For many nations in Africa, the turn of the New Year was marked by a sense of hope. After a period of economically damaging lockdowns – the only public health tool at most African governments’ disposal owing to a continent-wide dearth of vaccines – economies are now beginning to reopen. We are at last embarking on our respective, though interconnected, journeys to economic recovery.

For many of us, this means an urgent need to fast-track our industrialisation agendas, which have been slowed – or in some cases halted entirely – by the pandemic.

In Uganda, some two years of lockdown of the entertainment, tourism and night economies have exerted pressure on productivity. The manufacturing and light assembly sectors hold the most promise of creating the kinds of jobs that can put our economy back on track.

Moreover, like most African economies, ours is dominated by agriculture, with some 70% of our near 50m population employed by the sector. Many of these are small-holder farmers, who lack sufficient access to crucial services like finance and banking. Making the shift from raw materials exports to agro-processing is critical therefore not only to our post-Covid economic recovery, but to bringing millions out of poverty in general.