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Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are being linked to formal financing through lending and enterprise development programmes aimed at helping businesses overcome barriers to growth, with new figures highlighting the role of credit in supporting Uganda’s private sector.

A report titled Report to Society 2025, published by dfcu Bank, shows that the lender financed 6,527 SMEs in 2025, while its foundation facilitated Shs38.08 billion in credit to enterprises, highlighting the role of financial institutions and business support programmes in connecting enterprises to formal financial services.

The figures come amid growing attention to the financing needs of businesses seeking to expand beyond small-scale operations, invest in production, strengthen supply chains and create employment.

For many enterprises, accessing finance is only one part of the challenge. Business development skills, market connections and partnerships can also determine whether firms can use credit effectively to grow and become more resilient.

‘Uganda’s economic growth depends not only on helping businesses start, but also on enabling promising enterprises to become stronger, more productive and more resilient,’ Dr James Ssemwanga, chairperson of dfcu Foundation, said. ‘Many businesses have the potential to grow, create jobs and support wider value chains, yet they need more than capital alone. They need the skills, partnerships, market connections and financial services that can help them move to the next stage.’

The foundation, which transitioned from a Business Development Centre in 2024, has supported more than 4,000 enterprises since 2018 and reached over 80,000 beneficiaries, according to the report.

At the launch event at Serena Hotel Kampala on Wednesday, Dr Winifred Mary Tarinyeba Kiryabwire, Chairperson of dfcu Bank said: ‘We are sharing these results not simply to celebrate our progress, but to give our stakeholders a basis on which to assess our contribution and challenge us to do more.’

Linking businesses to finance

The Shs38.08 billion in credit facilitated through the foundation represents one of the report’s key indicators of its role in connecting enterprises to formal financial services. The report also identifies the financing needs of businesses described as the ‘missing middle’: enterprises that have moved beyond survival but still require appropriate financing, business development services and market access to scale. Such businesses may need support that combines finance with technical expertise and commercial connections, rather than lending alone.

The foundation’s approach includes working with SMEs, aggregators, processors, commercial farms, manufacturers and other enterprises linked through production and distribution networks.

These connections matter because the growth of an individual business can have implications for suppliers, producers, workers and other firms within the same value chain.

Women entrepreneurs are another group highlighted in the report, which says the bank’s Women in Business programme has supported more than 80,000 women entrepreneurs.

The initiative forms part of efforts to expand women’s participation in economic activity through enterprise development and access to financial services.

The foundation also reports that the majority of its more than 80,000 beneficiaries since 2018 have been women and young people. It aims to support more than 100,000 additional beneficiaries between 2025 and 2030 through enterprise development, value-chain connections and market-oriented partnerships.

Accountability in banking

Charles M. Mudiwa, managing director and chief executive officer of dfcu Bank, said the publication of the report was intended to account for the resources and trust placed in the institution by customers, investors and the wider public.

‘Uganda’s understanding of sustainability did not begin with the introduction of environmental, social and governance frameworks. Our communities have long understood the importance of protecting the natural world, preserving what matters and ensuring that future generations can benefit from what has been entrusted to them,’ Mr Mudiwa said.

‘That same principle applies to banking. Our customers and stakeholders entrust us with their money, their businesses and their confidence. We therefore have a responsibility to account for how we use those resources and what they help us achieve,’ he said.

He said the report brought together the institution’s impact stories and key figures, providing stakeholders with a view of its contribution beyond conventional banking services.

The report also documents community health and environmental initiatives, illustrating how the institution’s activities extend beyond business financing. It says community health interventions reached more than 25,000 Ugandans, while a three-year partnership with Rotary Uganda involved a Shs1 billion commitment towards preventive healthcare through medical camps.

The interventions include consultations, diagnostic tests, medicines, dental and eye care, health education and referrals. The report lists outreaches in Jinja, Mbuya, Mutungo, Kasenyi Landing Site and Kamwokya.

On environmental initiatives, the bank reported that 62,000 trees were planted or distributed in 2025. The report acknowledges the importance of distinguishing between trees planted and those distributed, as well as tracking survival rates and maintenance arrangements to establish longer-term environmental outcomes.

Najib Nsubuga Ssekikubo confesses that a wetland is more than a waterbody. When it is destroyed, Nsubuga adds, he feels a personal loss. This should not come as a surprise if anything because Nsubuga belongs to the Mamba clan, associated with the lungfish whose habitat is water.

The lungfish and the wetland is part of a much older idea in Buganda where clans are associated with animals, plants, fish and insects as totems which are traditionally protected. If one belongs to the lungfish or any totem, they do not eat and are expected to protect and preserve it. As such, Nsubuga argues that if such a rule or idea is followed, culture becomes environmental conservation since in protecting the totem, people will think of its habitat.

‘If we follow our clans to the book, we’ll preserve our biodiversity,’ he says, underlining the crust of Buganda’s heritage. He notes that forefathers looked for what sits underneath the obvious.

In his career as a lecturer of journalism and communication, Nsubuga observes that cultural research and kingdom responsibilities in cultural research and heritage, and eventually leadership of the Buganda Heritage and Tourism Board, continue to open his eyes and mind to new knowledge. Small wonder, when we meet in the Kampala suburb of Kasubi, Nsubuga opts to have luwombo for lunch.

Full of questions

When the luwombo arrives, Nsubuga is in the midst of telling about his quest for knowledge. Much of the knowledge he is looking for is not written down, so he has had to turn to elders. As such, Nsubuga believes young people interested in understanding their culture must spend time with older people because elders carry knowledge that may not be found in books. And beyond getting information, he seeks to understand the reasoning behind the traditions.

‘When you eventually know why they did what they did, you can understand why we must protect and conserve it,’ the history enthusiast explains as the unfurling of the matooke banana leaves gives off steam.

That question, why?, runs through his understanding of Buganda. A clan, for instance, is more than an identity. He describes it as a network of relationships. He also explains that a member of your clan can be regarded as a brother or sister. Likewise, your mother’s clan creates another relationship, while marriage connects still more families.

Traditionally, a Muganda does not marry within his or her own clan, or the mother’s clan. The restrictions, he says, also helped spread relationships across communities.

‘You keep creating links that strengthen unity amongst the people,’ he says before digging into the luwombo.

The clan system also carried responsibilities, Nsubuga discloses after shooting a look that is suggestive that the luwombo is tickling his taste buds. He points to the fact that different clans have particular roles, including crafts and duties within the kingdom, citing that during the construction and restoration of traditional royal houses like the Kasubi Royal Tombs, for example, different clans and lineages handle specific tasks, from roofing and decoration to rituals.

Getting it right

Nsubuga recalls one occasion when a task had to be repeated because the right clan had performed it, but the people involved were not from the particular lineage expected to do it. To someone looking only at the finished building, that may seem like a small distinction but to a cultural enthusiast like him, it is the heritage. The building and knowledge surrounding it are separate.

The same thinking applies to barkcloth. How did earlier generations discover that bark from a tree could become cloth? Nsubuga says that the question opens a window into indigenous knowledge and ingenuity. He says Buganda once lost some of its pride in barkcloth, although it had long been part of its cultural heritage. Today, artists are finding new uses for it. A piece worth about Shs100,000, he says, can be transformed through painting into artwork worth several million shillings.

Again, he sees the connection, from how a tree becomes bark and a cloth and then becomes art. In turn, heritage becomes a possible livelihood. That way of thinking has shaped his work at the Buganda Heritage and Tourism Board, established in 2015 to bring heritage and tourism together. The argument is that people are more likely to preserve traditions when they also see their value. Nsubuga’s tourism thinking therefore begins with things many Ugandans overlook.

Take jackfruit. For a Ugandan, a jackfruit tree may barely attract attention which is different for a visitor encountering the fruit for the first time. When they pick it fresh from a tree, and open it and taste it, that becomes an experience. The same applies to food, farming and craft. Nsubuga commends that a visitor should not only eat matooke but also see where it is grown and learn how it is prepared. Likewise, they should not only buy barkcloth but be allowed the opportunity to meet the people who make it.

‘Culture is unmatched’

To that end, he advocates for a homestay experience where a tourist is able to go to the garden or a small workshop in the community where a visitor is taught how a traditional craft is made.

The board has been exploring cultural villages and community-based experiences built around such possibilities. Nsubuga emphasises that culture offers Uganda something wildlife cannot always provide, noting that animals can be found elsewhere in the region but particular traditions of a people cannot simply be copied.

‘Culture is the unique thing that any community can sell that no one else can sell,’ he says.

Yet turning culture into tourism carries its own danger. For instance, a ceremony altered too much for tourists can eventually stop being the experience it claims to represent. That is why Nsubuga keeps returning to understanding, arguing that one cannot properly market what they do not understand.

Similarly, people cannot preserve what they no longer value. Nsubuga recalls travelling on a bus with a family spanning three generations, a grandmother, her daughter and children. The children did not understand their grandmother’s mother tongue. To communicate, the middle generation had to translate. Grandmother spoke, then her daughter translated and the children replied. The mother translated again. Nsubuga saw more than a language barrier.

‘We are losing ourselves,’ he says, his luwombo reducing in size ever so fast.

The traditional fireplace

The experience brought into focus what Nsubuga had been discovering through his work with elders. Some traditions survive because people continue to practise them while others survive because someone remembers the meaning behind them. But memory has limits. When an elder dies, a language fades. In that scenario, a child grows up knowing a clan name but not what it means. Also, a ceremony remains on the calendar while the reasoning behind it disappears.

This is where Nsubuga’s old profession meets his new one. He believes the traditional fireplace has changed. Children spend long periods away at school and parents are busy.

In the end, families have less time for the conversations through which cultural knowledge once travelled. But young people have not disappeared. They have moved to digital spaces.

‘The modern fireplace is the media,’ he says.

Heritage, therefore, must go where young people are. Stories about clans, food, barkcloth, ceremonies and traditional knowledge need to be told through radio, television and digital platforms.

‘If we think we’ll get them at the traditional fireplace, we are lying to ourselves,’ he says.

There is something fitting about Nsubuga carrying that message. He began as a communications teacher. Curiosity took him into cultural research. Kingdom service took him to elders, and the elders led him deeper into a heritage held not only in monuments, but in people, relationships and the natural world.

Now, through his work in heritage and tourism, he is trying to make those connections visible to others. The lungfish is a fish but for him, it is also a clan identity, a wetland and a reason to care for what surrounds it. The same can be said of the luwombo, which he has finished eating. It can be deconstructed.

Perhaps that is the larger lesson buried in Buganda’s traditions. The past was not always divided into neat categories called culture, family and environment. For those who understood how the pieces fitted together, they were part of the same story.

The Ministry of Health is reviewing its overall health infrastructure to strengthen local facilities and enable Ugandan medical teams to treat patients domestically, reducing the heavy reliance on costly overseas referrals.

Under the proposed arrangement, the government plans to convert national referral hospitals into super-specialized facilities, while upgrading current regional referral hospitals to national referral status. The restructuring will also transform Health Centre IVs into community hospitals staffed with five doctors, while Health Centre IIIs will be upgraded to accommodate three doctors. Additionally, health authorities are considering a ban on government doctors practicing in private medical facilities to streamline public healthcare delivery.

Speaking on Friday at Hotel Africana during the inaugural professorial lecture for the Director General of Health Services, Prof. Charles Olaro, Minister of ICT and National Guidance Dr. Chris Baryomunsi revealed that health officials recently met with President Museveni to discuss the policy shift. The President directed the ministry to draft a Cabinet white paper outlining essential reforms across training, recruitment, deployment, and staff welfare.

Dr. Baryomunsi noted that the primary goal is to restore public confidence in local healthcare and halt medical tourism. Addressing inquiries regarding the long-delayed Lubowa Specialized Hospital, he stated that construction has reached 70 percent, with the facility expected to be ready by the end of the year. He added that headhunting for specialized medical personnel is already underway, with public advertisements for remaining vacancies expected soon.

The lecture marked Prof. Olaro’s appointment as Professor of Practice in Health Services Management by Clarke International University. Delivering his address, titled “Reimagining Health Services Management: Leadership for Resilient Health Systems in Africa,” Prof. Olaro emphasized that healthcare systems are intricate networks dependent on strong governance rather than simple input-output mechanics.

He highlighted leadership as the critical factor in coordinating resources effectively, noting that well-managed health institutions consistently deliver superior outcomes compared to poorly led ones. To sustain institutional efficiency and prevent operational breakdowns during leadership transitions, Prof. Olaro urged the government to establish a dedicated leadership academy to groom future healthcare managers and ensure structured succession planning across the sector.

Uganda’s finances are already under heavy strain. Interest payments now eat up nearly a third of all government revenue, leaving less for health and education. Public debt has passed the government’s own ceiling, reaching 52.3 percent of GDP, and unemployment stands at 12.2 percent, with nine in 10 workers in informal jobs that offer no security. Pearl Sweet Oil, long promised, still has not started flowing, and farmers still sell their coffee and maize cheaply at harvest just to get cash.

A growing line of thinking proposes a different path that could liberate us from our financial shenanigans, a concept I call social-capitalism: Keep the markets open for private business, but make every Ugandan a partial owner in the establishments they work for. This way, ordinary Ugandans get a real share of the country’s wealth.

How it would work

The country would set up one protected national fund. Money from oil, gold, minerals and hydropower would go in, and politicians could not dip into it. Part would back the Shilling, part would be saved for hard times, and part would be invested in roads, renewable energy and local business. Citizens would get a small yearly payout or have it added to their pensions.

Three more tools would help. Farmers could store their farm produce in certified food banks/warehouses and borrow against it, so they need not sell cheaply. Ugandans abroad could buy bonds that pay for roads and housing. Workers could receive company shares on top of their wages, so they become part-owners.

It would not be easy, because oil money would be locked away, so the government would have less to spend at first. Printing money to pay bills would be banned, because that is how prices spiralled out of control in the Weimar Republic of Germany in the 1920s. Payouts would be small in the early years, and shares can lose value if a company fails.

This would result in a stronger Shilling, cheaper loans, and farmers and workers who own assets that grow. About $1.4 billion more in safe savings would be needed to back the Shilling properly. Arguably a big sum, but not out of reach.

The catch

To implement a social-capitalist framework, everything depends on honest management anchored on the will of the people. If the fund falls into the wrong hands, it becomes another source of corruption.

The opportunity cost of social-capitalism is a few tight years now, or the same boom-and-bust cycle again.

Ultimately, the argument for social-capitalism is that buying insurance for Uganda’s economy is cheaper in the long run than repeatedly paying to rebuild after an economic disaster.

Motor vehicle experts have urged young people against wasteful spending on vehicles, saying that a car should not be a symbol of status and urging that one must understand their needs before purchase.

‘We all agree that a car is no longer a luxury but rather a necessity. We all need a car, but that doesn’t mean that we need an expensive car,’ said Arthur Kisenyi, the founder and host of For the Love of Cars Uganda.

He explained that with luxurious mindsets, many people end up buying expensive cars that they do not need, which in turn translates into financial burdens.

”Because the majority of people, especially youths, look at the car as a status symbol. Most people, when buying a car, the first thing that crosses their mind is wanting to buy a car that they do not need. You need safety from fumes, accidents, and also understanding where you are going.’

Mr Kisenyi who is also an automotive educator and motoring broadcaster further said that every person intending to buy their first car should first understand the daily distance they intend to travel daily which will inform the decision on the choice of the car.

‘For example, there is a gentleman who is buying a car to take his children to school, which is 2km away. It means he can safely drive a 1.0-cc vehicle. There is a person who wants to drive 100km which means he will need a car which is at least 2.5-cc and in terms of fuel money he will invest more,’ he said.

Mr Kisenyi was speaking at the NSSF Financial Literacy Program dubbed Move with confidence: Smart transport choices.

‘If you understand your needs, it will help you balance the position and end up not making financial mistakes. A car is both an asset and a liability, and all this starts with the choices you make. For example, if you are driving Kampala to Masaka daily and use a Toyota Passo, that’s automatically a liability since you expect regular breakdowns, etc so if you buy according to your needs, it will save you a lot and become an asset since the car eases life,’ Mr Kisenyi said.

Christian Muwambe, the Country Director of Safe Boda, said that people who are not yet financially ready to own cars should not force it because the real repercussions are felt afterwards.

‘Everyone should spend in a 5:3:2 method where 50 percent of your money should go to what you need, 30 percent to what you want and 20 percent to savings or investments. So, if I unpack the 50 percent, transportation alone should be at least 15 percent which is tough means it should be tending towards the bottom needs,’ he said.

”There are scenarios where owning a car is the best option, where you live outside the city, where even when you come to me, Safe Boda, I will charge you for being out of the city, and for that situation you will need a car. But if you live near the city in places like Bukoto, Kyanja, Kisasi, and you have a car, the fuel consumption is high, and thus you may need services from firms like Safe Boda more.’

With skyrocketing fuel prices, motor vehicle experts warn that Ugandans must be deliberate while making decisions about owning cars, emphasising that knowing one’s needs rather than wants is very important before the decision is made.