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As a locally owned solar energy company in Uganda, our emphasis as a business, has been to impact the people at the bottom of the economic pyramid whilst simultaneously spurring local entrepreneurship, economic and social empowerment. 

To achieve that, our internal management team ought to have the right skill set to match the challenge.  

Background:

The Global Distributors Collective (GDC) teamed up with AMI to deliver an off-grid management training programme specifically for GDC members – Empowering Managers with a training programme for middle managers in the off-grid energy sector  Anuel Energy Uganda, being a member of the GDC took on the opportunity to empower it’s young and vibrant management team.

What were the objectives of the Empowering Managers’ program?

The program aimed to provide an opportunity to build our leadership and management skills, as well as to network with and learn from other last mile distribution companies. We hoped that our staff would build valuable skills that can be applied to real workplace challenges in order to ramp-up business performance and drive productivity across the workforce.

What do the participants, course managers & sponsors say about the program?

Anuel Energy recommended 3 key members of the management team (Josephine Namusaanya, John Barigye & Sharon Linda Nalubwama)  to take up this unique opportunity. 

Josephine Namusaanya, Head of Sales at Anuel Energy had this to say about the program:

“The training program completely changed my opinion on ‘business ownership.’ I learnt how to align my personal goals to those of the company. The team I work with is encouraged to share their business suggestions on how to grow the company, thus the ownership of the business is manifested practically. In our weekly planners, we are tasked to include our individual personal goals so that the rest of the team can follow up and keep encouraging each other to achieve them. The beauty about the program is it’s not all theoretical, but also provided us with the practical skills and tools to apply in dealing with work and personal challenges.” 

Martin M. Mwangi, AMI’s Account Manager for the programme had this to say about the participation of the Anuel Energy Management team.

“The Anuel team enrolled into the programme seeking to grow their management skills. We supported them through a combination of virtual learning sessions and online courses. The goal was to help them build effective management practices through the learning gained. Having downloaded over 490 resources from the AMI Online Portal with a course completion rate of 81%, It was exciting to see the team address both real life and work challenges through this programme.”

Charlotte Taylor, Communications and Project Manager, Global Distributors Collective had this to say about the program and its importance to last mile distributors.

“Last mile distributors work in some of the most remote areas around the world, often isolated from their peers and professional networks. This means that they are constantly reinventing the wheel and missing opportunities to learn from other like-minded organisations, who may be experiencing similar challenges and have solutions to share. That’s why we champion dedicated spaces, such as AMI’s Empowering Managers training programme, that enable last mile distributors to come together, learn from one another and cascade that learning throughout their sales and management teams to achieve greater impact at the last mile. With this in mind, we will soon be launching a new training programme – delivered in partnership with AMI and funded by USAID – designed specifically with last mile distributors in mind, tailored to their needs and fostering a community of practice to facilitate peer-to-peer learning between companies. The training is under development, and will be available to GDC members in East and West Africa. Watch this space for more information!