Museveni’s Blind Spot: Graduate Unemployment and the Vision He Refuses to See

By Julius Babyetsiza

The late Dr. Myles Munroe once said that vision is more important than people, buildings, or money, because those things are limited to what eyes can see, while vision is the product of the heart’s imagination. A leader without vision, Munroe argued, cannot take people where they need to go.

President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni is seeking re-election for an eighth term. But after nearly four decades in power, the pressing question is not whether Museveni can win another vote—it is whether he still possesses a vision for Uganda’s future. Nowhere is this question more urgent than in the crisis of graduate unemployment.

Every year, Uganda releases over half a million fresh graduates into the job market, swelling the ranks of desperate, overqualified, and underutilized youth—many turning to boda boda riding to survive. This is not merely wasted talent; it is state-sanctioned betrayal—training young people for years only to abandon them at the gate of opportunity.

And yet, when presented with a practical, scientifically-backed model, the President has remained silent.

I am referring to the Global University Business Club (GUBCCo) concept, developed from my PhD research on “Learning by doing in entrepreneurship clubs and hubs for graduates’ gainful self-employment: a study of Makerere University.” GUBCCo is not rhetoric. It is a tested proof-of-concept connecting graduates to investors, providing financing through SACCO schemes inspired by Muhammad Yunus’s microfinance revolution, and employing e-commerce innovations modeled on Amazon to market graduate enterprises.

I shared this vision publicly through an eight-part series in Pearl Times:

1. How government can save 500,000 graduates riding boda bodas
2. Tackling graduate unemployment through government-supported entrepreneurship
3. Why Ugandans deserve the development leaders see abroad
4. A smart way to connect entrepreneurs to investors
5. GUBCCo’s marketing and distribution model inspired by Amazon
6. The SACCO scheme for graduate financing
7. An open letter to President Museveni
8. Why leaders are ignoring calls to save graduates

I outlined how Uganda can rescue 500,000 graduates from precarious livelihoods, support university innovators in creating jobs, and implement a finance-and-marketing system that transforms youth desperation into national productivity. I even wrote directly to President Museveni. The response: silence.

The irony is stark. Museveni has elevated scientists’ salaries, praising science as the engine of development. Yet when science produces a practical solution like GUBCCo, he turns a blind eye. This selective attention exposes not leadership, but limitation.

Vision demands courage to confront uncomfortable truths. Uganda’s graduates are suffocating. Their anger simmers beneath the surface. Ignoring them is not merely morally bankrupt—it is politically perilous. A government that cannot provide meaningful livelihoods for its educated citizens is writing its own obituary.

Museveni’s defenders cite skilling programs, parish development models, and youth funds. But these are scattershot initiatives, lacking coherence, accountability, and structural capacity to absorb graduates into sustainable enterprise. They are band-aids on a cancer. GUBCCo is not another fund; it is an ecosystem designed to fundamentally transform how graduates engage the economy.

So why is Museveni ignoring this vision? Pride, an unwillingness to accept solutions from outside State House? Fear that empowered, economically independent graduates could challenge political control? Or inertia, a fatigue of long reign, prioritizing survival over transformation?

Whatever the cause, the consequence is the same: Uganda’s graduates are left stranded, their potential squandered, the nation’s future compromised. As Myles Munroe warned, without vision, graduates perish. Their dreams perish. Their potential perishes. And with them, Uganda’s future perishes.

President Museveni, as you campaign for another term, know this: graduates do not need slogans or handouts. They need systems that unlock their potential. GUBCCo offers such a system. It has been presented. Ignoring it is not a strength; it is “science thought” bankruptcy.

The choice is stark: be remembered as the leader who prepared Uganda for a future beyond oil and patronage, or as the one who squandered a generation’s dreams to secure one more election.

Vision is greater than power. Power without vision is tyranny.

For God and My Country,
Dr. Julius Babyetsiza (PhD, Entrepreneurship & Innovation; MSc & BSc, Economics & Statistics)
Founder, GUBCCo