Uganda
Joseph Terranova, co-founder of Tukula, shares his company’s model for women’s empowerment.
In the East African country of Uganda, a staggering 276,000 young people cannot find jobs each year. Even though many of these youth are university or trade school educated, there is simply not enough infrastructure to accommodate them in the job market. And without jobs, many of these youth will relapse into the cyclical poverty endemic in much of their country.
Photo credit: Bobby Neptune/Tukula
Young women are particularly vulnerable to unemployment. Many find themselves caught in premature marriages, struggling to support their children with little hope of saving for the future of their families.
But in the heart of Jinja, Uganda’s second largest city, five young women work diligently to create beautiful handmade bags and other accessories for Tukula (meaning “we grow” in Luganda), a for-profit social enterprise based out of Lancaster, Pa. The women, who range in age from 16 to 33, have different life stories.
All of them have completed some amount of tailoring school, and two are continuing their education using the money they earn at Tukula. The women hail from different tribes and ascribe to different religions. But what brings them together is their desire to better the future of themselves and their families.
One of these women, Ayakaka Sally, talks about the impact that Tukula has had on her life. “I used to depend on people,” she says. “But Tukula has made me to be on my own. Now I can afford my food. I can pay my rent. It’s good for me.”
Tukula works with its artisans to create budgets and savings programs aimed at preparing each woman to attain her future goals. By creating and selling beautiful, high-quality products, the company hopes to impact more women in the future.
Tukula is working to eliminate abject poverty in Uganda before it begins, one woman at a time. To learn more visit tukula.org.
This piece is cross-posted from Morgana Wingard’s Wanderlust blog.
During a recent trip to Uganda, I met the hardworking cooks of Amazima –- Nancy, Joanne, and Josephine. You think it’s hard to cook for your family? Trying cooking for more than 400. These women sweat over massive cauldrons of rice, beans and chicken every Saturday to feed children from the community.
It’s part of a larger program called Amazima Ministries –- a US-based nonprofit. According to the latest UN stats from 2009, there are an estimated 2.7 million orphans in Uganda. Amazima’s founder, Katie Davis, started the organization at merely 19 to feed, educate and encourage these vulnerable children. To learn more, visit http://www.amazima.org/.
More common than deafness or Down’s syndrome, hydrocephalus, or “water on the brain,” is a completely treatable condition diagnosed in 400,000 babies worldwide each year, including 250,000 in sub-Saharan Africa. Usually caused by complications from an infection at birth or in infancy, babies provided with proper medical assistance are expected to make full recoveries and to go on to lead perfectly normal, healthy lives. But, like many preventable diseases and disabilities prevalent in the developing world, almost 90 percent of hydrocephalus cases found in African children turn out to be fatal.
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Uganda belongs to you
There has been an unprecedented show of unity in Uganda’s parliament, as opposition and pro-government ministers of parliament (MPs) have joined together to demand a temporary halt in the completion of oil agreements until an independent regulator is established. This move was prompted by a collective sense of suspicion about Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) signed between the Ugandan government and two oil companies, the Italian firm ENI and the Irish company Tullow Oil. Ugandans had hoped that the emerging oil sector would help to create jobs, improve infrastructure and boost the economy. However,as the government continuously refused to make public the details of PSAs, suspicions grew that ordinary Ugandans were not going to benefit from the emerging oil sector.
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We’ve blogged a lot over the last few months about the importance of childhood vaccines. But kids aren’t the only ones who need vaccinations to stay healthy, and this week the global health community celebrated a major milestone when Uganda announced that it had eliminated maternal and neonatal tetanus through a vaccination campaign for women of childbearing age.
Tetanus is a potentially deadly infection that can occur if a baby’s umbilical cord is cut with an unclean tool or if a harmful substance such as ash or cow dung is applied to the cord, as is traditional practice in some African countries. When tetanus develops, child death rates are extremely high, especially in countries where health systems are not strong and access to more advanced medical treatment can be difficult.
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Vincent Magombe, Lee Opiyo Oryema, William Nkata Masembe and Belinda Atim outside number 10
A group of Ugandans in the London Diaspora have delivered an open letter to Prime Minister David Cameron on behalf of over 200 civil society activists from their home country. The petition calls on the British government to force oil, gas and mining companies registered in the UK to be more transparent in their operations abroad.
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Development is accelerated when a country is able to use its own resources effectively and efficiently. When foreign companies and governments conspire to prevent this happening, justice is not being served.
That is why the decision by the UK government, with France and Germany, to support reform of obscure European Union rules on financial reporting for oil, gas and mineral companies will have such far-reaching consequences. In Uganda, campaigners for greater transparency and accountability in the oil industry are already preparing for the day when they will have access to all legal payments made by oil companies to their government. In a letter sent on Thursday to David Cameron, over 200 of these activists make clear why this is so important, saying, “the only losers would be those who plan to steal the revenue”.
Last year civil society in many resource-rich developing countries celebrated as the US passed the Dodd-Frank Act, which contained the first ever “publish what you pay” law. This means that from April all companies listed on the New York stock exchange will have to report their payments to the governments of the countries where they operate, and even break down the payments to the level of individual projects. This will empower millions of people by giving them access to the information they need to hold their leaders accountable, demanding greater social and economic results, and reducing levels of corruption.
However, Uganda – which has large untapped oil reserves – will not see the benefits of the US law since the companies operating here are all listed on European stock exchanges. Tullow Oil, for example, is registered in the UK. Uganda is the perfect example of why European leaders need to swiftly implement these reforms. In his 10 minute-rule bill last week Anas Sarwar MP highlighted this by referring to the Ugandan shadow finance minister’s recent video message calling for UK leadership.
It is estimated that at peak production the oil reserves in Uganda will generate $2bn a year in revenue. To put this in context, the last national budget is $3bn billion, and $1.7bn has been coming from foreign aid. Clearly this oil money has the potential to drive economic development in Uganda, yet the early signs are not promising.
The production sharing agreements between Kampala and the oil companies have been kept secret by the Ugandan government despite repeated attempts by MPs, journalists and activists to access the contracts. A section of one of the agreements, which was leaked by a whistleblower, showed that the terms were not consistent with international norms as the government claims.
Currently, there is no provision in place for publishing the payments received once production begins. Ugandans are nervously looking across to neighbours in the Democratic Republic of Congo and wondering if they are heading down the same road, where natural resources have been a curse rather than a blessing.
Of course, transparency itself cannot deliver perfect oil governance – it is a means to an end. It is vital that once published, the information is used in the right way. Those working to improve aid transparency have voiced some concern that people in developing countries do not feel sufficient ownership over aid to hold donors and governments to account, even with greater transparency.
Natural resources do not suffer that problem. Citizens are demanding their fair share of what they know to be theirs. Civil society, supported by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, is tooling up to provide the checks and balances on government. The Ugandan activists are clear: “We stand ready to hold our leaders accountable, but we require your support to do so even more.”
The importance of extractive industries to African development cannot be understated. In 2008, exports of oil, gas and minerals from Africa were worth about nine times the value of international aid to the continent ($393bn v $44bn), and over 10 times the value of exports of agricultural produce ($37.9bn). Yet most of Africa’s natural resources remain in the ground. The economist Paul Collier estimates that only a fifth of sub-soil assets have been discovered in sub-Saharan Africa.
In Uganda, where over 7 million people still live in extreme poverty, harnessing the newfound oil wealth is a one-off opportunity to accelerate social and economic development at a previously unthinkable rate. With transparency and accountability acting as a vaccine against corruption and poor leadership, the new revenue has the potential to lift the country to middle-income status. Europe must do all it can to empower the people of Uganda to make sure this happens.
This blog was co-written by Winnie Ngabiiwe – chairwoman of Publish What You Pay – Uganda,
