Gerald Businge's Page

Hometown:

Kampala

Age:

28

Organisation:

Ultimate Media Consult (U) Ltd

About Me:

Gerald Businge is a trained and experienced graduate journalist and communication specialist. He has since 2000 (while still pursuing Mass Communication degree at Makerere University) worked with several media houses in Uganda, East and Southern Africa as a reporter, writer, correspondent, editor, and manager; and helped consult for many organisations in meeting their media and communications needs.

Businge led a team of fellow final year Mass Communication students in 2002 to start Ultimate Media Consult (U) Ltd www.ultimatemediaconsult.com He was concerned about the high rate of unemployment among trained and skilled people (in his field of media and communication). Yet, apart from him working as a features writer with the leading newspaper www.newvision.co.ug while still at school, he had got opportunities to work as media facilitator for the 2002 Women’s Worlds Congress, a correspondent with a community radio station, producing adverts for a commercial station, among others.

Businge realized that while there is wide-spread unemployment, there are many opportunities around us, only if we are ready to identify and take up each available opportunity and earn from continuous taking up and execution of opportunities instead of graduates concentrating on looking for a job in the traditional sense. He had long realized that a job in any media company denied him the opportunity to freely practice his skills in other media fields he trained in. For example becoming officially employed as a Features Writer for a newspaper meant not being able to do broadcast reporting/production, Public relations or advertising. Even in the same media house, one can not manage to do design and copy layout, editing, or news reporting, because of concentrating on the assigned job.

Thus, apart from unemployment, there was widespread underemployment, with many media professional not being able to exploit all their skills, while many worked in positions they were not interested in (and couldn’t excel maximally) because it is the position available. Businge and his colleagues agreed that as trained media professional, they start a company that would enable them to all times practice in all the fields they are skilled in, and earn according to particular payments by clients for tasks or products. Ultimate Media Consult (U) Ltd was thus incorporated as a platform for practice from where media professionals and those seeking a career in media/communication would exploit their skills and abilities to the fullest by serving the general market where and when the skills are needed.

The Company offers multidimensional services in editorial/news (as an agency), public relations, advertising, media relations, research, publicity, video recording and documentation and media placement services based on most journalists’ multidimensional training and serves a diversity of clients. Thousands of news and feature articles, hundreds of broadcast productions, hundreds of public relations and advertising strategies have been produced by the over 50 members who pass through Ultimate Media Consult. Apart from offering a platform for people to practice-exploit their abilities and earn accordingly, Ultimate Media has enabled many media houses and organizations access quality media communication services at low costs. For example radio stations across the country are receiving daily news packages of 10 quality news stories each for 58USD a month. More and more trained people come to Ultimate Media and go when they have horned their skills and identified fitting opportunities, and come back when those opportunities end, and continue in the production line as per their skills. Businge believes everyone needs to be given an opportunity to exploit all their abilities and skills.

Website:

http://www.ultimatemediaconsult.com

Favorite Social Entrepreneur:

Many

Favorite Music:

Country, RnB