Factors Affecting Women Entrepreneurship in Uganda.

Abstract

This study aimed to ascertain, motivating, facilitating and limiting factors that affect women entrepreneurship in Uganda. Using a qualitative research method, the researcher interviewed women from Wandegeya Market, Kampala city and found fulfilling personal dreams, family responsibilities, and bad experience from other jobs as the factors motivating women to be entrepreneurs. The study also found out that personal attributes, friends and relatives and government support are the main facilitators of entrepreneurship in Uganda. Besides, the main barriers to women entrepreneurship were established by this study as lack of business knowledge, complicated and expensive sources of capital, perishability of goods, and sexual exploitation. Participants went ahead to propose ways to doing business better, such as avoiding investing all the capital at one, training for new business entrants and entrusting business to God. The findings of this study suggest that, the government of Uganda and other governments elsewhere should avoid designing policies aimed at transforming women entrepreneurship without being informed by research and entrepreneurs should avoid investing all their capital in enterprises before fully studying them.