By Patricia Ojangole
Women empowerment is key to the attainment of the agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Specifically, Goal 10 on reducing inequalities; Goal 8 on promoting full and productive employment and decent work for all, and Goal 5 on achieving gender equality, cannot be realized without women’s economic empowerment. Achieving these three goals would in turn significantly contribute to other cross-cutting goals that are also in part dependent on women’s economic empowerment like Goal 1 on ending poverty: Goal 2 on food security and Goal 3 on health.
Women play a key role in the economic development of Uganda. They make vast and positive economic contributions through business, agriculture, trade, industry, and domestic care work. In short women today have greater access to /and control over productive resources, assets, and services, political and social representation, meaningful participation in decision-making spaces and processes, and access to decent work.
Ugandans have marked these milestones mainly due to committing to new ways of thinking about the value of women.
As part of the vanguard of women professionals living and working within this ongoing process of change, I can say with confidence that women now play a crucial role in economic development. This fact is important as it raises the question of how women will shape the shared future of the country.
According to World Bank (2019), women account for 77% of the agricultural labor force. This sector contributes 21% to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and accounts for 40% of Uganda’s export earnings while four in every 10 business owners are women (UBOS, 2020). Women are just as inclined as men to engage in entrepreneurship and therefore just as impacted by the impediments to growth as business owners. It is generally known that women face more challenges than men in starting, managing, and growing their enterprises. This is partly the burden of history, of catching up in acquiring the necessary capacities, skills, and resources due to negative cultural norms and attitudes about women’s roles.
Women have been (and continue to be) less mobile and the unequal demands of domestic responsibilities on women’s time among others have fettered the progress. Despite their role in the agriculture sector and within the small business sector in Uganda, women face a myriad of constraints surrounding access, ownership, and control over the means of production.
According to the UNDP report (2021), women control less than 20% of their output. It is estimated that 69% of all women in Uganda don’t own land and are only granted access through their spouses or other male family members.
When women do not have effective ownership over land, this negatively influences decisions about long-term investments in the land as well as their ability to access financial services since they lack collateral. Relatedly, about 49% of women lack access to or decision-making ability over credit. Women own only 4% of rural land, according to the Islamic Development Bank report 2019.
It is estimated that female farmers’ low access to productive resources and services, in comparison to male farmers, creates a gender gap of 13% in agricultural productivity in Uganda. According to the UN Women Report (2021), eliminating this gap would produce an increase of 2.8% in current crop output and 1.6% in agricultural GDP (about $156 million (USh 562 billion).
In addition to these barriers, crop and livestock value chains should be seen as gendered; men dominate high-value cash crops and larger livestock assets such as cows while women have more authority over food security crops and smaller livestock such as poultry. Relatedly, economic opportunity is segmented by gender. Women are more likely to operate in the informal sector, in smaller enterprises, and lower value-added sectors.
Differences in legal capacity and property rights also limit women’s capacity to own and operate businesses, access finance, or own and control the use of productive resources, including land.
Improving women’s access to financial services is a proven strategy for contributing to women’s social and economic empowerment, as well as improving the overall livelihoods of communities in Uganda. Having access to financial services allows women to procure the inputs, labor, and equipment they need for their agricultural and off-farm activities.
Women’s access to finance is constrained by socio-cultural, economic/legal, and in some cases educational barriers. Women’s access to financial services is also limited by the fact that, in general, they do not possess adequate productive assets or property which can be accepted by formal financial institutions as conventional forms of collateral.
Uganda Development Bank as Bank mandated with the economic development of Uganda launched Special programs to implement and manage interventions in the categories of Women, SMEs, Youth, and Business Advisory Services for both start-ups and existing businesses. Specifically, the Bank established Women Prosper Loans to increase access to affordable and appropriate financial services for women-owned and women-led businesses as an enabler to increased participation of women in the development agenda of Uganda.
The Bank’s women’s financial products and services address the various short-term and long-term business needs of women enterprises, support start-ups and expansion of women businesses, and acquisition of assets to enable and enhance productivity. These products come with many advantages in form of low loan interest rates (10-12%), adequate grace period, and patient capital (1-15 years tenor) among others.
To enhance the products, the Bank provides advisory services to clients about management best practices, good governance, record keeping, financial management, etc based on the Bank’s wider knowledge of the business, operating environment, and experience gained from funding, implementing, and monitoring of such projects. This is done by way of training and technical support to develop and implement the required processes in the businesses. The objective is to have professionally run businesses and enterprises.
As the world celebrates Women’s Day today under the theme, “Breaking the Bias”, we should work towards a world where women everywhere take their rightful place as partners in building the world we want.
Patricia Ojangole is the Managing Director of Uganda Development Bank
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