Despite an ailing economy, Uganda has the most entrepreneurial women in the world according to a new study.
The Mastercard Index of Women’s Entrepreneurship (MIWE) report released recently, revealed that 34.8 percent of businesses in Uganda are owned by women, making it the top performing country in the world.
The MIWE is a weighted index that helps to better understand and identify factors and conditions that are most conducive to closing the gender gap among business owners in any given economy.
The three factors include Women’s Advancement Outcomes, Access to Knowledge and Financial Services, and Supporting Entrepreneurial Factors. For the 2016 Index, Mastercard examined 54 different economies around the globe, including Botswana, Ethiopia, South Africa and Uganda.
In Uganda, the extraordinarily high percentage of women business owners (34.8 percent) is reflected through the strong ‘Women Entrepreneurial Activity Rate’ (F/M, 100%, rank 1) , suggesting that women are as likely as men to start a business activity, and have started one for a maximum of three and a half years. They have also been active over the past 12 months seeking to borrow or set aside funds to set up a business
Uganda also excelled in sharing knowledge assets with women and providing financial access, with 90.5 percent borrowing or saving to open a business – higher than the 52.4 percent average of other low to lower middle income countries – and a 95.8 percent gross women tertiary education enrollment rate.
The advancement of Uganda’s female businesswomen is hugely backed by the Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Programme (UWEP), popularly known as the Women Fund. This an initiative of the Government of Uganda aimed at improving access to financial services for women and equipping them with skills for enterprise growth, value addition and marketing of their products and services. UWEP, implemented as a Rolling Programme under the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development (MGLSD), is intended to empower Ugandan women for economic development.
The Programme is designed to address the challenges women face in undertaking economically viable enterprises including the limited access to affordable credit, limited technical knowledge and skills for business development, limited access to markets as well as information regarding business opportunities. The programme is envisaged to increase participation of women in business development, increase their incomes, livelihood security and overall quality of life.
