Meet Tony Otoa, the man who teaches Ugandan businesses how to do business in a business-like way

Today, 19th December 2019, Tony Okao Otoa will pass out yet another cohort of SME executives, after a 3 months rigorous business mentoring and coaching in all aspects of business at Stanbic Bank’s The Business Incubator programme. Otoa’s job is no ordinary job- he teaches or rather is a sort of headmaster for an ‘institution’ that teaches Ugandan businesses how to do business in a business-like manner.
Born out of a need to prop up SMEs that are Uganda’s engine of growth, by Stanbic Bank, Uganda’s biggest bank and initially tailored for SMEs focused on serving the nascent oil and gas industry, the programme has quickly gained demand across the entire SMEs and start-up spectrum. The Oxford Brookes University alumni, who has spent a better part of his career in supporting national/local content in the oil and gas sector, in this interview with CEO East Africa’s Muhereza Kyamutetera, passionately shares lessons learnt, successes made but more importantly, what more needs to be done- to build a thriving SME ecosystem in Uganda- beyond just words and the usual grandstanding.