Lydia Nyafono at her shop in Tororo
HABARI DAILY I Kampala, Uganda I The Generating Growth Opportunities and Productivity for Women Enterprises (GROW) loans have gone a long way towards helping women attain their financial independence.
The GROW project is aligned to Government development programs which are bent on promoting women’s economic empowerment.
Take Lydia Nyafono, a 44-year old a resident of Agululu village, Achillet parish, in Tororo district.
The says she works with 10 farmers who have supplied her with agri-produce for the last nine years. Nyafono says with the recent GROW loan, she accessed through her bank, she hopes to work with more women farmers within the district.
She buys maize and rice from farmers which she processes and supplies to the market at a profit. Nyafono says to expand her business, she needs over sh40m to buy stock.
“Since our business is in produce, I have always found myself in seasons where I have no capital to invest in the businesses,” she says. Nyafono, whose initial capital was Shs 1.5 million, says she sometimes finds challenges meeting the market demand because she runs out of stock.
Nyafono, a single mother of three, says her capital has consistently grown over time, through loans and savings.
Her business incurs costs for milling, sealing, and packaging bags.
A client of Finance Trust Bank, she says she learned about the GROW loan through an advertisement on Bukedde TV saying the Government was providing loans through banks to women in business.
Nyafono says previously high interest rates have limited women like her from expanding their businesses.
She took a GROW loan of Shs 4 million at a 10.5% interest rate to be serviced within 12 months. “Before taking the GROW loan, I would only purchase 15 bags of maize. However, today, I have stocked three tonnes,” she says.
In two years, with the proceeds from GROW Loan, Nyafono hopes to pay her children’s school fees as well as construct a residential house on a plot of land she bought last year.
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