Dr. Patricia Ojangole, the managing director of Uganda Development Bank (UDB), has urged the government to support the scaling up of national development banks like UDB if they are to make a real impact in the lives of the people. Ojangole was speaking on the second day of the Uganda Development Finance Summit organised by the bank.
“Governments must support them by providing capital that is directed toward the right interventions. If governments do not finance National Development Banks, then someone else will, and that funding will inevitably serve their own agenda rather than the government’s agenda,” she said during a session on “Reimagining National Development Banks as Architects of Inclusive and Sustainable Transformation”.
Kasule Lumumba, the minister for General Duties in the Office of the Prime Minister, thanked UDB for demystifying the notion that development banks are only for big investors.
“By establishing a facility for women and youth, they ensure that if 30% of a company or project is owned by youth, women, or both, it is eligible for support,” she said.
Jeremiah Dan-Okayi, Head, Strategy, Policy and Innovation, Development Bank of Nigeria, said many SMEs in Africa can’t scale because they have no access to capital.
“Our job is to ensure that we help them fulfil their potential by catalyzing access to financing. In Nigeria, just 10% of capital is channeled to SMEs. One of the reasons why banks were not lending to SMEs is that they did not understand the space. When we started around 8 years ago, we put 5 banks in an 18-month programme to teach them how to understand SMEs,” he said.
Frank Aswani, CEO of AVPA, said that while Africa represented the largest impact opportunity in the world, it lacks sufficient competence in the innovative finance space.
Dr Monica Musenero, the minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, has said Uganda is leveraging technology and innovation to drive economic growth.
“If you want to take part in economic transformation, then you have to be a deeper participant in technology. One, you must understand what the economy is and what technology is. Just because you have access to artificial intelligence does not mean that you are benefiting from it,” she said during a panel discussion on “Economic Transformation in a Technologically Driven World.”
She said most financial institutions are wired to make it so difficult for you to access money, something that has limited access to money to fund innovation in Uganda and Africa.
The two-day summit attracted participants from various economic fields from across Africa.
