A total of 1,000 women drawn from more than 60 women’s groups in Busia County have enrolled in a two-year empowerment programme aimed at strengthening their entrepreneurial skills, leadership capacity and economic independence.

The Muvirogo Women Training Programme, implemented under Ushindi Empowerment, will equip participants with business skills, advocacy knowledge and an understanding of economic justice to enable them to expand their enterprises, influence decision-making and improve their livelihoods.

Ushindi Empowerment Director Ella Wafula said Busia had numerous business opportunities, particularly due to its strategic location along the Kenya-Uganda border, but women needed adequate training and collective action to benefit from them.

“The training will help women to aggregate economically and trade well. Busia County has got a lot of business opportunities due to the fact of being at the border. Training our women, aggregating our products, aggregating our policy and understanding our voice will help the collective growth of women in this county,” she said.

Wafula said leadership development was a key component of the programme, noting that women needed the skills and confidence to participate effectively in leadership at individual, group and community levels.

“We are looking at a separate track that is targeting the leader and the leadership structure in our training design. We are investing time to nurture leadership at the individual level, group level and collective level. This creates a big success in ensuring a woman has a voice in the leadership of the community,” she said.

She added that the programme would build a strong network of women capable of advocating for their interests, contributing to county and national development and establishing linkages across the region.

Ushindi Empowerment Lead Trainer Eliud Wasike said the initiative sought to address gaps in business skills that had prevented many women from identifying and exploiting available economic opportunities.

“We realized that there are many women who lack skills in the business sector. We want to empower women in entrepreneurship and business start-up so that they can learn how to identify business opportunities within Busia County,” he said.

Wasike said the training would also strengthen women’s advocacy skills, enabling them to articulate challenges affecting their businesses and communities and engage more effectively with decision-makers.

He noted that economic justice was another critical area, particularly in raising awareness about women’s rights to own property and participate fully in economic development.

“We are training them on economic justice because many of them don’t know that they can own properties. They have the capability to contribute to the economy of the county and country. We are mobilizing them to work together through groups, where we train the leadership of the groups, and this enables us to reach many women,” he said.

Wasike said empowering women financially and equipping them with business skills would benefit entire households by improving their ability to provide for their children, strengthen food security and contribute to environmental conservation.

Women in the programme led by Mercy Smith, a member of Pamoja Women Group in Butula, said limited access to finance and inadequate business training remained major barriers to women seeking to establish and grow enterprises.

“There is always a challenge for us women, mostly from local areas, to get finance to establish our businesses. Being empowered will help us to have the knowledge to identify and do business, which will help us improve our living standards,” she said.

Mathlidah Nafula of Amoni Muungano Women Group said the training had helped members appreciate the benefits of working together and supporting one another economically.

“The training has impacted us on how we can come together and benefit as a group and build each other as women. Women have remained vulnerable in society, but with such training, it is opening us up to understand that we have the ability to contribute to the economy and be able to own properties,” she said.

Nafula added that the knowledge acquired would help women meet their family responsibilities, including educating their children and providing for their households, while strengthening their economic independence.

 By Salome Alwanda and Rodgers Omondi