Grab A Coffee: Tourism MSME's And Finance Access

Um, Amos, I, I wanted you to speak to something, and I think that you're confirming, uh, Dr. Enoch's worries, which is, if I as a banker, and I'm typically thinking about it as a banker, if I as a banker, Mr. Issa Kato comes and says, "I've got bookings, um, here that show I'm going to get 700 guests, so I need $2.3 million," and I look at the history of what has happened, I might start to think Raymond's money, Juliana's money, Nwanne's money cannot go to someone who, if I give it to them and they announce an Ebola, and then they shut down, then someone's money will be lost in the process.

Aren't you confirming the fears that bankers have, that this is a very volatile industry?

Yeah, of course.

Bankers mainly are business people.

That's why even our banks are as small as, as us, the population.

This gentleman can tell you, Uganda's got 23 profitable banks, right? And Kenya's got, for example, and we discussed this before, Kenya's got 35 profitable banks.

All our 23 profitable banks, their profit last, last 2020, 2025 was 2.17 trillion shillings.

Am I lying? It's a fact.

That is not even equivalent to one bank in Kenya, which is Kenya Commercial Bank, uh, in terms of profit.

So we are actually a very small group of people.

So don't walk around feeling very important.

None of us is actually very important.

We are poor.

Uh, we have seen the statistics the man has given.

So we have ...

But we have so much potential, though.

We have so much potential, but we also have to appreciate the fact that we cannot do without proper positioning of our country.

If we actually put a lot of efforts, supported Uganda Tourism Board, supported foreign affairs, I really thank the f- what some of the wo- some of the embassies, uh, the work they're doing actually across, across the world, and made sure we controlled information, this country would see opportunities that we've never seen, uh, before.

And, and also we need, of course, to continue making sure that we probably have Uganda Tourism Board engaging with, for example, European, European Union.

I was looking at the statistics for 2025, 2026 for tourists.

Last year, the total we had out of the whole of Europe was 49,000 tourists.

From whole of Europe.

How many countries are there? 50? Probably.

I don't know how many the countries are, but that's what we got, what, what we had.

And I was comparing with citizens, yeah.