In markets across Uganda, the streets are alive with the energy of women vendors many of whom are mothers, breadwinners, and entrepreneurs by circumstance. They are the unobtrusive power behind Uganda's informal economy, hawking fresh fruits and vegetables, prepared foods, clothes, and home goods. But while their stands are modest in size, their aspirations are far from humble.
For too long, women street vendors have been considered simply players in subsistence-level trade. Working often on thin profit margins and small capital, they are exposed to daily risks: unstable prices, limited storage, bad roads, and whimsical customer flows. But aspiration is not missing for these women what they lacked was access to skills, tools, and opportunities that can move them from stall owners to whole entrepreneurs.
This is where strategic capacity-building comes in. When women vendors are trained in finance, marketing, and technology, then their businesses no longer become a matter of subsistence on a daily basis they become portals to sustainable growth and leadership. Financial literacy is the first grand transformation.
Women work without proper bookkeeping, so profits can neither be tracked nor reinvested nor saved. With low skills in record-keeping, budgeting, and saving, women begin making deliberate decisions. Women start distinguishing business and personal funds, savings accumulation for investing, and gaining qualification for group credit or microloan arrangements.
Confidence in money management brings confidence in managing growth. Marketing is yet another powerful lever. Traditionally, women vendors rely on passing trade and word of mouth. But gaining a basic understanding of branding, packaging, pricing strategies, and customer care management makes vendors capable of promoting themselves differently in the market.
Proper branding of a kiosk, consistent pricing, and customer follow-up even via the mobile instills confidence, loyalty, and professionalism. It transforms the mindset of a vendor from informal seller to business manager.
The biggest leap, however, is with tech. In Uganda, only 19% of women use the internet, as opposed to 27% of men one of the biggest gender digital gaps in Sub-Saharan Africa. Worse still is that 37% more women than men are failing to use mobile internet across the region, comprising over 190 million digitally excluded women.
To this end, basic digital skills training even merely being able to use WhatsApp for business is revolutionary. It empowers women vendors to market goods, make mobile payments, communicate with suppliers, and build customer networks beyond their physical marketplace. But beyond individual business growth, skilling creates something even more powerful: leadership. Women skilled turn into mobilizers in the local community, cooperatives' leaders, and role models.
They become members of trade associations, are likely to engage in advocacy for greater market infrastructure and even involve themselves in local policy. With education, there is voice and with agency, there is power. Moreover, the ripple effects are irrefutable. When one woman gains the skill to stabilize and grow her business, she hires others, trains colleagues, and invests in her family. Children go to school more often. Health outcomes improve.
Households become stronger. Community businesses formalize. And gradually, the face of Uganda's economy begins to change from informal, insecure commerce to organized, women-owned enterprise. But to make this change self-perpetuating, investing in women's skilling must be deliberate and sustained. It must be done through collaboration between government, civil society, private sector actors, and market associations.
The training must be accessible, relevant, and attuned to women's real business environments whether a wooden stall in a rural marketplace or a small kiosk in an urban setting. At the same time, we must eliminate structural obstacles: access to low-cost credit, safe trading spaces, and protection from market-based harassment or displacement.
Skilling alone will not be enough if the environment remains hostile to growth. Empowering women vendors into business leaders must be part of a broader agenda of inclusive economic development. The truth is that the market stall is not the destination it is a starting point. With the proper skills, tools, and support, Uganda's women vendors can rise above the limitations of their environment and become agents of change not just in markets, but in boardrooms, cooperatives, and across the economy. The time has arrived to invest in what women are currently doing, but more importantly, in what they have the potential to become.