Uganda Targets Costly Business Advice With Standards and Certification

Bad business advice has cost Ugandan entrepreneurs both money and years of effort, according to Trade, Industry and Cooperatives Minister Sanjay Tanna. The government is moving to raise the quality of that advice through standards, certification and professional regulation. The stakes extend beyond better consultancy: officials want small businesses, farmer organisations and cooperatives to build the records, management systems and commercial relationships needed to attract investment, according to Nile Post Uganda (direct).

Tanna’s message was delivered by the ministry’s Head of Human Resource Management, Dez Atwebembire, at a gathering in Kampala marking the tenth anniversary of the AgriBusiness Market Ecosystem Alliance, or AMEA. The minister said enterprise support needed to become more consistent and effective, rather than a series of disconnected interventions whose benefits fade. The reforms target business development services—the advice and practical support that help enterprises improve how they operate.

Making advice accountable

The government and its partners have already developed service standards and a framework for professionalising providers, Tanna said. A certification framework is also being developed, using regional practices as a benchmark, with the aim of helping Ugandan professionals secure qualifications recognised outside the country. The government is working with AMEA, a platform for business support professionals and other partners to finalise and put that framework into use.

The next challenge is to make those rules matter when enterprise support programmes select and pay service providers. Tanna said standards and certification should shape both procurement and delivery, so public spending purchases worthwhile support rather than simply funding activity. His argument was that small business owners cannot easily absorb the losses caused by repeated poor advice.

Tanna’s message: access to finance and business support should reinforce each other, rather than compete for attention.

That distinction matters because a shortage of capital is only part of the problem, the minister said. Many enterprises lack reliable records, sound governance and market relationships that give financiers confidence their money can be deployed safely. He also connected stronger agricultural businesses and cooperatives to food security. Producing more food alone would not create a resilient system without better storage, processing, transport and aggregation—the collection of produce from multiple farmers.

From scattered projects to local ownership

AMEA Global Network Director Mark Blackett said the alliance was founded in 2016 amid concern that development organisations were running fragmented projects and repeating approaches with limited lasting results. Its early work focused on assembling a peer-reviewed set of practical tools for service providers. It also spent six years supporting an international standard to help farmer organisations operate as professional businesses. But global work only delivers if local institutions value and use it, he said, pointing to growing government and private-sector involvement in Uganda.

Harrison Kaziro, AMEA’s Uganda network facilitator, said organisations had long duplicated projects without sharing information or lessons, sometimes without involving government. He identified the formation of the Uganda Business Support Professionals platform as an important step towards self-regulation, advocacy and eventual certification. He said national policy and standards could strengthen support for agribusinesses and farmer organisations if stakeholders commit to implementation.

What matters next is whether the certification framework is completed, put into practice and reflected in how support programmes operate. Blackett urged partners to build on the foundations already established. Tanna set a more tangible test for the next decade: not the volume of rules produced, but whether farmers and small agro-processing businesses become stronger, more sustainable and more competitive.