Executive Summary

Market women in Kasubi Market, Kampala City.

Photography by Gillian Nantume

This report seeks to highlight the impact of the response to Covid-19 on urban poor women, particularly informal street and market vendors in Uganda. The report also recommends actions that the Government of Uganda can take to enable and support women’s participation in a sustainable recovery process, two years after the paralysis caused when the Covid-19 pandemic began. Nearly 14 million (98 percent) of Uganda’s total working-age population are engaged in the informal sector, and of these, 87 percent are women workers.1 Street and market vending was particularly impacted

1 National Labour Force Survey 2018 -1019, Uganda Bureau of Statistics by the Covid-19 pandemic because the industry depends on engaging with people (often in large crowds) in public spaces. Also, the vendors have very little savings due to the low wages. They are therefore very dependent on their daily income for survival, and the profit they take home at the end of the day is extremely sensitive to fluctuations in price, inflation, and consumer demand. As women are significantly overrepresented in this field, women were disproportionately exposed to the economic hardship brought on by the pandemic.