The landslides that hit Bududa District, eastern Uganda, in 2010 will forever remain fresh in the memory of Emmanuel Wabwire.
Seeing desperate youth clinging to life after losing their livelihoods to the landslides which claimed hundreds of people inspired Wabwire to help vulnerable people.
The 30-year-old, who at the time was working with Uganda Red Cross Society, says after helping people affected by landslides, he started thinking about how they would survive since they had lost homes and gardens.
He later joined Uganda Christian University in 2011, to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in Development Studies, a course he thought would enable him serve the community directly.
In his first year at the university, Wabwire registered a company called the International Development Students Society. He established it alongside Eric van Zanden from Netherlands and Julius Oboth, a fellow Ugandan. Wabwire was the CEO.
Wabwire says their organisation believed that students are the backbone of development in Africa and, therefore, they sought to develop their entrepreneurial skills.
They started engaging youth is enterprises that helped them earn some income. They also did charitable activities and capacity building.
“It was more of a social enterprise which was doing youth camps and social empowerment,” Wabwire says.
“We fundraised about Shs167 million that we used to support needy students to finish their studies,’’ he adds.
The organisation’s popularity saw Wabwire elected as the university Guild President in 2012.
“With the experience from Red Cross and now as the Guild President, we started car washes, shoe polish drives, opened markets on university premises and class to class collections just to help fundraise tuition for the disadvantaged students,” he notes.
Sadly, the organisation didn’t live long enough to see its fourth birthday. It had started struggling and crumbling down, because they didn’t have a clear business plan and strategy. They also lacked enough finances to keep its sustainability.
But all was not lost for Wabwire. In 2013, he founded the Faraja Africa Foundation, a social enterprise that runs several businesses in social impacting, technology, communications, and safaris.
Faraja Africa Foundation is focussed on educating, engaging and empowering the youth with digital skills in social entrepreneurship skills.
Wabwire says the money they earn is used to economically empower young people as well as engage them in political affairs.
Wabwire has lived to see his brainchild grow into big, unprecedented heights.
The organization is known for championing the National and Regional Youth Parliaments in Eastern Africa. Over the past year, it has championed two National Youth Parliaments in Burundi, one in Kenya, one in Rwanda, one in South Sudan, four in Uganda and two in Tanzania.
Since then, Wabwire has gone places. Since 2015, he has been the youth chairperson of Uganda National Commission for UNESCO. He is the founder and Managing Director of Faraja Safaris, a tour operating company he founded in 2016.
Currently he serves as the chairperson of the Uganda Christian University Alumni Association since March 2021. He also holds a master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) from the Catholic University of Milan, Italy.
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