Hoima City — For Florence Asaba, the transformation is not measured only in the money that has passed through the Hoima West Women Entrepreneurs Emyooga Savings and Credit Cooperative Organisation (SACCO).
It is visible in women who can now pay school fees, businesses that have begun employing other people, agricultural produce being turned into packaged products, and a group that has started thinking beyond individual enterprises to a shared business.
“We have improved our household incomes,” says Asaba, the chairperson of the SACCO.
The women started as a small group. Through Emyooga, they received Shs30 million in seed capital, which has since grown to Shs70 million.
More than 180 beneficiaries have so far accessed the funds, with some returning for additional loans after repaying earlier ones.
“Since it is a revolving fund, people pay back their loans, and then they come back and access more money,” Asaba explains.
The model is consistent with the design of Emyooga, the government programme launched in 2019 to support financially excluded Ugandans organised around specific enterprises. The Microfinance Support Centre (MSC), the programme’s implementing agency, says the initiative is intended to move households from subsistence activity towards market-oriented production by providing access to finance, training and business support.
For the women in Hoima, however, the effect is easier to understand through what they have done with the money.
From loans to livelihoods
Charity Alinda, 28, began with a retail shop in Busiisi, Hoima West Division.
She had saved with the SACCO for two years, putting aside amounts starting from Shs3,000. Eventually, she received a Shs1.9 million loan, which she used to establish her shop.
Today, she estimates that the business generates about Shs100,000 in monthly profit.
She is still looking for more customers and hopes to expand into poultry and piggery next year.
Her story illustrates one of the central ideas behind the Emyooga model: access to relatively small amounts of organised finance can allow members to move from saving into productive investment.
MSC says Emyooga SACCOs are designed around specialised enterprise groups, with seed capital channelled through the SACCO structure rather than handed directly to individual beneficiaries. Women entrepreneurs are one of the programme’s 18 targeted categories.
From no income to a growing farm
Hilda Amanya, 33, says she had no independent source of income before joining the SACCO.
She began by saving money from the daily allowances given to her by her husband. Her first loan was Shs200,000.
She used it to buy local chickens. The flock grew to 20 birds, which she sold to finance a larger enterprise. She bought 100 broilers and one pig. The project continued to grow.
Today, Hilda says she has about 350 birds and five pigs. The business has also allowed her to accumulate assets beyond livestock.
She has bought one acre of land in the city and another plot in town. She uses the acre to grow maize for her poultry enterprise and plans to develop rental houses on the town plot.
“I have been a member of the SACCO for five years,” Hilda says.
Her progression—from a small poultry project to livestock, land acquisition and plans for rental property—shows how the women are using successive investments rather than treating the first loan as an end in itself.
A cooperative becoming a business
Asaba says the women eventually realised that lending money to individual members was only one part of what the SACCO could do.
They began looking at what they could produce collectively. “We feel that the government needs value addition, so we need to add value to the products we are producing,” she says.
The women started developing products including soya and millet flour, peanut paste, liquid soap and jelly.
Their food products use locally available agricultural ingredients including millet, maize, soya, pumpkin, rice and milk.
The group sells some of the products at about Shs5,000 per kilogramme.
The jobs beyond the women
Asaba says the effect of the SACCO is extending beyond its membership. Members who borrow money establish businesses and, in some cases, employ other people.
Asaba herself says she now employs six workers. “If it were not for Emyooga, I wouldn’t be having them,” she says.
The SACCO itself also employs people, including a manager and cashier.
The result, she says, is that the programme’s impact is no longer confined to the women who received the original capital.
A different relationship with credit
Asaba also points to the revolving nature of the money as one of the reasons she believes the model is working for the women.
Members borrow, invest, repay, and return for another loan. That creates a cycle in which the same capital can support different enterprises over time.
MSC’s Emyooga model was designed to combine government seed capital with savings mobilisation and access to financial services through SACCOs.
Beyond survival
According to Asaba, some of the most significant changes are inside the household. She says beneficiaries who previously struggled to pay school fees can now send their children to better schools.
The women have also moved into enterprises that generate employment and, in the case of the SACCO itself, collective production. “We have also been able to pay school fees for our children, which was a problem earlier,” she says.
The ambition is now moving beyond maintaining the businesses they have built. The women hope to open more branches and increase their membership.
Their longer-term dream is even larger: to establish a financial institution of their own. “We see ourselves having a bank for women entrepreneurs,” she says.
The women are also looking beyond their existing customers. Hoima’s expanding economy, driven partly by oil-related activity and a growing population, is creating expectations of a larger market.
The women expect increased demand for their food products as more people come to the city. Their products are already sold in Hoima, including through the central market.
Asaba says the group is planning to acquire a washing machine so it can offer laundry services as another business, targeting the upcoming 2027 African Cup of Nations (AFCON).