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WOUGNET is located at Plot 55 Kenneth Dale, Off Kira Road, Kamwokya. Directions: After the Kamwokya market as you travel along Kira road, turn off to your left onto Kenneth Dale, (just before the football field and Kira Road Police Station). Once on Kenneth Dale, look out for the WOUGNET sign post on your left towards the end of the road. Click here for a map.

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Women of Uganda Network is a NGO initiated by women`s organisations in Uganda to develop the use of ICTs among women as tools to share information and address issues collectively. Read More...

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In Uganda, women entrepreneurs are involved in rural and urban informal activities, dealing with their own produce or retailing from other primary producers. Statistics show that in Uganda most women operate business of micro and small size, 46% of micro and small enterprises in Uganda are owned and operated by women where as 37% are male owned. Thirteen (13%) are multi-owned and 4.5% are unknown. Women in Uganda own enterprises that are involved in production of beverages, textiles, services and retail trade. They do this in addition to their reproductive roles of producing food for the family and providing labor for agricultural production (Madanda 2009). Considering the physical structure from which businesses are operated, 72% of women MSEs are operating from semi-permanent temporary or no structure which makes their business insecure and quite costly in terms of management and growth. Though women’s ability to contribute to the economy and national development has been recognized, their contribution is constrained by factors such as lack of capital to start enterprises and information on where they can access credit, lack of access to relevant information on market prices, lack of places to obtain trade support services, skills to manage their enterprises etc.

Efforts have been made by the government of Uganda and various institution to provide support services to women entrepreneurs to develop their enterprises, by building their capacity in entrepreneurship skills, providing them entrepreneurial information and credit. Despite the efforts made, women still face challenges in running their enterprises. Majority of their businesses die within the first few months of establishment and this has affected sustainability of the enterprises.

In line with ILO WEDGE Project support towards realising an enabling environment that supports the start up and growth of women’s enterprises which generate quality jobs seeing an improvement in women entrepreneurs’ income-generating capacity and competitiveness, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has partnered with Women Of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) to conduct a mini survey on “women’s access to affordable financial services”.

The survey will target women entrepreneurs and establish constraints faced by women entrepreneurs in accessing formal financial services and also target formal financial institutions, to ascertain what financial products they have for women entrepreneurs and if they correlate with challenges faced by these women in business. The findings of this mini survey will be disseminated at half day advocacy seminar which will bring together, WED Stakeholders, women entrepreneurs and formal financial institutions. During the forum, women entrepreneurs will be provided with an opportunity to discuss issues affecting their enterprises that are financial in nature and for financial institutions to offer financial counselling to these women entrepreneurs. The findings of the study will form a basis for advocacy for better practices by financial institutions and policies that favor the women’s access and use of financial products for economic empowerment and improvement of their livelihoods

About WOUGNET’s Enterpreneurship Project / ILO’s WEDGE Project
Under the Gender and ICT Policy advocacy program, WOUGNET runs an entrepreneurship project which aims at promoting economic empowerment among women entrepreneurs through use of ICTs. The project also promotes gender equality among men and women and has benefited over 150 women entrepreneurs in Kampala, Apac, Mukono and Ibanda districts. The project focuses on building capacities of women organizations in Entrepreneurship skills development using ICTs.

The ILO’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Development and Gender Equality (WEDGE) project has been working on the promotion of decent work for men and women through the provision of enterprise development support for women to start and develop their businesses. Over the years, WEDGE has developed various training tools and guidelines that are meant to strengthen partners to promote Women’s Entrepreneurship Development (WED) and also improve the competitiveness of women owned enterprises. The WEDGE project has built capacity of national partners through conducting training of trainers on various gender sensitive enterprise development tools and guidelines as well as by way of mainstreaming.

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