A woman, who graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Development Studies, has taken a job as a bicycle bodaboda operator after searching for a job in vain.
35-year-old Halima Namusobya says she graduated from Kyambogo University in 2004 eager to start a career in social work. She says she was disappointed that after walking the streets for five years she could not get a single entry-level job for a graduate with her qualifications.
Frustrated and pressured to start making a living on her own, Namusobya obtained a loan to buy a bicycle and she is now the first female bodaboda operator in Iganga town.
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Namusobya is a well-spoken, tall, light skinned lady. She says she has attracted a lot of attention in Iganga, particularly among the other bodaboda operators, most who are illiterate or high school dropouts.
Everyday she leaves her room at Nakavule in Iganga town and heads off for work. She earns about 5,000 shillings a day, which she closely guards in the hope that it will help her start her own business in the future.
Halima Namusobya is just one of thousands of university graduates in Uganda who are unable to find jobs.
A Poverty Assessment Report released in 2001 said that Uganda would require 15.6 million jobs for its active population, aged between 15 and 64 years, by 2010. It predicted that with an unemployment rate of 23% about 4.37 million people would be jobless by 2010.
Julie Kyeyune, a trader in Jinja, says she is not a university graduate, having left school after her A-levels. She says she is shocked that a university graduate like Halima Namusobya can be unemployed for so long.
Kyeyune wants government to do more to ensure that educated and qualified youth are engaged in meaningful employment.
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Moses Okeya, a resident of Bugiri who has a Diploma in Development Studies, says he, like Namusobya, failed to get a job in social work. He blames this on the course he studied, claiming what he was taught had little relationships to the needs in the job market.
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Okeya says he is now trying his hand at journalism by freelancing for several media outlets.
Earlier this year President Yoweri Museveni said his government was working to create six million new jobs around the country.
