Paulinho Muzaliwa - Social Entrepreneurship in African Refugee Camps

Paulinho Muzaliwa is a social entrepreneur passionate about regenerative agriculture and founder of the Unidos Social Innovation Center in Uganda, East Africa. 

As a refugee facing personal setbacks and challenges, Paulinho’s dream is to transform refugee camps into regenerative communities where every refugee can access clean water, abundant food, and quality education.

He believes that change and progress come from within the community and demonstrates how refugees can become change-makers by leveraging their unique experiences and skills to develop innovative solutions. 

In our conversation Paulinho emphasizes the importance of moving beyond reliance on humanitarian aid by fostering local leadership and sustainable practices. 

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform to learn how to become an authentic and emotionally engaging leader.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn.

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TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: So Paulinho, I want to ask you just to get to know you a little bit. Growing up, were there any specific person, people, events that somehow have impacted who you are today?

Paulinho Muzaliwa: Not really. I grew up in a memory, which is a little bit modest, not so much poor and not so much rich. My dream was to be a pilot.

Once I was not being able to go to university, so I chose to being an accountant. I met in secondary school. I done business and demonstrative administration. After finish up, it was quite hard to push and walk him. And all my dream really disappeared. So I gave up to all my dream. Being a refugee is kind of starting a new life.

Stephen Matini: Going through challenges, life in general, how do you keep your spirit positive? How do you keep the hope? 

Paulinho Muzaliwa: How I keep the or stay positive is understand that all my life have been challenging. And in order to be successful or in order to have a decent life, I need to be satisfied of what I have and cherish, also connect to myself. And the most of it is if things are not good right now, as long as I work hard, so I expect something positive will come no matter the time that we spend on these things.

So I try to be optimistic because the worst part of my life is what I have done. I just want to be more positive so that I cherish all the moments that I'm having right now.

Stephen Matini: And this is something that you also share with entrepreneurs. You know, to be an entrepreneur, you must have a vision. You must constantly fight self-doubts, challenges, insecurities and problems. How did you get to social entrepreneurship? What attracted you to this? 

Paulinho Muzaliwa: Yeah, exactly. So I think there is so many facts that has motivated me to jump into this based on the challenges that are accounted in being a refugee. The first one was language barrier, which has been most affected young people here in refugee settlements to get access to employment.

Four percentage of refugee are unemployed. And this due to language barrier, lack of experience, rigid education. So all this prevents people to get access. Job markets is quite also low in Uganda. So we have been able to at least, while learning entrepreneurship, instead of relying on the system, better creates our own system, better creates our own opportunities as refugees.

So mostly from, especially from the country that I am. So the system, especially the education system, make us slaves of the system. You may be almost 100 people who are learning business and administration. And you are going to alert that the company in the city. So you are going to fund at only two companies.

So if you are not really a non-person or your parent is not a