In what the Minister of Gender, Labour, and Social Development has described as a powerful move, the Uganda Industrial Research Institute (UIRI), in partnership with the Private Sector Foundation Uganda (PSFU), has launched the Generating Growth Opportunities and Productivity for Women (GROW) project, which will see thousands of women in business and youth skilled and funded in the commercial production of different goods and services at a commercial scale.

While launching the project partnership on February 13, 2024, at the UIRI Namanve Campus, Minister Betty Amongi, the minister of gender who was the chief guest, said that the project will transform Uganda’s economy using women. She noted that Ugandan women have been ranked the most entrepreneurs compared to their counterparts in all of Sub-Saharan Africa.

“The ratio of businesses to women stands at 47 percent, especially in the informal sector in Uganda,” she said.

However, she noted that the 47 percent is a problem that needs to be solved, saying that Uganda needs to move women from informality to formality.

Referring to the partnership between PSFU and UIRI, she noted that GROW will support women with the certification of their businesses for free through collaboration with UNBS.

Referring to the Ministry of Gender, UIRI, and PSFU as the core GROW-enforcing partners, she called upon all women with products still under incubation to go through any of the partnering institutions to ensure that they are aided to realize the dream of commercial production.

The Executive Director of UIRI, Prof. Charles Kwesiga, said that Uganda is not developing enterprises at the rate that the country should, partly because we are not embracing appropriate technologies that are unique to our raw materials, saying that UIRI provides solutions to this puzzle.

He noted that depending on foreign technologies has been a cause and consequence of Uganda’s inability to move to modernity. He highlighted that UIRI will play a skillful role for all the women on board under the GROW project without them having to spend a penny. This will see women skilled in textiles and tailoring, crafts, fabric production from local raw materials, yoghurt making, and other enterprising hands on skills.

Sarah Kagingo, the Vice Chairperson of PSFU, noted that GROW will enable them to fund women with enterprises that have been failing to kick off due to a lack of adequate capital. She also noted that the project will see them help successful women in various businesses open up global markets. “We shall ensure that products made in Uganda by women are of quality and certified free of charge to enable them to meet big market demands,” she said.

The launch of the PSFU-UIRI GROW Project at Namanve was crowned by a guided tour where Prof. Charles Kwesiga led the Chief Guest to the different state-of-the art training departments of the Industrial Research Institute.