Free Access | 2024-04-12

Fostering rural women nonfarm household enterprises financing through local groups

Authors/Editors: Sarah Ssewanyana (PhD) ,  Madina M. Guloba (PhD) ,  Elizabeth Birabwa Aliro

Abstract:

Rural women entrepreneurs in Uganda continue to face multiple challenges that impede their enterprise growth and expansion, despite pragmatic interventions from government and non-state actors to enhance entrepreneurship. Uganda’s female managed nonfarm household enterprises continue to be micro, informal and face bottlenecks to access high credit to grow their business as they do not have the necessary collateral that formal credit institutions demand. Hence, many resort to borrowing from locally managed community or village credit associations to start or grow their businesses and yet, these financing mechanisms are limited. The Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Programme (UWEP) should therefore ensure that the distribution of funds is equitable taking into consideration the heterogeneities across spatial areas, region, education level and size of business enterprise.