Syda Bbumba Quotes

I am really happy to say that we have made some progress on gender parity, starting with education. With the introduction of UPE [Universal Primary Education], we were able to achieve 50/50 percent enrollment of both boys and girls. But where we’ve got the challenge in UPE is the high school drop-out [rates] of girls due to poverty at home and due to some social problems. And the same extends to education in upper primary where the girls drop out for early marriages and to assist their mothers and aunties with household work and other things.

We have to look at the genesis of the problem: One, education. Secondly is the slow growth of private sector because the civil service does not provide a lot of jobs. The jobs come from the private sector. But the private sector has not been growing as fast as we would have wanted.

Youth unemployment is one of the most biting problems for our government today with a population of 57 percent of youths below the age of 20, and the number goes even slightly higher if you go up to the age of 30.

At the university and the higher levels, I think we are doing much better because the enrolment of girls is 60 percent compared to boys at 40 percent. The Law School [at Makerere University] is a case in point. This has been achieved because of the affirmative action the Government of Uganda has put in place to uplift the girl child.

Our women here [in Uganda] are quite enterprising but they lack the appropriate capital, they lack access to markets, and they lack access to collateral. This is because in Africa all property belongs to men so it’s very difficult for male spouses to allow them to use family collateral to borrow money [that can] help them to expand their businesses. So, here we need funding, which does not require the traditional collateral, for women to be able to grow their businesses.