The National Planning Authority (NPA) has urged government to urgently conduct a comprehensive manpower survey to align Uganda’s education system and labour planning with the country’s demographic and economic realities.
Stephen Birahwa Mukitale, an executive board member of the NPA, noted the increase of unemployment, jobless graduates, and a large number of young people who are neither in employment, education, nor training.
“There wouldn’t be a better timing than now to give us this very important human resource, what we used to call the manpower survey, more so when you just gave us the population census findings, which clearly speak to the need for employment, jobless graduates, people not in employment, not in education,” Mukitale said.
Speaking to the Nile Post ,he stressed that Uganda’s demographic structure presents both a challenge and an opportunity that must be addressed through structured labour planning and education reform.
Mukitale noted that government is already rolling out what he referred to as enabling frameworks for job creation, but emphasized that the private sector will remain the main source of employment growth.
“Most of the jobs will be in the private sector. Government and public service, including teachers, cannot go beyond 500,000. So the demand for jobs every year is going to come from the private sector,” he said.
He added that this makes it critical for education institutions to prioritize relevant skills, particularly soft skills, across all levels of learning and not just at university level.
Mukitale argued that skills such as bookkeeping, health awareness, environmental management, and basic financial literacy should be embedded in the curriculum for all learners, regardless of their field of study.
“Why should we leave university without knowing bookkeeping? Whether you are an engineer or in any profession, you must have some accounting skills,” he said, calling for compulsory cross-cutting course units starting from year one of higher education.
He also pointed to the need for reforms that reflect Uganda’s largely informal economy, noting that only a small proportion of citizens are currently in formal tax registration systems.
Mukitale further observed that Uganda’s economic structure is still heavily reliant on agriculture, but transitioning towards services and manufacturing, which he said is consistent with broader development planning goals.
He added that diaspora engagement and data-driven planning should be strengthened to support national development, saying countries that have successfully leveraged diaspora skills have benefited from brain gain through returning professionals.
Mukitale concluded that the census findings and ongoing planning processes should be used to drive a shift toward a more integrated and self-sustaining economy anchored in accurate labour market data and education reform.
