Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Programme (UWEP) is one of the core programmes under the second National Development Plan (GoU, 2015). UWEP, whose operations started in Financial Year 2015/16, was designed to address the challenges women face in undertaking economically viable enterprises including limited access to affordable credit, technical knowledge and skills for business development, access to markets as well as information regarding business opportunities (MoGLSD, 2015). This programme is implemented as a rolling intervention by the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development (MoGLSD) as the overall policy coordinating and implementing agency.
The Technical Support Unit (TSU) in the MoGLSD was created to provide technical oversight to its implementation. The MoGLSD works in collaboration with other government institutions and agencies like Parliament, Office of the Prime Minister, other line ministries, the National Women’s Council and Local Government Authorities of which Pallisa District Local Government is among. For purposes of establishing UWEP impact so far, CIDD-UG in partnership with Pallisa District Local Government conducted programme assessment in Pallisa.
Key findings from CIDD-UG assessment indicate that whereas the programme has so far benefited 166,742, women through 13, 803 projects in Uganda, a total of 1,247 women have benefited from Pallisa District through 100 projects with financial support amounting to Shs. 550,553,375 from the national total of Shs. 85,432,213,239. Shs. 72,280,000 of the total disbursement has been recovered in the District so far from the revolving fund.
Out of 64 visited UWEP enterprises in Pallisa district; 8% have been successful, 59% of the projects or enterprises are struggling and at the verge of collapse. 6% of the projects have been hijacked. 27% have actually crumbled.