Kampala — More than 140 corporate leaders from Uganda's largest employers convened in Kampala this week to craft a new blueprint for workforce development, amid growing pressure on companies to respond to a swelling youth population, rapid technological change, and widening skills mismatches in the labour market.
The high-level Executive Roundtable, hosted by BrighterMonday Uganda in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, the Federation of Uganda Employers (FUE), and the Human Resource Managers' Association of Uganda (HRMAU), placed Uganda's looming "youth dividend" at the centre of boardroom strategy. With 70% of Ugandans below 30, employers acknowledged that the next decade will determine whether the country unlocks economic growth or faces a destabilising labour crisis.
Themed Strategic Workforce Shaping, the meeting signalled a shift in how business leaders approach talent planning away from traditional hiring models and toward predictive, data-driven workforce design.
"This event is basically business leaders, CEOs, HR directors, HR leaders coming together to really rethink about strategic workforce shaping," said Xenia Wachira, Country Director of BrighterMonday Uganda.
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"So in very simpler terms what that means is how do we move away from traditional hiring practices to really shaping the workforce that we need for the future."
Speaking at the Golden Tulip, Wachira highlighted the urgency of the conversation: "Think about the next 5, 10 years, 15 years, how will the workplace look like and what are we doing about it right now to make that workplace look better for that time."
The data presented offered a stark picture. Hilda Kabushenga, CEO of The African Talent Company (TATC), highlighted a structural mismatch deepening across sub-Saharan Africa: 11 million young people graduate annually, but only 3 million formal jobs are created.
" There's 8 million guys that are floating, trying to figure out what to do next. The mismatch is already obvious," Kabushenga said.
She noted the rising frustration among job seekers: "I spoke to a seeker recently who said, hey, I've applied to about 700 jobs this year, and I've not been shortlisted, are the jobs real?"
Kabushenga argued that without systemic reform including skills training, employer-education alignment, and last-mile digital capability building the gap will widen.
She pointed to early gains from Mastercard Foundation's Young Africa Works programme, which has enabled her team to train 120,000 Ugandans since February and link 20,000 to jobs across the country.
"We can't fix everything but at least we can help in this way," she said.
Key speakers pushed employers to take a more deliberate role in preparing young people for leadership, especially those without experience.
"One of the gaps we noticed is employers will always go for seekers who have experience," Wachira said.
"We need more leaders giving a chance to actually people who don't have experience to be mentored, to be coached."
Beyond graduate recruitment, she emphasised the need for board-level involvement.
"Ideally this conversation is supposed to be had with only HR leaders. We decided to bring this conversation to the boardroom. How do you start shaping your pipeline of leaders today for tomorrow?"
Her comments reflect a shifting trend in global workforce strategy, where companies increasingly build rather than buy talent particularly in markets where mature skills are scarce.
Eve Zalwango, General Manager of AmCham Uganda, the demographic profile presents both opportunity and risk.
"We can think of it as a time bomb, but it's also a challenge and an opportunity," she said.
"Uganda's future is so bright, but the brightness of Uganda is not in our resources, it's with our people."
She argued for proactive development of digital literacy, cybersecurity capacity, green economy skills, and leadership competencies areas where demand is surging faster than formal training pipelines.
"When we speak of global as a country, BrighterMonday is one to help us actually look at that," Zalwango said, pointing to rising global talent mobility and remote work trends.
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Zalwango also critiqued the deep stigma that surrounds vocational training in Uganda, describing it as a major barrier to building competitive industries.
Her remarks align with global economic patterns showing renewed demand for high-skill trades, especially in construction, manufacturing, and green technologies.
Across sessions, participants agreed on a shared responsibility industry, training institutions, and government to align skills with market demand. With Uganda seeking to diversify into ICT, agri-processing, tourism, and digitally enabled services, businesses say they can no longer afford passive talent strategies.
"Conscious hiring goes a long way," Kabushenga argued, adding that opportunities for women, PWDs, and youth-led enterprises remain largely untapped.
Wachira echoed this need for coordinated action: "We hope that at the end of this session we will have some action steps... so that you are shaping your pipeline for leadership for tomorrow."
