learning to ensuring that graduates acquire these competencies. the theme for the silver jubilee commemoration is “ celebrating 25 years of excellence in the footsteps of the uganda martyrs ”. one of the lessons we can draw from the life of the uganda martyrs is the value of believing and adhering to what you consider the truth and the right way and sticking to this principle, no matter the cost. this is even more instructive for you who are fortunate to be educated in a faith - based institution like umu nkozi where values such as honesty and integrity are so important. my second issue is that of the changing global economy in which our graduands will be starting their careers. we are now in an era that has been labeled by such entities like the world economic forum as the “ fourth industrial revolution ”, characterized by artificial intelligence and the advent of robots. in a nutshell, this fourth industrial revolution means that human effort in a growing number of processes is being complemented and, in some cases, replaced, by computing power and robots. for example, drones are delivering blood units to hospitals and parcels in far distant places where previously human beings would have been needed to do the job. you will have heard of the driver - less vehicles or even the virtual assistants deployed in customer service centres. this digital revolution has implications for the form of training we give our students and the type of jobs that will be applicable. one of the implications of this fourth industrial revolution is that the speed of change is very high in the business world, and this means that the skills required of employees can rapidly change. also, low skill white collar jobs are being eliminated by automation. the rapid change in skills needs and plausible loss of jobs to automation means that competition for available employment opportunities will be more intense. for instance, a large number of services which were known as non - tradable have become tradable because of technology, and this has implications for protection of jobs which hitherto faced competition only within one geographical jurisdiction. graduands therefore must be keen to take advantage of the various development programs and financing schemes instituted by the government of uganda to create their own jobs. another consequence of the fourth industrial revolution is that learning new skills may become a permanent and indispensable feature of a successful career. the importance of continuous learning was put succinctly by alvin toffler, “ the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those

be taken purely on commercial criteria, without being distorted by the provision of cheap credit or other forms of finance from the government. government induced distortions in financial markets will lead to the misallocation of resources, reducing the social rate of return to these resources. modernising smallholder farming will entail smallholders making greater use of purchased farm inputs. hence modernisation will require smallholders having better access to finance. nevertheless finance is unlikely to be the binding constraint on modernisation of smallholder agriculture and unless more important constraints are tackled, enhancing smallholders ’ access to finance will be ineffective. policy measures to strengthen the provision of financial bis central bankers ’ speeches services in the rural areas must be part of a much broader set of interventions to support smallholders to adopt modern farm technology and produce for the market, of the type i have already mentioned. unless smallholders have adopted good agricultural practises, such as the use of improved seeds, proper field preparation, timely planting, weeding and pest control, proper harvest and post - harvest handling, etc – practises which can improve yields significantly – they will not be able to utilise credit effectively because their farms will not be profitable. how should government support the development of rural financial markets? the key interventions required are to alleviate the market failures which impede the delivery of financial services to farmers. for example, it is necessary to strengthen the institutional environment for loan security to reduce the credit risks of lending to farmers. strengthening land rights to allow farmers to use land as loan collateral would help to make farmers more creditworthy. the proposed establishment of a collateral securities registry and the enactment of the chattel securities bill, which is currently before parliament, will help to widen the range of assets which are acceptable to lenders as collateral. promoting the warehouse receipt system set up by the uganda commodity exchange would also be a useful measure to support lending to agriculture. microfinance institutions ( mfis ) and savings and credit cooperatives ( saccos ) are much better suited institutionally than commercial banks to serving small farmers, but they are often constrained by managerial and technical weaknesses. hence there is an important role for government to assist mfis and saccos to strengthen their management and the professional skills of their officers. the bank of uganda is encouraging the larger tier 4 mfis to upgrade to become licensed deposit taking mdis. assisting mfis and saccos to strengthen their technical and managerial capacities so that they can mobilise funds from the