Uganda

The Stimulating Agriculture for Youth Employment (SAYE) project, a new partnership launched by the Mastercard Foundation and Heifer International, will expand access to agribusiness opportunities for over 250,000 young people in Uganda.

The Gender Community of Practice brings together Uganda partners to improve the meaningful engagement of young women in the Foundation’s programs. Through this platform, partners share learnings and best practices and contribute towards an enhanced understanding of gender mainstreaming.

About 12,000 displaced people live in Uganda’s Kyangwali Refugee Settlement, most of whom rely on subsistence farming for food. Inspired by their own experiences in the camp, Mastercard Foundation Scholars Safali Libia, Kataike Viola, and Kevin Githuku launched A Hand for a Refugee, a program that leverages skills they learned at Uganda’s Makerere University to help Kyangwali farmers grow their own hybrid passion fruits for both food and income.  

A natural storyteller from a young age, Mastercard Foundation Scholar Ndyabawe Myres majors in journalism and communications at Uganada’s Makerere University. He’s passionate about communicating human interest stories to impact social change. But when he realized that unmet financial needs were the reason kids were dropping out of schools in Uganda’s Kamwenge District, Myres founded Rabbits for Education—a venture to help kids raise rabbits for market to support their education costs and help reduce dropout rates.  

Edith Violet Naisubi grew up watching young mothers in her Eastern Ugandan home tend to other people’s garden crops, only to live hand-to-mouth in spite of long hours and no days off. The Mastercard Foundation Scholar partnered with fellow Scholar Amanuel Eshete to create AgriSan, a community market garden where underprivileged women can grow vegetables, earn an income, gain savings, and learn financial management skills to help lift them out of the poverty cycle.   

David Gai and Akot Arkanjelo grew up as young refugees from South Sudan in Kenya and Uganda’s refugee settlement camps. heir struggle to educate themselves as young men has motivated them to launch the Youth Empowerment Initiative (YEI), a new venture to help the children from northern Uganda’s Bidi Bidi Refugee Settlement pursue their studies.

Joy Birungi found herself with few work opportunities as schools and businesses in Uganda shut down due to COVID-19 in early 2020. Soon afterward, the educational mentor and consultant fell seriously ill. She then realized she would have to reinvent herself, but when a new opportunity landed in her lap that she felt was far outside her skill set, she faced a difficult decision: decline out of fear, or accept the new challenge. Birungi chose the latter.