Stimulating youth entrepreneurial mindset and orientation: experiences from the students’ enterprise scheme at Gulu University

Enhancing the entrepreneurship orientation of the youth is now considered the best approach to increasing employability and employment. Responding to calls for entrepreneurship programs to be more practical in nature, Gulu University developed an agribusiness innovation model, referred to as the Student Enterprise Scheme (SES). Through this scheme, Gulu University currently runs an Agribusiness Incubation Hub (AIH) aimed at changing the mindset of youths in the university to become more entrepreneurial. Under the A IH, students’ business plans are subjected to vetting and scrutiny by a multi-disciplinary committee comprising of both university and non-university staff. To date, 38 student incubates have completed their mentorship cycles, while additional 57 are undergoing mentorship. The AIH has been able to change the entrepreneurial mindset of university students through business mentorshjp, training and practical business management. Given its success within the university, the students enterprise scheme has been piloted in other contexts including technical and vocational institutes, refuges communities, and among smallholder farmers. In all these contexts, we observe that the agribusiness innovation model is effective in entrenching an entrepreneurial mindset amongst the youth, and has received wide acceptance amongst entrepreneurship practitioners. We therefore recommend that the agribusiness innovation model be rod led out to other relevant contexts, universities and institutions as a basis for entrepreneurship mentorship and training.