The World Bank’s latest assessment of Uganda should unsettle policymakers not because it predicts economic collapse, but because it exposes a far more dangerous illusion: that economic growth, by itself, is enough. It isn’t. For years, Uganda has celebrated respectable GDP growth, expanded infrastructure and the promise of an oil-producing future. Yet beneath those encouraging indicators lies a labour market that is steadily failing the country’s greatest asset, its young people. The World Bank’s finding that roughly 650,000 Ugandans enter the labour market each year while only about 17,000 formal jobs are created is not merely a statistical imbalance. It is a warning that the country’s development model is no longer matching its demographic reality. The central question is therefore not whether Uganda is growing. It is whether that growth is creating opportunity. If the answer is no, then growth risks becoming politically fragile and socially divisive. An economy where nearly 90 per cent of workers remain trapped in the informal sector is one in which millions survive without stable incomes. social protection or meaningful prospects for advancement. Young graduates compete for scarce jobs while many others abandon formal employment altogether for subsistence businesses that offer little security or productivity. Families invest heavily in education only to discover that qualifications no longer guarantee employment. That disconnect carries consequences beyond economics. Persistent unemployment erodes public confidence, widens inequality and fuels frustration among a generation that is increasingly educated, connected and aware of opportunities elsewhere. The World Bank’s reports point to another painful truth. Uganda’s challenge is not simply a shortage of investment but the quality of that investment. When nearly one-third of infrastructure spending is lost through weaknesses in planning, procurement and implementation, the country is effectively taxing its own future. Every inefficient project represents roads unfinished, schools under-equipped and businesses deprived of the infrastructure they need to create jobs. The same caution applies to Uganda’s approaching oil era. History offers countless examples of countries that mistook natural resource wealth for sustainable development. Oil revenues can finance transformation, but they cannot substitute for sound institutions, disciplined public spending or a competitive private sector. As the World Bank rightly observes, the real question is not how much Uganda will earn from oil, but what lasting assets it will leave behind. The government’s recognition of these challenges is encouraging. Finance Minister Henry Musasizi has acknowledged that stronger fiscal management and job creation must remain national priorities. Recognition, however, must now give way to execution. Uganda’s next decade should be judged less by the size of its economic growth rate than by the number of productive jobs it creates. That requires more efficient public investment, better schools that equip young people with marketable skills, stronger support for manufacturers and agribusinesses, easier access to finance for entrepreneurs and a regulatory environment that rewards enterprise rather than bureaucracy. Equally important is accountability. Public resources must produce measurable economic returns, not simply impressive budget figures or ambitious announcements. Uganda possesses enviable advantages: a youthful population, strategic geography, fertile agricultural land and growing regional markets. Those strengths can become engines of prosperity only if institutions convert potential into employment. The country’s greatest resource is not the oil beneath its soil. It is the ambition of the young people above it. If Uganda fails to create opportunities for them, no amount of economic growth will be enough. If it succeeds, the country’s demographic surge will become its greatest competitive advantage rather than its greatest policy challenge.The post Editorial: Uganda doesn’t have a growth problem. It has a jobs problem appeared first on The Observer Media Ltd.