East African Business Week

Kampala, Uganda-Uganda Health Marketing Group (UHMG) has partnered with the United States Agency for Economic Development to mitigate the problem of the  increasing population in the country and advocate for smaller manageable families.
In their campaign dubbed GENEXT, the three year programme will educate and breed a generation of young men and women who will educate others and have small manageable families.
The campaign that literally means generation next is heavily reliant on the peer to peer advocacy will be activated in 15 districts across the country.
The Head of Communications at UHMG, Daudi Ochieng a high population can only be a crucial resource to national development if well managed and planned.
 "High fertility and population growth is undermining Uganda's economic, social and political development reflected by increasing unemployment and food shortage," Ochieng explained.
"A smaller population will guarantee a good education, better jobs, money for food and quality of life for children which will see a stronger Uganda in terms of development."
He explained that over 256,700 youths can't find jobs every year urging that smaller families will improve the quality of life. Ochieng disproves the floating arguments that a fast growing population can be an opportunity to grow its middle class and work force reiterating  that it can only happen if the people posses the required skills. Uganda Bureau of Statistics indicates that 650,000 homes can only have one meal a day and there is just 1 doctor for almost 25,000 patients.
Ochieng forwards for a need to change the mindset of Ugandans to value small sized families and understand the relationship between family planning and development.
Rita Namuli one of the young trainees says that small manageable families eases the distribution of resources equitably among the community. "We have power shortages because the population has grown rapidly and has outpaced the capacity of the service to supply its people," Namuli said.
She adds if the population is managed, the teacher pupil ratio in schools will be balanced as one teacher has to attend to more than 100 pupils especially in govt  schools.