The Uganda’s perspective, status and implementation of the National leather value chain Strategies

Uganda is transforming her leather value chain to a modern and competitive sub-sector, aiming at production of value-added leather materials and leather products from the abundant raw hides and skins at the slaughter houses and abattoirs. The challenge though is the exportation of about 95% of the wet blue product, which is the only processed leather material for export from Uganda. More still, the quantity of wet blue produced and exported from Uganda stands at 1.08 million pieces from hides and 2.01 million pieces from goats and sheep skins amounting to 17.28 m sq. ft and 7.04m sq. Ft, respectively. In total this translates to about 24.32m sq. ft of finished leather if it was to be processed from within Uganda. Taking an average square foot of 2.5 sq. ft per pair of shoes, then this output would give about 9.73m pairs of leather shoes. Since Uganda needs about 25 m pairs of leather shoes per annum, it implies that there would be a deficit of about 16.88 m pairs of shoes per annum. This deficit has been covered by importing about 0.5 m pairs of leather shoes per annum and about 23.5 m pairs of synthetic leather shoes and second-hand shoes combined. Now Uganda exports about 24.32 m sq. ft worth of leather (about 9.73m pairs of shoes) and imports about 0.5 m pairs of leather shoes which is a sixteenth of what is exported. Exportation of unfinished products for processing elsewhere goes with jobs and services as well. For this reason, wet blue product made in Uganda need to be further processed in the country to avail leather and leather products, service like Design Studios, facilities, e.g., incubation centers and jobs. The information about tanneries was obtained by use of a questionnaire in which respondents were tannery industry production managers. In addition, documentary review of the world population on Uganda, Ministry of Trade Industry and Cooperatives (MTIC) abstracts and UBOS census 2014 reports were also used as the source of data. According to the Uganda census 2014, the country’s primary and secondary going children are 10,113,201 students. If for example these students wear leather shoes at 35,000/= per pair per annum then the leather Sector would earn 353bn UGX per annum. This contribution would be about 56 times that which tourism is contributing towards the GDP of Uganda, implying that the leather sector in Uganda, if emphasised could stimulate economic growth of the country.