to have enterprising mindset which is innovative, takes risks, generates and implements new ideas and exploits their talents to provide economic and social benefits to society.

This year's events were spearheaded by Enterprise Uganda with support from Vision Group, Google, Barclays Bank, Mara Foundation, ILO, Educate Uganda, Prime Time Makerere, Junior Achievers, Fin Africa, Mountain of the Moon University, Tree Adoption Uganda, among others.