Little David seems to be listening intently to a presentation of START (Support to Agricultural Revitalization and Transformation), an innovative blended finance facility for value adding small and medium agribusinesses set up by UNCDF in partnership with the Private Sector Foundation of Uganda (PSFU) and the Uganda Development Bank (UDB) and funded by the European Union as part of the 11^th European Development Fund.

6-month old and cuddled in his mom’s lap, David seems to be nodding approvingly as Alex, PSFU Business Development Advisor explains to a group of around 200 representatives of small and medium agribusinesses from the Teso sub-region in Northern Uganda who gathered today in the town of Soroti for an information session about START. Yes, there are only about 10% of women among the participants and David’s mother is one of them. She has an established and growing chili production business and she came hoping that START will help her to expand this business that she runs together with a group of women from her village.

PSFU with the support of UNCDF and UDB hosted START launch events in all five sub-regions of Northern Uganda: Acholi, Lango, West Nile, Teso and Karamoja. These events attracted great numbers of local entrepreneurs engaged in various stages of agricultural value addition and seeking technical and financial support for their businesses. On average, START launches attracted around 300 participants in each sub-region but only 10-30% women. This is a clear indication of the challenge that women entrepreneurs face in Uganda.

According to a recent ILO’s national Women’s Entrepreneurship Development survey, Ugandan women are disadvantaged when it comes to necessary capacities, skills and resources as well as legal impediments, cultural norms, restricted mobility and domestic responsibilities. Entrepreneurship is not considered by all as an acceptable role for women and some practices override legal provisions, for example passing assets such as land onto males and not to females. Gendered social roles assigned to women, including domestic work and childcare, hamper women entrepreneurs’ capacity to spend as much time on their business as men.

It is difficult to imagine David’s father coming to such a meeting with his 6-old son in lap. Ugandan women are more likely than men to be motivated to start a business out of necessity (30% of the women and only 21% of the men), the survival rates of their businesses past 42 months is lower than that of men and they have significantly lower percentages of businesses with employees than men (38% vs. 55% in established businesses).

START recognises this challenges and explicitly incorporates support to projects that contribute to economic empowerment of women in its design by extending project preparation and development assistance and highly subsidized finance to small and medium value adding agribusinesses led by women or creating at least 30% of jobs for women. START addresses the “middle missing” gap in agricultural finance targeting projects with a financing requirement from 10,000 EUR (approximately UGX 40 million) to 100,000 EUR (approximately 4 billion UGX).

The START launches took place in May-July and followed a call for proposals issued in May 2018 to invite proposals from agribusiness SMEs in Northern Uganda. The launch events have been instrumental in four respects.

Local government authorities participating in the START launches reiterated the need for development of a productive commercially-based agriculture sector and committed to helping private businesses achieve this objective – not through cash handouts but through creating a local business enabling environment. “Agriculture is a business, therefore don’t expect anything for free. For those with viable projects, please apply for this Facility, which is the right way to address poverty in Lango sub-region and Northern Uganda at large,” said Mr. Okello, Resident District Commissioner of Lira District.

The challenge of agricultural value addition was firmly put on the agenda of local authorities and, very importantly, of local businesses. START’s unique focus on agricultural value addition was instrumental in highlighting the potential of value adding activities in processing, storage and handling to increase productivity and therefore contribute to structural transformation of Uganda’s economy.

Each session was a learning exercise for local businesses about what makes a good project proposal. Just walking them through the application forms and explaining the meaning of each requirement (market and supply information, cash projections, development impact, etc.) provided clear benchmarks to the participants how to develop their business ideas to the professional standards. This was a small but important step to encourage greater maturity and sophistication of local businesses.

These sessions have highlighted the challenge of women’s participation and representation in agribusiness. The low percentage of women did not escape the attention of local authorities and participants. The START sessions raised the awareness of the local business community about the unequal representation of women and stimulated discussions about the underlying reasons for this situation.

Lastly, the launches made an important contribution to building the capacity of PSFU to engage with its grassroots membership, raise its profile in the field and hone its business communication and outreach skills. Says Daniel Kisekka, PSFU Grants Manager: “Our partnership with UNCDF has been phenomenal and allowed for more PSFU visibility and outreach to both our members and the private sector in general across all districts aligned to the START/DINU programme. In just 3 months (May – July 2018) since the launch of START, PSFU with support from UNCDF has managed to transverse over 30 districts in the Acholi, Lango, West Nile, Teso and Karamoja sub-regions and interacted with among others district chairpersons, resident district commissioners, chief administrative officers, production/agriculture officers, over 1,120 potential prospects and business enterprises. As a result of this partnership, we have been able to engage and inform prospects on how to address challenges to do with poverty eradication and under nutrition using START, a model blended facility that is unique in design and is sustainable for future economic growth. At PSFU we are thankful for this cooperation and look forward to continuously growing this partnership.”This is just the beginning of a journey for the START partners. Now that the call for proposals is closed, PSFU will perform the first screening to identify eligible project proposals that can be handed over to UNCDF for building an investable pipeline of projects. START aims to have the first batch of projects to be ready for financing through UDB before the end of this year. This will be followed by more projects approved for financing and the next call for proposals to be issued in early 2019. And one day David may hear from his mom a story about how START helped her small business to transform into a large and prosperous enterprise.