For home-based workers in Uganda, access to affordable credit is one of the biggest barriers to growing a business. Banks are rarely an option, with strict loan conditions, high interest rates, and a stressful application process. For members of Ngalo Buwereza Organisation (NBO), that is changing.
With support from RAISE and a grant from Merkurfonden, NBO has established its own savings and credit cooperative, a SACCO (Savings and Credit Cooperative), a model widely used in Uganda. The SACCO is now actively disbursing loans to NBO’s 126 member organisations, which together represent more than 7,000 individual members across the country, two-thirds of them women. The results coming back are concrete: groups are expanding production, increasing sales, and reinvesting in their businesses.
What a small loan can do
The loans are modest, typically around DKK 850, but the difference they make is significant. Members describe borrowing from NBO’s SACCO as easier and far less stressful than going to a bank. Crucially, the cooperative is governed by NBO’s own member organisations, who understand local markets and lend on terms that fit their members’ businesses, rather than working against them.
A few examples from groups who have already received loans:
Kakugulumira Women Weavers Association (KUWWA) used their loan to buy leather and traditional kitenge fabric, upgrading their handwoven baskets. The investment more than doubled their selling price: a plain basket goes for around DKK 35, while the upgraded versions fetch DKK 85. More orders have followed, and the group is now working toward export certification from the Uganda National Bureau of Standards.
Mawanga Rural Women Development Group produce liquid soap. With their loan, they bought supplies in bulk and invested in proper product labels. Weekly sales jumped from one to five 1-litre bottles and from two to eight 20-litre drums, and better packaging allowed them to raise the price per drum from DKK 43 to DKK 70.
Galima Women Fights HIV/AIDS Organisation invested in feed and fingerlings for their micro fish farm, expanding from 50 to 130 fish. Fish waste from the pond is composted to grow vegetables in small urban kitchen gardens, creating both food and additional income for the women and their families.
Achievers Women Group produce peanut butter for local sale and school canteens. Their loan allowed them to double their raw material purchases, from 10 to 20 kilos of peanuts and from 2 to 4 kilos of sesame seeds, increasing both turnover and profit.
Patience Pays, a group producing sun-dried fruit, used their loan to buy larger volumes of fresh fruit and avoid the high interest rates charged by informal moneylenders. The result: an income boost of more than DKK 1,300.
Credit that works for communities
Across all the groups that have received loans, the pattern is consistent: small amounts of capital, combined with members’ own skills and organisation, lead to measurable growth. The income generated is reinvested into production, into savings, and into the SACCO itself, creating a cycle of financial resilience.
This is what community-controlled finance looks like in practice: not charity, but a tool that unlocks what people are already capable of.
