Sebei National Youth Movement – Tingey County Youth Spotlight Series
Tingey County is home to vibrant, resilient, and hardworking young people spread across its sub counties and parishes. Yet behind this resilience lies deep frustration and quiet pain. Every day, young people wake up ready to work, to organize, and to contribute to the development of their communities—but they are constantly pushed back by barriers they did not create. Slowly, hope is being replaced by exhaustion, and ambition by survival.
Across the parishes of Tingey County, youth are not short of ideas or energy. What they lack is a system that recognizes their dignity, protects their labor, and opens doors instead of closing them.
Unemployment and Limited Livelihood Options
Unemployment in Tingey County is not just a statistic—it is a daily reality that shapes how young people live, plan, and dream. With almost no formal job opportunities, many youth are forced into subsistence agriculture, casual labor, or informal trade that barely sustains them.
Dreams of stable income, independence, and personal growth are postponed year after year. The absence of vocational training centers, start-up capital, access to land, and reliable markets has trapped many young people in cycles of underemployment and poverty. Time passes, energy fades, and frustration grows as opportunities remain out of reach.
Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) and Conservation Pressures
In sub counties and parishes (Chema, Chebonet, Munarya, Sipi and Kabeywa) neighboring protected areas, young people live under fear and strict conservation regimes that directly affect their survival. While conservation is important and necessary, youth in Tingey County continue to bear its heaviest costs.
Access to land, forests, and natural resources has steadily diminished, yet meaningful compensation, alternative livelihoods, or structured benefit-sharing have not followed. Many young people feel punished simply for living near protected areas. Traditional coping mechanisms have disappeared, replaced by restrictions without viable alternatives.
Most painful is the exclusion. Youth report little to no involvement in conservation-related planning, employment, or enterprise opportunities. As a result, conservation is experienced as something imposed on communities rather than built with them—fueling frustration, resentment, and a sense of injustice.
Neglected Tourism and District-Level Failure
Tourism should have been a lifeline for Tingey County’s youth. Instead, it has become another source of disappointment.
Young people engaged in guiding, cultural experiences, hospitality, and nature-based initiatives describe a complete lack of support from the district tourism office. Tourism trails are poorly maintained or completely neglected, cutting off visitor access and destroying income opportunities for youth who depend on them.
What hurts most is the silence. Many young people cannot recall the last time district tourism officials visited Tingey’s parishes to assess challenges, provide technical guidance, or even listen. This prolonged absence sends a painful message—that youth-led tourism initiatives in Tingey County are not a priority. As a result, a sector with enormous potential remains inaccessible to the very youth who could sustain it.
Quarrying Sites and Exploitative Labor Practices
Stone quarrying has become a desperate source of income for many young people across Tingey’s parishes. What should be dignified labor has instead turned into exploitation.
Youth describe working conditions that resemble semi-slavery: extremely low pay, long hours, dangerous environments, no contracts, and no protective gear. Injuries are common, medical support is nonexistent, and security is absent. Despite extracting enormous value from community land, quarry operators invest nothing back into youth development, health services, or local infrastructure.
What remains are broken bodies, degraded land, and deep resentment—an exchange that strips young people of dignity while enriching others.
Corruption, Nepotism, and Access to Public Opportunities
Perhaps the deepest wound carried by Tingey County’s youth is betrayal.
Across the parishes, young people speak with pain and anger about how they campaigned tirelessly for leaders—Members of Parliament and local council officials—believing in promises of change. Once elections ended, many of these leaders became distant, unreachable, and indifferent.
Instead of service, youth say they encountered corruption, nepotism, and exclusion. Government jobs and opportunities are widely believed to be reserved for relatives, friends, and those who can afford bribes. Qualified and committed young people are sidelined, humiliated, and silenced.
Recent recruitment processes in the wider Kapchorwa area are cited as painful reminders that fairness has been replaced by money and connections. This reality has crushed trust in public institutions and left many youth questioning whether honesty, participation, and civic engagement still matter.
The Parish Perspective
At parish level, youth leaders continue to organize savings groups, farming collectives, and advocacy forums—refusing to give up entirely. These efforts demonstrate resilience and determination, but they are weakened by poor institutional support and a lack of accountability from those in power.
Young people are tired of token consultations and empty promises. They want transparency, fair access to opportunities, and genuine inclusion in decisions that shape their lives and futures.
Youth need jobs, skills, and protection—not speeches. Transparent recruitment processes, enforcement of labor standards at quarry sites, genuine community benefit-sharing from tourism, meaningful youth inclusion in conservation, and decisive action against corruption are no longer optional.
Tingey’s youth are not asking for favors.
They are asking for a future where hard work matters, participation counts, and hope is no longer punished.
