KAMPALA — Uganda’s youth unemployment crisis is hard to ignore. The 2024 census paints an uncomfortable picture: 16.1 percent of young people are out of work, more than 10 million are neither employed nor in training, and another 700,000 enter the job market each year.
Inside the National ICT Innovation Hub in Nakawa, though, a different story is quietly unfolding.
Beyond its walls lies a labour market that cannot absorb the sheer number of young people searching for opportunities. But within it, something is beginning to shift.
It was against this backdrop that Allen Kagina, a trustee on the MTN Foundation Board, walked through the facility earlier this week and arrived at a conclusion that felt both simple and striking.
“This is working.”
The confidence wasn’t abstract. It came from what she saw.
Since 2022, the MTN ACE Tech Programme, supported by MTN Uganda and implemented by Centenary Technology Services, has quietly transformed the Hub into one of the country’s most ambitious responses to youth unemployment. It is Uganda’s premier publicly owned technology facility, designed not just to train, but to move young people from learning to earning.
More than 32,125 individuals have already passed through its programmes. Of these, 19,781 are male, 12,248 female, and 96 are differently abled. For those who complete advanced training, the outcomes are striking: nine in ten find employment or launch a business within six months.
For Kagina, the impact becomes clear in the smallest details.
She paused at the computer lab, noting that for many trainees, this is their first access to a fully equipped, connected workstation. “That is the difference between a young person who has potential and one who can act on it,” she said.
Nearby, a video conferencing suite hums quietly—less a technical feature than a gateway. Uganda’s National BPO Policy aims to tap into a global outsourcing market worth over $250 billion, positioning the country as a service hub.
“A young professional with the right skills can serve a client in London or New York from this building,” Kagina said. “The conferencing suite is not a convenience. It is a job-creation tool.”
In another room, 3D printers bring ideas into physical form. For young innovators, it is the moment where imagination meets reality. Kagina described it as collapsing one of the most expensive stages of innovation—the leap from concept to prototype.
Taken together, the spaces form a deliberate journey. “You learn. You collaborate. You build. You tell your story. You pitch. That is what an enabling environment looks like.”
For those running the Hub, that transformation has been hard-won.
“Before this programme, we had the mandate but not the means,” said Flavia Opio, who heads the facility. “MTN Uganda’s investment has made it possible for us to actually be the infrastructure Uganda’s Digital Transformation Roadmap and NDP IV need.”
Behind the scenes, the change is as much about systems as it is about space. Steven Kirenga, General Manager for Product and Business Development at Centenary Technology Services, pointed to the operational processes built into the Hub—from onboarding innovators to managing incubation and ensuring compliance.
“Equipment can be replaced. Processes define what an institution can do,” he said. “We did not just equip this Hub. We gave it an operating system.”
The stakes extend far beyond Nakawa.
Uganda’s development plan targets nearly 885,000 new jobs each year through 2030. The formal sector alone cannot absorb that demand. The future, increasingly, lies in digital work, entrepreneurship, and services that cross borders without requiring travel.
Standing in the Hub, Kagina framed it in practical terms.
“MTN Uganda is not waiting for someone else to solve the part it can solve,” she said. “What I saw today is serious investment, sustained over years, measured honestly.”
The programme is now entering its next phase, with plans to expand to cities including Gulu, Kabale, Busitema, and Soroti—taking the model beyond Kampala.
For the young people inside the Hub, the shift is already tangible. For millions still outside it, the question remains open.
But in this building, at least, the numbers—and the lives behind them—are beginning to move in a different direction.