The line forms before Masaka City Hall opens most mornings, a queue of young people with broken streetlights to report, small business dreams to chase, and jobs to find. Nearly all of them are under 25—a fact that is not incidental to the city's governing strategy, but central to it. In Uganda, about 43 percent of young people aged 15 to 24 are neither in school, nor working, nor receiving training. For Masaka, a rapidly growing city in the southwest, those statistics are not abstract: they are the faces at the door.
Why this matters becomes clear once you understand what young people face in most of Africa. Across the continent, they are demanding more jobs and a greater say in decisions that affect their lives. As urban populations grow younger, local governments are struggling to respond. But in Masaka—a city shaped by its role as a hub along major transport corridors linking Kampala to western Uganda—those pressures have sparked not resistance, but institutional change.
When Florence Namayanja became the first woman elected mayor of Masaka City in 2021, shortly after the municipality gained city status, she arrived with a clear conviction: "We cannot plan for Masaka without planning for young people." A former member of Parliament and deputy mayor of Kampala, Namayanja understood that young people were not asking for charity. They were asking to be heard. Inside city hall, a modest office has now become one of the busiest destinations for exactly that purpose. There, Winfred Nansikombi coordinates the Masaka Youth Desk—a unit created in 2024 to strengthen direct communication between young residents and local government. "This is like a place where government and the young meet," Nansikombi says. Young people bring complaints and ideas; officials listen and act.
The desk's origins trace to Masaka's engagement with the Strong Cities Network, a global platform that connects local governments working on resilient urban governance. Through exchanges with cities such as Mombasa in Kenya, Masaka officials were exposed to new approaches for meaningful youth participation in decision-making. The results have been tangible. One story captures the scale: Brian Kato, a 22-year-old secondary school leaver from Nyendo, had spent nearly two years in casual jobs after failing to secure tertiary education. When a friend told him about the desk, he walked in without much hope. Through the Youth Desk, he was connected to a short vocational training program in carpentry run by a local partner organization. "I now know how to make furniture," Kato says. "I'm not where I want to be yet, but I'm not where I was."
Martha Nalukenge, the SDG officer at Equator University of Science and Technology in Masaka, articulates what makes this work matter: "Young people are often told they are the future, but many are struggling to find their place in the present. They need places where they can be heard and connected to opportunities." The Youth Desk answers that need directly. Nansikombi, who fields questions and relays concerns to city officials daily, observes something essential about the young people who come through the door. "They always come with ideas," she says. "Even when they are frustrated, they still come. That means they still believe something can change." In a city where most residents are under 25, that belief—and the institutions that nurture it—may be the most valuable resource of all.