Dr Yusuf Byaruhanga (left) explains the use of the machines at the faculty’s incubation centre

By Sylvia Juuko

INCUBATION centers that nurture budding and youthful entrepreneurs is what higher learning institutions need to produce job creators.

Makerere University’s department of food science and technology set up such a centre to nurture business start-ups for continuing students.

Professor John Muyonga, head of department is optimistic that the stage has been set to create 200 direct jobs annually.

“We want to facilitate commercialisation of research and knowledge. Under this initiative, an incubator centre was created for nurturing start-ups,” he explains.

He says the core clientele are students, researchers and in some unique cases, non-students.

As an incentive to churn out different ideas, the faculty has engaged students in competition in which experts are brought in to evaluate products and award marks.

“The winners are given money to market, test and tell us where the product has been sold and the level of capacity,” he explains.

The students are also trained in entrepreneurship which is not a core part of the food science and technology course.

“This training supports their efforts and because of this, many products moved from books to the market; most of them at a small level,” he said.

At the end of last year, about 50 jobs were created out of the incubation centre initiatives.

He said there were a range of products that have been produced under the food, technology and business incubation centre.

Some of the projects that have created jobs include a group that has made bushera (fermented non-alcoholic drink) which is well packaged, cheaper but filled with nutrients.

Another equally interesting product is the Tofu, also know as Soya bean curd that can be substituted for meat. It has a meat like taste. It is a source of protein with no cholesterol and low in saturated fat.

Nutrient rich cookies i.e. vitamins, minerals, groundnuts which adds nutrition

Others include sausages, flour-nutrient enhanced mixture (beans, millet, Soya) or (rice, Soya and grains) that can be used to make cookies, Juice and jam from goose berries.

Plans are underway to create a forum that will link technology developers and entrepreneurs and funders that will facilitate turning research ideas into products

“We want to liaise with the Private Sector Foundation (PSFU) and the Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) and link them to technology developers on how to move forward. Options include either selling off the technology or the developer could become a shareholder which will help us produce practical graduates,” he stressed.

Muyonga says the department has 12 different types of technologies that are being fine-tuned and will be available for scaling up into projects.

Some of these include oil made from fish for vitamins, grain amaranth from seeds, producing noodles, syrup from maize that can be used as a sweetener, highly nutritious pudding, standardising banana beer.

Work is on to make sweet potatoes last longer without peels and water, fruit based toffee with high nutrition content, ready to cook vegetable, technology that can enable passion fruit have a longer shelf life, among others.

“The concept is to modernise traditional technology or foods or put science into traditional technology or foods. We have not contributed to international cuisine because we have not applied technology to our products,” he said.

The plan is also to roll out from the department to take the technology to areas that supply the raw materials.

Following President Yoweri Museveni’s visit last year, the department was allocated some funds from the National budget for its reach and technology activities.

The Department is in the process of procuring a mobile fruit processing unit that can be located in fruit producing areas.

“We want to set up micro projects away from Makerere but they must fit within the budget. We want to facilitate entrepreneurs but not turn Makerere into a business model,” he emphasised.

He pointed out the importance of venture capital that can be used as a source of funding to scale up the small enterprises set up by students to allow them to expand.

“Our primary role is social marketing. If we substituted 30% of artificial drinks on the market with our products that have high nutritional value, we would have made a contribution,” he said.