Introduction

Market women in Kasubi Market, Kampala City.

Photography by Gillian Nantume

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ugandan government, through the Youth Livelihood Programme (YLP) and the Uganda Women Empowerment Programme (UWEP), supported women’s empowerment through championing savings groups and skills-training to enable women to better compete in the economic sphere,10 in an effort to reduce the level of unemployment and poverty among urban poor and rural women. Now, as Uganda charts a recovery path from

10 Natukunda, Hope. Nareeba, Peter. Nakijoba, Sawuya. Woman Empowerment and Household Income in Kira Municipality, Uganda. Journal of Economic Science Research, 2021, 4(4), 3774. https://doi.org/10.30564/jesr. v4i4.3774 the Covid-19 pandemic, the government is strengthening its contribution to the growth of the informal sector by designing social and financial support programs that fit into the National Growth Plan, 2007.

“Empowerment of women is top of the government’s agenda for post-Covid recovery. For a long time, women had been struggling to start up businesses, and their biggest challenge was capital, affordable credit, the skills needed … and the markets.”11

11 Frank Mugabi, Communications Officer, Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development

This report supports these efforts by highlighting the impact of Covid-19 on women street and market vendors in Uganda. The report presents data from targeted interviews with vendors, CSOs, government officials and a review of relevant literature on women’s economic empowerment and the Covid-19 pandemic.

When a 7pm a nation-wide curfew came into force on March 31, 2020,12 It affected everyone. The livelihoods and economic standing of women, particularly in the urban informal sector, were disproportionately affected. In April 2020, the closure of the markets was a main challenge for market vendors. However, two weeks into the month, the president issued a directive allowing market vendors who sell food to resume work.13

After April, specifically from June to September, fewer customers due to the ban on public transportation became the main challenge. At the time, while people were free to walk on foot during the day, vehicles apart from delivery and cargo trucks – were not allowed on the road. This meant that the few customers who made it to the markets struggled to carry their purchases home. The situation was only eased four months later, when boda boda cyclists were allowed back on the road, but only up to 4pm.14

12 Uganda: Authorities announce 14-day nationwide lockdown April 1 /update 3 (Crisis24, 2020) https://crisis24. garda.com/alerts/2020/04/uganda-authorities-announce14-day-nationwide-lockdown-april-1-update-3 Accessed on July 25, 2022. 13 ‘FULL SPEECH: President Museveni’s 5th COVID-19 address’ (The Independent, 2020). https://www.independent.co.ug/full-speech-presidentmusevenis-5th-covid-19-address/ Accessed on July 21, 2022. 14 ‘Ugandan Boda Bodas return to road – With requirements’ (Voice of America, 2020). https://www. voanews.com/a/africa_ugandan-boda-bodas-return-roadrequirements/6193508.html Accessed on July 21, 2022. Although market vendors were allowed back in the markets, they had to sleep at their workplaces for two weeks before returning home. These women faced other risks and hardships, which included, the safety of the children they had left at home, health risks in the market due to poor sanitation, and the risk of sexual harassment and rape.15 Most of these restrictions were lifted by August 2020, although in June 2021, with an upsurge in Covid-19 cases, the president instituted another lockdown with the same harsh restrictions.16

School closures were instituted across many countries in Africa beginning between March and June of 2020. The Ugandan government implemented the longest continuous period of school closure in the world, lasting 22 months. Estimates predict that this period of closure may have created a learning deficit of 2.8 years in Uganda.17 The long period of school closure increased the care burden on Ugandan women, giving them less time to devote to economic activities. As a consequence, some women left the labor market altogether, and women’s businesses, which already were smaller and less profitable than men’s, were the first to close as the economy contracted.18

The Ministry of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development (MoFPED)

15 ‘Vendors opt to sleep in markets, walk to work. (Daily Monitor, 2020) https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/ news/national/vendors-opt-to-sleep-in-markets-walk-towork-1882730 Accessed on July 21, 2022. 16 ‘Uganda re-imposes lockdown to beat back COVID-19 case surge’ (Reuters, 2021) https://www.reuters.com/world/ africa/uganda-re-imposes-lockdown-beat-back-covid-19case-surge-2021-06-06/ Accessed on July 21, 2022 17 HRW. Impact of Covid-19 on Children’s Education in Africa. 2020. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/08/26/ impact-covid-19-childrens-education-africa 18 Goldstein, M. Martinez, P.G. Papineni, S. and Wimpey, J. The Global State of Small Business during COVID-19: Gender Inequalities. World Bank Blogs. 2020

reported that many urban people experiencing poverty lost their sources of regular income and became financially unstable as they had little or no savings to resort to, with women and girls more likely to be negatively affected compared to their male counterparts.19

After the lockdowns were lifted, an FSD survey found that many Ugandans increased their borrowing and sold some assets to help protect themselves from the economic effects of Covid-19.20 The share of individuals in Uganda who borrowed increased from 15% in April to 25% in July 2020 and stayed at this rate in September 2020.

“The little money I had, like the money that I had saved at home, I had to use it on domestic things … (when I had used it up) I could seek for help from others, like my friends. I borrowed some money from my friend, on interest, and I began (trading) with that.”21

Since many of them lack collateral, many women vendors are generally not given credit. The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted a gap, and need, in credit service provision, especially to women in the informal sector.

Gender inequalities also widened during the pandemic, from risk of job loss and economic stability to experiences of violence inside the home.22 In the initial response to the pandemic, while countries focused on the health and

19 Kirabo, S. Yegon, E. Ajema, C. Wandera, N. Afifu, C. and Mugyenyi, C. Impact Of Covid-19 On Women Workers in the Urban Informal Economy in Uganda and Kenya. Secondary Data Review . The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). 2022 20 Impact of Covid-19 on the economic resilience and financial behavior of Ugandans. Financial Sector Deepening (FSD) Uganda. 2021 21 Mercy Ozizuyo, market vendor, Awindiri Market, Arua City 22 The Lancet, 2021, COVID-19: the turning point for gender equality, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)01651-2 mortality impacts of the coronavirus, a mounting gendered social and economic crises threatened to roll back decades of women’s empowerment.

In Uganda, where poverty rates were estimated to have shot up from 17 percent to 32.7 percent during the Covid-19 pandemic,23 sustainable development can only be achieved by gender-inclusivity and equal opportunities that address the risks women face in the informal sector. To this end, the Ugandan government has launched (but has yet to implement) a Parish Development Model (PDM), which is projected to provide socioeconomic protection to 30 percent of the women and youth. The PDM is an addition to other social protection and financial programs, such as, the Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Program (UWEP), The Presidential Initiative on Wealth and Job Creation (Emyooga) and Skilling Uganda. Like CSOs across the continent, CSOs in Uganda faced obstacles in responding to the needs of women vendors during the pandemic. A survey of 1,039 CSOs, from 46 African countries, found that the unprecedented scale of disruption caused by the pandemic severely tested the sector’s capacity to effectively play its role.24 The survey found that in 2020, 69.3 percent of African CSOs reduced or cancelled their operations, with beneficiaries being denied vital services, such as, educative programs for children and adolescents, life saving medication for HIV+ people, shelter for survivors of domestic violence or rape, and other activities.

23 “3 million slip into poverty as Covid strikes economy” (Daily Monitor, 2020) https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/ news/national/3-million-slip-into-poverty-as-covid-strikeseconomy-2455458 Accessed on July 25, 2022. 24 The Impact of COVID-19 on African Civil Society Organizations Ongoing Uncertainty and a Glimmer of Optimism. EPIC-AFRICA. 2021.

However, after the first few months of the lockdown in 2020, CSOs developed means to adapt to the restrictions, and thereby reach more with their services, such as, delivering health and humanitarian aid to vulnerable populations, which in turn, helped many informal sector workers, especially women, stay in business.

“We are an NGO offering legal aid services. Transportation was difficult, because we could not move to offer our services. This is because our services are basically offered in the office; a client walks into the office and we know the services we can give them … Not until some lawyers had to fight to include legal aid services as part of the essential services.”25 This report is structured in five sections beginning with Chapter 1 which is the introduction to the report: Chapter 2 describes the methodology and guiding questions, Chapter 3 covers the impacts of the Covid-19 crisis on market and street vendors, Chapter 4 gives an overview of Uganda’s current measures to support the economic recovery of women in the informal sector, and Chapter 5 identifies opportunities to pursue a more genderinclusive recovery.

25 Judith Ayikoru, Legal Office, FIDA Uganda, Arua Field Office