Monday , May 12 2025
Latest News
Home / BLOGS / Busy but Broke: The curious case of Uganda’s enterprising women

Busy but Broke: The curious case of Uganda’s enterprising women

Ugandan women top global entrepreneurship charts, but without real support, their hustle risks, becoming a lifelong struggle.

COMMENT | Gertrude Kamya Othieno | In 2021, the Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs ranked Uganda second globally for the proportion of women-owned businesses, at an impressive 38.4%. Only Botswana ranked higher. It’s a statistic we’ve worn like a badge of honour, proof that Ugandan women are among the most enterprising in the world.

But beneath the applause lies a harder truth: these women are busy, yes, but still broke.

We’ve normalised a situation where being “entrepreneurial” means juggling five side hustles, waking up before dawn, and sleeping late, all to earn just enough to survive. It’s as if the world is cheering for women sprinting on a treadmill, committed, determined, but going nowhere fast.

What does it mean to top entrepreneurship charts if it doesn’t translate into economic power or upward mobility? According to the World Bank, women-owned microenterprises in Uganda still earn 30% less profit than those run by men. These women aren’t scaling up; they’re simply scraping by. And so the accolades ring hollow.

The issue isn’t ambition or effort. It’s access. Ugandan women remain commercially and culturally disadvantaged. They lack collateral for formal loans. They face prohibitive bureaucracy and tax burdens. Culturally, they remain overburdened, expected to run businesses while playing nurse, cook, cleaner, carer, and crisis manager, often all at once.

To be fair, Uganda has rolled out a number of government-funded initiatives in recent years. The Parish Development Model (PDM) and Emyooga have aimed to bring capital closer to communities, and the Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Programme (UWEP), launched in 2015, was designed to support women through interest-free credit and skills training. These are commendable efforts. But, implementation has faced persistent challenges, limited access to affordable credit, gaps in technical support, and difficulty penetrating formal markets.

Tellingly, although women own nearly 40% of Uganda’s businesses, they receive only 1% of government contracts. This reflects a much deeper issue: women are still excluded from high-value supply chains and the formal economy, remaining locked in low-profit sectors.

Let’s be honest: most of our “entrepreneurial” women aren’t building enterprises in the true sense. They are surviving. They’re launching micro-businesses not because it’s fashionable but because it’s the only viable way to support their families in an economy that offers little else. They are coping, not thriving.

So what needs to change?

First, we must stop romanticising women’s struggles as resilience. It’s not empowering to be overworked and underpaid. If we genuinely value women’s contribution to the economy, we must invest in it. That means simplifying access to credit, offering financial literacy programmes, and restructuring tax systems to suit small informal enterprises.

Second, we must redefine what entrepreneurship means. It’s not just selling produce by the roadside; it’s about engaging in value chains, using technology, innovating, and building long-term stability. It’s about having the freedom to take calculated risks and the safety nets to recover if things go wrong.

Third, we must reform procurement and contracting systems to ensure women-led businesses have a fair share of public tenders and large-scale opportunities. With real inclusion, women entrepreneurs can become engines of national growth, not just local survival.

Ugandan women have already proven they can build something out of nothing. The question is, what more could they achieve if the systems were truly designed for their success?

Until we answer that, we must pause before we celebrate another statistic about how “enterprising” they are. Because unless something changes, our women will remain world champions of doing the most with the least, and that’s not the kind of gold medal anyone should be proud of.

****

Gertrude Kamya Othieno | Political Sociologist in Social Development (Alumna – London School of Economics/Political Science) | Email – gkothieno@gmail.com

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *