By Silvia Nyambura
Without proper evaluation of the youth capital venture fund, government unveils yet another massive youth scheme:
In its efforts to fight youth unemployment, in early 2012 the Ugandan government in partnership with DFCU bank, Stanbic and Centenary bank unveiled a venture capital initiative aimed at empowering youth between 18 and 35 years of age to fund their start up businesses as well as grow existing ones.
Of the Ushs 25 billion allocated, Ushs 7.16 billion was given to Centenary bank while the rest was presumably disbursed to the other two banks (the two banks couldn’t confirm the amount they received).
Centenary bank which seems to have made some headway with the fund told The CEO Magazine that after it was allocated the money by government, it also contributed the same amount (Ushs 7.16 billion) to make a total of 14.32 billion available for youth willing to borrow.
Centenary bank Managing Director Fabian Kasi says by end of July 2013, his bank had disbursed Ushs 21.77bn to 6,229 youth of which Ushs 9.57 billion had been paid back. He says they have continuously done due diligence during appraisal and this has played a very important role in taming the youth in financial management resulting in good repayments.
“With Centenary bank the scheme has been successful and we believe the government of Uganda needs to keep embracing such initiatives,
