Power For Ugandan Women Entrepreneurs
The POWER (Providing Opportunities for Women in Entrepreneurship and Reproductive Health) began in 2022 as a pilot project and joint initiative funded by Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevölkerung (DSW) and led by Action 4 Health Uganda (A4HU) for women entrepreneurs and business leaders addressing Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) and Family Planning (FP) challenges in Uganda. Other partners have since come on board to scale up the program to more cohorts of young women in health innovators.
The POWER project started in 2022 with a nine-month pilot that provided capacity development and mentoring for twelve women entrepreneurs aged 18-30 to develop sustainable businesses in SRHR/FP.
The Pilot project, which commenced in June 2022 and ended in February 2023, was scaled up for the second cohort of 20 young women entrepreneurs in September 2024. Of these, 15 graduated. In March 2025, a third cohort was welcomed onto the accelerator program in partnership with Makerere University School of Public Health and through the Social Innovation in Health Initiative (SIHI)-funded by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA).
The women entrepreneurs are linked to a mentorship program, an alumni network created by the first cohort, local business networks, academic institutions, the public sector, and international networks to ensure access to ongoing information and services to help expand their enterprises.
The 2018 Mastercard Index of Women’s Entrepreneurship showed that Ugandan women are the third most enterprising globally, behind Ghana and Russia. Through POWER, we aim to capture the passion and drive of these young women to create sustainable business models while addressing SRHR challenges. This Accelerator project will transform the Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) landscape in Uganda and provide innovative ways to tackle poverty among the youth.
The POWER pilot’s success has enabled the establishment of an Incubation Hub at The Bonita Training Center, located at our head offices on Lubowa Hill, off the Kampala-Entebbe Highway. These women-led FP/SRHR business start-ups will be developed and launched at this hub. The women entrepreneurs work towards a “Demo Day” to pitch their ideas to a broad audience of influencers to attract public interest, new investors, and partners. At the end of the program, the participants are awarded certificates, with the five top enterprises receiving a monetary prize to accelerate their businesses. After the young women complete the program, they receive continued mentorship, coaching, and business development support from A4HU, with an opportunity to join the Alumni network and benefit from the POWER Investment Facility (PIF) to access Investment financing for their startups. Outstanding entrepreneurs are assessed for certification as business coaches and mentors to join A4HU to mentor and coach other women and youth in business.
- POWER Technical-Brief-8-8-2024
- POWER Technical Brief Phase 1
- POWER Pitch DECK Fundraising Final
- 1. POWER Project Narrative report June 2022 to Feb 2023_FINAL
- NEW POWER ACCELERATOR STRATEGY AND OPERATIONAL PLAN FOR UGANDA
- Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevölkerung Annual report for Uganda 2023
- POWER Demo Day_Booklet
MEET THE LADIES OF POWER COHORT II
Nabaggala Sandra Sarah
Startup: Nature Delight Limited
Profile: A social enterprise making Nutritional products to resolve malnutrition cases among children under 5 years and integrating SRHR Information and wellness and balanced diet sessions for women and girls of reproductive age.
How: She produces dietary supplements from local organic materials to address malnutrition and obesity cases, integrating SRHR Information access and access to FP products at the Arena. She also integrates ICT through dietary online sessions and podcasts for young adolescents.
Nansasi Suminiy
Startup: Young Youth and Women Initiative Network (YYOUWIN)
Profile: A social enterprise dedicated to addressing stigma and discrimination and Reproductive rights of Muslim women in accessing SRHR/FP in the Muslim community, which is against the use of FP and women empowerment through evidence-based Advocacy for FP/SRHR information and services.
How: Suminyi intends to conduct capacity-building and mindset change among Muslim leaders using evidence-based methods and testimonies from Survivors of Gender violence and teenage pregnancies among Muslim communities to change the mentality of religious leaders. The business targets Mosques, churches, and religious institutions in Wakiso district. She also intends to make and install condom dispensers at her laundry business and all other key hot spots in the city to provide access to contraceptives and FP products.
Najjemba Betty
Startup: Malangala Makapads Project
Profile: The Malangala Youth Empowerment Centre was engaged in producing eco-friendly sanitary pads from papyrus and recycled paper.
How: It supplied the products to schools, pharmacies, and local clinics to enhance menstrual hygiene for adolescent girls in rural communities. They harvested papyrus from swamps, processed it, and mixed it with recycled paper to produce a biodegradable sanitary pad.
Fatuma Tibanagwa
Startup: Skills for Growth
Profile: A social enterprise creating employment for young women and girls by offering catering services and training them in VSLA, life skills, and SRHR.
How: Fatuma mobilizes women in groups and provides capacity-building training across women’s groups, such as VSLA groups.
Nassolo Claire
Startup: Claire’s Bakery and Training Centre
Profile: Training Girls and Youth in Menstrual Hygiene Management in learning institutions and communities, but also advocating for dignified menstrual experiences among girls and women of reproductive age.
How: Claire strives to improve self-esteem around menstrual hygiene practices for girls and access to sanitary kits and information.
Taka Martha Birungi
Startup: Innovative Corner Cafe and Stationeries
Profile: A social enterprise addressing high school dropouts arising from teenage pregnancy and the lack of Information on SRHR and access to modern contraceptives for women and girls of reproductive age.
How: this will be done through partnering with schools, learning centers, and vocational institutions to train Adolescents in SRHR information and sell Family Planning products as a solution to addressing high teenage pregnancy in the district but also skill girls in catering services to earn some income, make books for sale as a side income to boost access to FP commodities.
Nassolo Suzan
Startup: Evergrow Organics
Profile: Evergrow Organics is an environmental social enterprise that addresses farmers’ access to organic products. It integrates access to SRHR/ FP products through organic farmer groups in the rural Mityana district. She is also a member of the Youth Empowerment Network.
How: Suzan intends to train farmers on SRHR and link them to products through Flying Nurses under the TeamUp Uganda program. After training farmers within their groups at the community level, she intends to sell them menstrual products and kits.
Apoya Tereza Awori
Startup: Youth Mission 4 Change Initiative (YM4CI)
Profile: The social enterprise trains young women in SRHR and provides skills in tailoring for job creation, integrating youths from empowerment centres.
How: Tereza intends to identify youths from Tororo Youth Empowerment Centre and train them on the comprehensive package of SRHR as a social business and skill 300 in tailoring and selling menstrual products alongside fashion design that attracts girls and young people.
Nanyonga Dorcas
Startup: ENSONGA CARE
Profile: The social enterprise promotes SRHR/FP in the poultry business by skilling poultry farmers in family planning and providing them with SRHR information and services. She also transforms kitchen droppings into manure and fertilizers to solve soil infertility.
How: She utilizes poultry farmers within her network to provide SRHR/FP services to these groups within her community. She also intends to provide training in GBV, menstrual hygiene management, and preventing and treating STIs.
Nazziwa Annet
Startup: Radiant Beauty Salon
Profile: A social enterprise providing FP/ SRHR Information and services in Mukono district.
How: Annet uses the beauty salon as a safe space for talking about SRHR and Family Planning and providing young women with HIV and Gender-based violence prevention education.
Namayanja Allen
Startup: Mindset Coaching Mission Limited
Profile: A social enterprise focused on changing mindsets among young people regarding reproductive health issues, such as healthy relationships, sexuality, safe sex practices, and psychosocial support services, including counseling and mental health.
How: Allen intends to develop tailored and simplified podcasts and blended learning videos, audios, and animated skits around SRHR/FP to sensitize and train young people in the most simplest way, especially using digital platforms and tools.
Nakandi Jesca Daisy
Startup: Haizy Baby Porridge
Profile: A social enterprise addressing malnutrition and poor dietary practices among children 0-5 years through the production and sale of porridge boosters but also maternal health products for lactating mothers and their babies, including Family Planning products and access to contraceptives in urban slums and cities and rural communities.
How: She intends to produce and sell porridge boosters alongside other SRHR products (reusable sanitary pads) and contraceptives. She will also train young mothers on infant feeding and family planning to create space and manageable families.
Abeja Daphine
Startup: Daphine Enterprises
Profile: Daphy Enterprises is a social enterprise aiming to produce reusable sanitary pads to address menstrual hygiene among teenage girls in the community and schools of Kamuli district. The enterprise seeks to bridge the gap in access to these products, as adolescents currently use sand and polythene bags as an alternative.
How: Using Local materials like thread and cotton, she intends to make reusable pads and sell them to the community and schools. She will also provide sex education and menstrual hygiene training in educational institutions in exchange for a fee while selling sanitary pad kits.
Masibo Zulaika
Satrtup: She Ascends Enterprise Uganda Limited
Profile: The social enterprise addresses the lack of sanitary pads for girls, often leading to irregular attendance and dropping out of school.
How: Zulaika utilizes locally available materials to make reusable sanitary pads and raise awareness on SRHR, including HIV/AIDS, psychosocial support, and skilling Girls in producing and marketing hygienic pads.
Kathryn Rhoda
Startup: R-Jay Cleaning Services
Profile: A social enterprise dedicated to empowering single and teenage mothers through offering professional, eco-friendly, and sustainable cleaning services. Our goal goes beyond just cleaning spaces, we are cleaning the path toward brighter futures for young women who need it most.
How: She offers skills training and empowerment workshops, access to SRHR services, provides access to support networks, and advocacy.
MEET THE LADIES OF POWER COHORT I
Joan Patience
Startup: Simply FP App
Profile: An on-demand app that provides accurate information about FP products, contraceptives, and services. It aims to dispel misinformation about FP and counteract harmful cultural beliefs.
How: Using GPS coordinates, the APP enables users to ask questions about FP and receives real-time answers from all health facilities that provide FP information and services.
Aim: Her long-term commitment is to change the way sexual and reproductive health is managed in Uganda.
Sumayyah Nakimuli Sengendo
Startup: Totler
Profile: Totler is a social enterprise focused on creating social impact for its clients (mothers and babies) and the community at large.
How: Totler’s unique selling point is the provision of SRHR/FP education under the ‘Totler Mother’s Campaign’. Through educational activities and awareness (such as SMS text messages), Sumayyah and her team prepare Totler clients for childbirth and the postpartum period with SRHR information.
Aim: To develop and help replicate a community-based approach to healthcare by building a network of Totler Mothers across Uganda!
Angel Babirye
Startup: Us for Girls Foundation
Profile: The Foundation was started in 2021 by a team of four women, including Babirye Angel, to address SRHR challenges adolescent girls face in their local districts.
How: Though female founded, the Foundation includes both females and males who share the same passion for seeing girls grow within a healthy and safe environment. Via this accelerator, the founders want to shape and grow their direction towards reaching out to even more girls in Uganda and provide them with better knowledge and practices on menstrual hygiene.
Aim: To help adolescent girls and young women understand their SRHR needs, while addressing their challenges.
Sharon Natukunda
Startup: Green Homeland Initiative (GHI)
Profile: Protecting the environment through eco-friendly sanitary pad production and waste transformation.
How: Empowering women and youth through sustainable sanitary pad production, promoting hygiene and income generation, while raising awareness about waste disposal and menstrual hygiene management in schools and communities.
Aim: To involve all women and girls in environmentally friendly enterprises in Uganda to improve their lives economically and protect their reproductive health.
Rebecca Florence
Startup: Shetechtive Uganda
Profile: Shetechtive Uganda empowers adolescent girls and young women through technology solutions for sustainable development.
How: Through their innovation called GAWAH, Shetechtive Uganda uses a WhatsApp chatbot named “Aunty Flo” to provide SRHR information, products, and services, addressing the unmet need for family planning in urban slums.
Aim: Shetechtive Uganda aims to empower young women by offering accessible SRHR information through their chatbot, while creating a market for contraceptives and SRH service providers and promoting their offerings through trade shows, partnerships, and digital marketing.
Mary Yaar
Startup: Founder of Marie Medicinal Haven (MMH)
Profile: MMH produces affordable and quality menstrual products for women and girls in Gulu District, Uganda.
How: Marie Medicinal Haven is a social entrepreneurship that provides economic empowerment to refugees through recruiting, practical skills training, mentorship, and employment. Although started as an eco-friendly soap production company, MMH will be expanding to include quality menstrual products based on natural materials.
Aim: In addition to the production and distribution of quality and affordable menstrual products for women and girls within Gulu District, the startup also aims to create awareness in the schools and surrounding communities through outreaches and dialogues.
Evelyn Logose
Startup: Safe Delivery Kits
Profile: Safe Delivery Kits is a startup that will enhance the sexual reproductive environment through improving accessibility to standard, affordable, eco-friendly and high-quality delivery kits among adolescents and young women in order the curb local high mortality rates.
How: The company will employ an integrated approach that improves accessibility to affordable, eco-friendly, and high-quality FP supplies for safe deliveries, as well as providing family planning education via clinics, community outreaches, and digital platforms.
Aim: To become the leading startup in supplying family planning information, services, and FP supplies in Uganda.
Vickie Sharon
Startup: Queen Hair Saloon (QHS)
Profile: Queen Hair Saloon is a hair maintenance and training initiative for young women in saloon management.
How: QHS is not your regular hair salon. QHS was created as a safe space for women to open up and share their sexual and reproductive health challenges, which are often broad in nature, from how to communicate with their partners about good sexual practices to their struggles to access youth-friendly and affordable SRH services. As well as peer-friendly FP/SRHR advice, the startup also provide courses in salon management.
Aim: To reach more women with SRHR/FP information and services, QHS will be scaled-up to provide menstrual hygiene management and the provision of affordable menstrual products. QHS will be a solid platform to empower young women, provide easy access to affordable menstrual products, and to get accurate (women-led) knowledge.
Edith Atim
Startup: Edith Foundation
Profile: To produce reusable pads of different sizes to fit all women’s body shapes and to sell these at reasonable prices.
How: Edith’s startup aims to make and sell re-usable pads at affordable prices and in various sizes. Her company will also promote accurate information on SRHR and menstrual hygiene management, in addition to antenatal care and delivery services to people living in remote communities.
Aim: A future of gender equality and proper menstrual hygiene management among women and girls across Uganda.
Fatuma Imanet
Startup: Lady Mariam Educational Centre
Profile: To create in-school spaces to teach FP/SRHR, income generating activities (IGAs), and advocacy for young mothers
How: As a former youth champion in Mityana District, Fatuma will use her experience to develop an educational hub that incorporates FP/SRHR, IGAs, and advocacy classes for young mothers that come to pick-up and drop-off their children from schools. The hub will not only be used as a source of information and referral for young mothers, but as a safe spot for them to share their issues and gain solutions.
Aim: To promote understanding, SRHR knowledge, independence, and power for young women and girls in Mityana District.
Maureen Kamara
Startup: Nisha Beauty Palace
Profile: Nisha Beauty Palace is committed to being a leader in the beauty industry by providing affordable beauty products and professional services. Health is wealth at Nisha, so sexual and reproductive education is emphasized in all its operations. This is done through condom distribution and refilling condom dispensers around Kampala. Referrals are also done for youth to access youth-friendly services.
Aim: To scale towards improving young people’s health, economic status and livelihood across Uganda.
Winnie Nabukeera
Startup: Little Winnie Foundation
Profile: Little Winnie Foundation aims at creating awareness about HIV & AIDS via community sensitization, testing people for HIV, and health awareness.
How: With her team, Winnie has visited many schools under their school model program and sensitized children about HIV at all levels. Via the POWER pilot, they have begun a campaign for a Nurses & Midwives mentorship and coaching program. The Foundation aims at helping nurses and midwives find their purpose, passion – and to turn it into profit!
Aim: To continue to fight the stigma attached to HIV & AIDS, to spread testing and awareness, while at the same time helping nurses become more efficient and effective in terms of service delivery and customer care. The startup will empower nurses to find a work-life balance, prioritize their health needs, and also get entrepreneurship skills.