On a heavy, rainy afternoon, water drums relentlessly against the iron sheets sheltering the head offices of the Foundation for Inclusive Community Help (FICH). The office, nestled in Akongatar ‘C’ Village, Angweta Parish, within Iceme Sub-county, Oyam District, serves as a sanctuary from the downpour.
On the veranda, a group of 13 teenage girls sit closely on wooden stools and white plastic chairs, huddled together to dodge the cold wind and the stubborn spray of rainwater. Their knees touch in the cramped space, but their hands move with remarkable speed and precision.
‘Braid tighter at the root,’ one trainee instructs her peer, adjusting a strand of synthetic hair.
‘Bring me some black hair,’ another whispers softly to a friend nearby, reaching out for an fresh bundle of hair extensions. The humid air beneath the veranda smells intensely of fresh rain, chemical hair products, and raw ambition.
Since February 2026, a total of 20 young girls have been making the daily trek to this compound. Here, they spend hours mastering the intricate arts of plaiting, cornrowing, twisting, and styling hair.
The training is run by FICH, a grassroots non-governmental organisation dedicated to strengthening foundational learning, inclusive education, and improving community livelihoods across Uganda. For the management of FICH and the girls they support, hairdressing is not merely a lesson in aesthetics or beauty. It is a pathway to survival. It is business.
The majority of the trainees at the centre are school dropouts. Some walked away from formal education after completing Primary Seven, unable to cope when their parents failed to pay the hidden, extra costs of secondary schooling. Others were forced by circumstances or family pressure into early marriages-only to return to their communities after those fragile unions collapsed.
At FICH, these girls are given a rare opportunity to start over. The comprehensive curriculum covers everything from threading complex hair extensions and sanitising styling tools to the softer skills of customer care and client communication.
The instructors do not stop at technical training. They teach the girls how to accurately price a style, how to save a portion of their daily earnings, and how to independently manage a small enterprise. Out on the veranda, as the rain pours and the wooden stools tremble slightly on the wet concrete, abstract business theory transforms into real-world practice.
‘This skill will feed me,’ a 17-year-old trainee says confidently, her eyes fixed firmly on the scalp in front of her. ‘I will not depend on any man.’
However, a closer look at the vibrant training ground reveals a stark, quiet reality. From the eager trainees to the expert instructors, there is no boy child in sight. Not one.
The wooden stools are occupied entirely by girls. The white plastic chairs are filled by girls. The bundles of black extensions are handled exclusively by girls. The economic future being carefully braided under this roof is undeniably female.
This visible gender disparity is beginning to prompt uncomfortable, hard questions within Oyam District and across the wider sub-region. As NGOs and development partners scale up vocational programmes for girls-rightly responding to the devastating local crises of early pregnancy, school dropout rates, and gender-based violence-a critical question remains: who is training the boy child?
Ms Gloria Aceng, a seasoned business development service provider, warns that the systematic exclusion of boys from the national development agenda has mutated into a severe socio-economic problem.
‘I see that as a crisis in the future, especially at the family level,’ Ms Aceng observes. ‘Men, by nature, are expected to lead the family. They are supposed to provide direction, guidance, and even financial support. But if they are not empowered, then they are fundamentally unable to perform those traditional roles.’
According to Ms Aceng, this imbalance places an unsustainable amount of pressure on young women, who are increasingly forced to bridge the systemic gaps left by unequipped men.
‘These days, we are seeing a society of very masculine women, simply because they are forced by survival to perform tasks that should be shared or carried out by men,’ she notes. ‘Yes, I believe that is actually the biggest reason why the rate of family collapse is increasing day by day in our communities.’
The critique is echoed by Ms Christine Apio, a Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning, and Accountability (MELA) specialist. She argues that contemporary development strategies have inadvertently manufactured a massive societal imbalance by prioritising the empowerment of girls while leaving boys to fend for themselves in an economic vacuum.
This selective focus, Ms Apio argues, has contributed heavily to a generation of weak men who struggle with basic decision-making and household leadership. Left without structured support, guidance, or legal livelihoods, boys as young as 13 are increasingly slipping into a life of petty crime, substance abuse, and vagrancy. When interviewed by social workers, many of these young boys cite parental abandonment or the lack of guidance as the primary reasons for their plight.
‘No one wants to talk openly about it, but there is a much bigger problem here than meets the eye,’ Ms Apio contends.
‘Our singular concentration on the girl child has inadvertently built a generation of weak men and poor decision-makers. They are even failing now to provide basic leadership at the household level.’
While vulnerable girls who drop out of school are frequently funneled into funded vocational institutes or NGO-led workshops, boys in the exact same harsh socio-economic environments are left entirely to their own devices.
‘Right now, sports betting has taken all their time. Our boy child is getting wasted within the community,’ Ms Apio points out. ‘Our adult males are now hiding under social media. That is where they try to prove their strength and voice. But on the ground, they are weak husbands, they are weak fathers, and they are financially handicapped because they simply do not possess market-ready skills.’
She adds: ‘They are not empowered to be able to generate sustainable income to support themselves and their households. It is high time that development partners refocused their lenses on the boy child. The girl child has been significantly empowered.’
The consequences of this gender imbalance are showing up vividly in the local justice system. Local leaders, child rights activists, and community elders are warning that while empowering women is vital for rural development, it must be balanced with the empowerment of men to maintain a healthy social fabric.
Ms Sandra Akello, the Oyam District Probation and Social Welfare Officer, deals with the fallout of this neglect on a daily basis.
‘The undeniable fact is that the boy children are left out,’ Ms Akello says. ‘Most NGOs, when they come on board, focus almost exclusively on girl child education and skilling, completely forgetting that the boys are equally vulnerable.’
Ms Akello notes that many of these boys are orphans or products of broken families. Lacking attention, mentorship, or options, they drop out of school and quickly adopt antisocial behaviours.
‘When boy children have nothing productive to do, or when they are completely unguided, they inevitably start getting into conflict with the law,’ she explains. ‘As a probation officer, I spend a lot of my time working in the courts. The juveniles brought before us are mainly boys, facing severe charges of defilement, robbery, burglary, theft, and even murder. You find that they are the ones committing these heavy crimes, while the girls are largely absent from the dock.’
Ms Akello believes this pattern points to a systemic failure. ‘There is a big question mark here. Are these boys being attended to at all? Defilement happens to girls often because the boys themselves are not guided on relationships and boundaries. It is up to us as leaders, community members, and development stakeholders to take the initiative and ensure that boys are brought back on board.’
The growing concern has not gone unnoticed by the organisations driving these local initiatives. Speaking during a stakeholder engagement and planning convention held at the organization’s offices on Monday, June 22, 2026, Mr Patrick Ocen, the Director of Programmes at FICH, acknowledged the validity of the community’s concerns.
‘The concern that the boy child is being left behind is entirely genuine,’ Mr Ocen stated to stakeholders. He promised that FICH would formally table the issue before its strategic planning team to ensure future community frameworks cater to all vulnerable children equitably, regardless of gender.
Community leaders maintain that a truly resilient and prosperous Ugandan society requires both empowered women and capable, skilled men. Without intentionally addressing the ongoing neglect of the boy child, the very foundations of community leadership, economic stability, and the family unit in rural Uganda will continue to erode from within.