Africa-Press – Uganda. In partnership with PostBank Uganda, the Women in Business Awards (WiBAS) has skilled over 719 women in the second edition of the WiBAS Handholding Workshop, aimed at equipping women entrepreneurs in West Nile, Acholi, Lango, and Karamoja with essential financial literacy and business management skills as a catalyst for sustainable business growth.
The workshop, themed “Handholding Women for Business Sustainability”, builds on last year’s successful inaugural session that attracted over 220 participants, including women-led enterprises, VSLAs, SACCOs, and micro-businesses.
This year, 719 women participated, thus creating a capacity-building platform to enhance their competitiveness, business acumen, and access to key economic opportunities.
According to the Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs (MIWE), Uganda ranks second globally, with 38.4% of business owners being women—just behind Botswana at 38.5%.
This indicates that nearly four in every ten business owners in Uganda are women, who make up 52.5% of the national labor force.
However, due to gender-specific constraints that women face in starting, sustaining, and growing their enterprises—such as legal discrimination, restrictive gender norms, limited education and skills, confidence and risk aversion, poor access to finance, assets, networks, and information, as well as household responsibilities—many women struggle to scale their businesses, limiting both their financial independence and Uganda’s broader economic development.
Through its partnership with WiBAS, PostBank is tackling these barriers by offering financial literacy and business training, raising awareness of government programs like GROW, PDM, and Emyooga, promoting customized financial offerings for women, and creating linkages to markets, technology, and financial services.
“PostBank Uganda’s purpose is to foster prosperity for Ugandans,” said Enock Okwara Edwaru, Branch Manager of the Lira branch.
“We believe that women are the backbone of our communities and a key driver of Uganda’s economic transformation. Through initiatives like WiBAS, we are creating a supportive ecosystem that enables women to move from subsistence-level enterprises to sustainable businesses.”
According to officials, through platforms like Wendi, PostBank’s digital wallet, women entrepreneurs can access affordable and convenient financial services tailored to their needs.
Wendi not only offers a reliable way to manage day-to-day transactions but also acts as a simple financial management system that promotes transparency, accountability, and better record-keeping.
As the landscape for women entrepreneurs in Uganda evolves, programs like WiBAS represent the ideal environment to uplift women—which will ultimately lead to sustainable economic development across the country.
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