Uganda, May 1 -- Every year, when schools close for the holidays, a familiar scene plays out across Uganda.

Our children sleep in late, spend hours on their phones, and drift through the weeks with little to show for it by the time school resumes.

But what if this holiday season were different? What if, instead of idling away precious time, our young people used these weeks to build something, a skill, a habit, or even a small business?

This is what even the new curriculum is all about. Children should be great thinkers and innovators, and school holidays can be an avenue to practice what they learn from school. The school holiday is not a gap in a teenager's life.

It is an opportunity, arguably one of the greatest they will have befo...