Put farming at the centre of entrepreneurship ventures

Editor, Re: Bank Rwanda’s future growth on Youth ‘Tech-preneurs’ (Sunday Times May 21) Ideally, that situation room should have been pitched on a large-scale commercial farm more than elsewhere. That is where the magic begins: the food basket. This simple and usually overlooked inflation variable has far more wide reaching roots and tentacles than we ever imagined. There is a reason why the U.S. subsidies her wheat farmers; the Europeans live and die by their Common Agriculture Policy which pools funding to subsidise her farmers. For once costs have been pulled out or brought down in the food basket - a primal basic necessity - disposable incomes shoot up. This feeds into a higher savings rate as well as a heightened propensity to consume. Such savings form pools of capital that your local bank would then go ahead to lend to the numerous Nsenga Buchanas of this world at beaten-down low interest rates, thereby giving rise to several mushrooming tech-prenuers in all manner of fields. Food prices insipidly determine our much vaunted cost of capital, and thus advancements being made elsewhere. Gwanga Mujjye ************************* Spot on! The Rwanda Stock Exchange should watch this space and list one of the successful tech-preneurs or entrepreneurs. This will then have an upward spiral effect. There is another young man equally with high potential in the waste management space. He operates a business in Nyamagabe. These young people are the fellows who will provide jobs to thousands of Rwandans and Africans. Al

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Put farming at the centre of entrepreneurship ventures