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Josephine Okot Quotes

born 1970

‎‎Josephine Okot is a Ugandan businesswoman, entrepreneur and corporate executive, who is the founder, managing director and chief executive officer of Victoria Seeds Limited, an agribusiness enterprise based in Uganda that processes, packages and markets agricultural seeds to farmers in the countries of the African Great Lakes.

Random Josephine Okot quote

31 quotes

The training was for scientists but they brought me in as a woman in business.

We need people to advise farmers on how to apply fertiliser.

That is a business for men, they told me.

They said business is a male dominated area and that the private seed industry hardly existed in Uganda.

Control pests and prevent post-harvest losses such as those caused by inadequate storage.

It is enterprises that are the critical drivers, they drive demand from farmers.

To bring a seed from breeder stage to the market can take three years.

If donors want to achieve their objectives, if they want to improve livelihoods, they should focus on businesses that add value to output.

I named it after the largest body of water on the continent.

The hand held hoe should no longer be a tool of production.

Donors should focus on those higher up the value chain.

The bank then accepted to give me startup capital.

You need confidence and to believe in yourself.

The bank actually shut the door in my face.

The following year I got the YARA award.

In the early years it gave me the confidence every day to wake up and say, I am not going anywhere.

I pushed on and even picked up a name that would inspire me every day.

I felt it showed that I will always be here.

They wrote me a letter to take to the bank to guarantee my loan if I fail to repay it.

I'm much too loud, you have a horrible office, I'm not coming back.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Josephine Okot (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.