Government has been urged to give social entrepreneurs more attention to address the country's pressing social and economic issues.
The call was made on Friday by Timothy Mugerwa, the CEO of Astute Strategists during the inaugural Social Enterprise Awards hosted at Four Points by Sheraton.
Mugerwa acknowledged the numerous challenges social enterprises face in Uganda, including lack of policies and misinformation.
He also noted that the government has not yet given social entrepreneurs the attention they deserve, emphasising that despite these obstacles, social entrepreneurs continue to play a vital role in addressing the country's pressing social and economic issues.
"What people don't know about the social enterprises is that in Uganda, we do not have a specific ministry or a department or directorate that's dedicated to oversee the work of social enterprises," Mugerwa said.
He also mentioned the challenge of underfunding of social enterprises by the government.
"I know there are so many initiatives from the government and the private sector, but they are not targeting social enterprises.So that is still a challenge. We also have limited spaces for them to network, share experiences, learn from one another,"
He added, "So we feel like the government should give them more attention because they have huge potential to contribute to the social and economic development of our country and for the government's Vision 2040 agenda,"
He observed that the Social Enterprise Awards awards are going to link social entrepreneurs to potential founders, potential partners as well as equipping them with more skills.
On his part, Dr. Hillary Kisanja, the chief guest and Private Secretary to the President of Uganda for Youth in Agriculture, Value Addition, and Export Promotion appealed to the private sector to synergize with the government to tap into the different resources of these young social entrepreneurs.
"Most of them (social entrepreneurs), lack access to finance, they lack access to technology, they lack access to machinery, so we have to see how we can partner and synergize and identify these young people who have come up to become risk takers, who have become change agents, who have become transformers, to see how we can support them to move from one level to another level," Dr Kisanja stated.
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He noted that the government is undertaking different initiatives by putting up different budgets in the Central Bank, government banks, and the Microfinance Support Centre, to support social entrepreneurs with cheaper loans.
"Different budgets have been spearheaded really to support those individuals who are going to participate into social entrepreneurship in different categories of business enterprises," he said.
The awards ceremony provided a platform for social entrepreneurs to connect, share knowledge, and collaborate, and celebrate the power of social entrepreneurship in Uganda.
