Today, the 5th of July 2023, the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development convened the second National Women Leader’s Forum with the theme “Consolidating the Gains on the Delivery of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment: Strategizing to Advance the Women’s Agenda in Uganda” in the Imperial Royale Hotel. Speaking at the event, the Minister of Gender, Labour and Social Development, Hon. Betty Amongi Akena, called on women to unite and collectively confront the challenges women face in the quest for their advancement in social, political, and economic spheres.
The Minister highlighted various ways in which the fight for gender equality in Uganda has progressed, noting that 14 out of 31 (45%) Cabinet Ministers are women, 24 out of 50 (48%) State Ministers are women, 11 out of 30 (37%) Shadow Ministers are women and 189 of Members of Parliament (34%) are women. The Minister further noted that Uganda has a female Vice President, Prime Minister a female Strategic Ministers.
Furthermore, the Minister noted that there is a parity in the enrolment of both girls and boys in schools showing that people are now more willing to value the education of girls.
However, there are still many things that must be pushed forward to reach true gender equality in Uganda and the Minister noted that despite the high enrolment rate, there is a low completion rate of school for girls and added that the cultural norms of societies can have the power to overrule the law as they often prevent women from accessing opportunities that could lead them to financial independence.
She added that women are also very economically vulnerable as they often have no collateral to offer when placing loans and have to resort to money lenders that give them money at an interest of 5 – 10% per month.
Fortunately, the Minister noted that programs such as the Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Program (UWEP), the Parish Development Model (PDM), and Growth and Productivity Opportunities for Women Enterprises (GROW) are working on these issues.
UWEP aims to allow women to get loans without collateral and use that money to turn their micro businesses into macro ones, the PDM will allow women to borrow money to build businesses and GROW will utilize a $217M grant from the World Bank to support women entrepreneurs with cheap capital through loans, grants and other programs.
The Rt. Hon. Third Deputy Prime Minister represented the Vice President during the opening session of the event. The Rt. Hon. Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. First Deputy Prime Minister, the UN Women Representative, the UN Resident Coordinator a,t, inhe representative of the Ambassador of Denmark also spoke at the event.
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