Mastercard Foundation, NSSF boost women led enterprises with Shs4.8billion

The National Social Security Fund (NSSF) in partnership with Mastercard Foundation have awarded Shs4.8bn seed funding to 66 women entrepreneurs through their Hi-innovator Women Accelerator program, executives announced on March 14 at Mestil Hotel in Kampala.

A total of 15,000 job opportunities for women and youths countrywide are expected to be created through this intervention, according to executives.

The two partners, in addition to the seed funding support, trained beneficiaries in business management skills through the program’s self-directed online Business Academy.

Specifically, the women entrepreneurs were skilled in financial literacy, compliance, marketing, and bookkeeping among others between November 2022 and January 2023.

The NSSF Hi-Innovator Women Accelerator is a women-only cohort aimed at giving women entrepreneurs across all sectors an even opportunity to improve their business skills and grow their businesses into resilient enterprises that are more competitive and better placed to receive financial services. 

 It is the third cohort of the NSSF Hi-innovator Programme, an innovation initiative by the NSSF in partnership with Mastercard Foundation. It aims to create an ecosystem where small and growing businesses by Ugandan entrepreneurs can be supported to mature into viable businesses.

Patrick Ayota, the NSSF Acting managing director said, “Whereas 66 businesses have received funding today, I am pleased to note that the program has enabled over 500 women entrepreneurs formalise their businesses, giving them a steppingstone to access funding easily.”

Each of the winning businesses was awarded USD20,000 (approx.Shs75m) and will receive tailored technical support in the next few months.

The majority of the winning entrepreneurs intimated that they would want to use the funding to expand their product base, scale up the reach of their products and obtain quality certification for their products and services.

Adrian Bukenya, the Mastercard Foundation Country Director said, “The businesses selected for funding today affirm our commitment to creating more jobs for women and youth in Uganda. At Mastercard Foundation we believe that supporting businesses to scale will expand employment opportunities and that’s why we partnered with NSSF in this initiative.”

To date, 220 businesses have received seed funding worth Shs18bn and skilled 12,000 youths of which 30% are female. The programme began in 2021.