By Abdulkarim Ssengendo
Over 500 youth and women have been equipped with skills in dairy farming as a business and value addition, especially in making yogurt and other milk products.
The majority of the youth came from districts in the western region. AGDI Dairy Farm, in Kiruhura district conducted the training.
Speaking to New Vision, Col Dick Bugingo, the director of AGDI Dairy Farm, said the training attracted participants ranging from Primary Seven to university levels.
The goal was to enable the youth and women to achieve self-employment through value addition.
Bugingo is one of the Best Farmer’s Competition winners, which Vision Group organises with support from the Embassy of the Netherlands, dfcu Bank, KLM Airlines, and Koudijs Nutrition BV.
Experienced trainers
The one to two-month training was conducted by experts, some of whom are from universities contracted by AGDI Farm Training Centre.
Bumwa Janet, a trainer and lecturer at Bishop Stuart University, and Nicholas Rugambwa, the head of the value addition department at AGDI Dairy Farm, believe the acquired skills have empowered the trainees to create their employment and even employ others in their communities.
The trainees received Directorate Of Industrial (DIT) Training certificates upon completing the programme.
Bugingo says they plan to offer additional courses in ghee and butter making, organic fertilisers, and other milk products.
“Given the high unemployment rate across the country, we believe it is important to equip young Ugandans with skills that can help them start their businesses to support their families,” Bugingo said.
As one of the inaugural winners of the Best Farmers Competition in 2014, Bugingo advised young Ugandans who finished university to pursue short courses in value addition.
He added that his farm has already trained over 2,000 people at his training centre, all of whom completed DIT exams.
He plans to recruit more experienced experts to offer additional courses in various agricultural fields.
“In 2019-2022, I began training people on farming as a business. Now, I am focusing on skilling them in value addition,” Bugingo said.
He expressed gratitude to the various organisations supporting him, including Vision Group and the Netherlands Government, which facilitated his training in the foreign country.
He also thanked the Office of the Prime Minister for supporting him in training refugees in farming skills.
Bugingo advised farmers to adopt good farming practices, including proper feeding, hygiene and record keeping.
