Unlocking the Potential of Women Entrepreneurs in Uganda

Against all odds, she is using coffee to build young girls’ lives in Uganda

Women in the coffee business

As a teenage girl, born in Fort Portal, in rural Western Uganda, Annet Nyakaisiki is now the CEO of the coffee company, Barista House. Annet was raised in a coffee farming family. She wanted to earn a living as a high school graduate, so when she heard about a Barista competition at Sheraton Hotel Kampala in 2011, she thought this would be her chance. Many years later, she works to help young Ugandan girls find the opportunities she once sought.

Remarkably, most competitors she’s faced in brewing competitions are often male, and the specific task in one particular event that brought her into the limelight was to brew 12 drinks in 15 minutes, with types including Cappuccino, Espresso, and signature drinks. An official from the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) encouraged her, despite her misgivings about being the only female.

She would later make significant gains, by 2013, she was working with a top coffee shop in Kampala, Café Bravo. The same year, she competed again in a similar event under UCDA and reached the semi-finals.

In December 2013, she would get a call from another big brand by then, Good African Coffee, to work as their Barrista, yet that was just the start. A year later, she emerged as the only female participant in the finals. She couldn’t take it in. “Did I even sleep that night?” she says, recalling her preparation for the Barista finals.

Long story short, she emerged the winner in what would turn into a series of opportunities and networking for her. She would later compete in Kenya, the US, and come alongside upcoming Baristas nationwide.

As a single mother, Annet says, coffee has helped her take care of her two daughters and her paralyzed dad, she’s also empowered more female entrepreneurs, including women in Kapchorwa and other groups in the Rwenzori region, from where she harvests and processes her Rwenzori gold coffee specialty.

Now she would like to scale her initiative with the purchase of 10 acres of land she’s already identified, in order to demonstrate the “crop to cup” experience, “since people keep asking us, where is your farm?” she adds.

Her dream, though still in a strange location, remains valid. She wants to start a coffee barrister training institute and empower Ugandan girls struggling to make a living in a country where gender disparities make it almost impossible for young women to find meaningful work.

Annet is not yet where she wants to be, but she’s also not where she used to be. Thus, she wants other young women to get where they need to be, thanks to her against-all-odds coffee Barrista dream.

Uganda has a strong culture of entrepreneurship, including among women, and is one of only seven countries worldwide that has achieved gender parity in terms of the number of women driven to pursue entrepreneurial activities. Uganda’s female labor force participation rate is also high compared to other Sub-Saharan countries but has been falling since 2012, especially among young urban women.

IWCA Uganda: Unlocking The Potential Of Women and Youth In Coffee

The Generating Livelihoods and Opportunities for Women (GLOW) project in Uganda intends to create an enabling environment for women’s enterprises by delivering a package of services that pairs finance with business development services and productive infrastructure. It will provide investment finance; enhance technical, socio-emotional, and digital skills; establish professional and business networks, and coordinate greater access to new information and market opportunities. The proposed approach will address social norms and increase women’s access to economic and social infrastructure through the provision of common-user facilities for women to include childcare and other infrastructure that supports women’s participation in work. Notably, the specific needs of refugees and host communities will be integrated across the project’s interventions.

Impact evaluation to test the effectiveness of the new innovations in support of women entrepreneurs will also be considered. In doing so, it would not only support the Government of Uganda to deliver future operations more successfully for women-owned firms but also strengthen the global understanding of the key constraints faced by women entrepreneurs and shed light on new solutions to help overcome them.

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