Who is Aga Sekalala Sr? Flash Uganda Media looks at his biography, age, wife, family, tribe, achievements, and relationship with Aga Sekalala Jr., Mulwana, Blasberg, the early life and education of the owner of Ugachick Poultry Breeders and Sekalala Enterprises.
Aga Sekalala Sr. is an entrepreneur, business executive, management training consultant and investor from Uganda.
He is the owner of Ugachick Poultry Breeders and Sekalala Enterprises.
Early Life and Education
Aga Sekalala also known as Aga Sekalala Senior was born in Uganda and raised by parents who were business people and traders.
He is married and a father with one of his children being Aga Sekalala Jr.
Aga Sekalala, from humble beginnings, dropped out of Wandegeya Islamic School in Junior three.
During the run-up to Uganda’s independence, he became a vibrant youth wing activist in the UPC.
During Tanzania’s TANU’s search for better organising skills in Tanganyika, he was later asked to represent the TANU youth wingers at a conference in Denmark at the age of eighteen.
Following the conference, he was given the opportunity to connect to London, where he would live with Britons for the next five years.
He used his stay to pursue a long-awaited dream: formal education while working odd jobs to support himself.
He studied for his A-levels in England, UK and completed a Diploma in Journalism at the London School of Journalism.
Sekalala pursued his desire by earning an Advanced Diploma in Journalism at the London School of TV Production with an emphasis on TV production.
He even secured funding from the previous government of Uganda, which covered his tuition and provided him with a much-needed stipend.
Career and Professional Work Experience
Starting out, Aga Sekalala Sr. worked alongside his father in a home-based, impromptu coffee processing business in the 1950s. Business in Uganda at that time was exclusively the domain of the Indian community.
Processing, packing, shipping, business development and most importantly, how to persevere in life were all things he learned from his father.
After spending five years in the UK, he took his first job at Uganda Television (UTV at the time), which is now known as Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC).
Before the Amin War of the 1970s generated enough difficulties, he served as an information officer for the government of Buganda.
He then worked for the Management Training and Advisory Centre (MTAC) to support the development of Ugandans’ capacity for business creation and operation.
As an information and documentation officer, he and his group produced the radio program Double Your Money, which aired on Radio Uganda. It was developed as an educational part to encourage Ugandans to conduct business all throughout the nation.
In 1972, Sekalala Sr. left his well-paying job to join the business world when President Idi Amin expelled Asians from Uganda.
He has been involved in a variety of businesses, including fuel trading, catering and hospitality (with Lion Hotel, which later became Lion Shopping Centre), steel tool manufacturing (with S- Engineering), vanilla and fish farming (at Magigye and on the shores of L.Victoria), and agrochemical importation with Sekalala Enterprises Ltd.
In 1992, Sekalala founded Ugachick Poultry Breeders Uganda Limited, commonly referred to as Ugachick, a poultry breeding and marketing company in Magigye, on the Namulonge Road, a few kilometres from Gayaza.
When the company first began, it was co-owned by Aga Sekalala Sr, James Mulwana, and their Dutch partner, Hans Blasberg.
In 1997, Ugachick Poultry Breeders was in dire financial straits. Mulwana and Blasberg withdrew and sold their shares to Aga after seeing no light at the end of the tunnel.
Aga Sekalala Sr. then continued managing the business until later when he handed over the management to his son Aga Sekalala Jr.
Achievements and Awards
Aga Sekalala Senior is one of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs, with decades of experience in agro-business. His vast business empire, whose flagship brand is Ugachick, directly and indirectly employs thousands of people.
Sekalala Sr. is the author of ‘Double Your Money’. This autobiography basically contains three messages.
First, Aga Sekalala’s life is the subject of the book. Second, it deals with being and establishing one’s self as a businessperson in a nation where political and economic institutions are either nonexistent or imperfectly in place.
Third, despite the societal chaos all around it, the novel vividly illustrates the strength of the tenacious intellect and what it is capable of.
At the conclusion of the book, one is impressed by a very clever and practical businessperson who overcame challenges and created a massive agro-business empire.
The title is derived from a series of radio dramas that aired on Radio Uganda in the 1970s and 1980s and were scripted and produced by Aga Sekalala himself during his time at MTAC.
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