By Aggrey Baba
At a time when many of her age-mates were preparing to enjoy the freedom that comes with completing Senior Six, Dr Ruth Aisha Biyinzika Kasolo was already learning lessons in money management, leadership and enterprise that would eventually take her into the corridors of major development programmes.
Interestingly, her journey did not begin with a prestigious appointment, a university degree or a lucrative job offer, but a disagreement over a UGX 4,500 beach outing in 1999, when her father decided that the money she intended to spend on a holiday could instead help her acquire a stake in a savings association.
Biyinzika, then 19, had joined classmates in planning a trip to the beach. But her father had other ideas after learning about their plans. Rather than simply prohibiting the outing, he challenged his daughter to embrace saving and investment by joining the newly established Kawempe Financial Savings Association (KFSA).
The condition for membership was a UGX10,000 share. Her father offered to contribute UGX5,000, leaving her to find the balance herself.
Instead of insisting on the beach trip, Biyinzika accepted the challenge and redirected her holiday money towards purchasing the share, a decision which would prove more consequential than the outing she missed.
Through KFSA, she began learning how collective savings, small loans and disciplined financial management could help individuals and communities improve their economic circumstances.
But she was not content with being an ordinary member.
During the association’s early leadership elections, Dr. Biyinzika decided to contest for the chairperson’s position, despite facing older candidates who already had experience in local councils, unions and other community organizations, and so she lost.
For many young people, such a defeat could have been enough to discourage further participation. Biyinzika, however, found another way into leadership when an opportunity arose on the association’s three-member auditing committee, where she contested and was selected to head it.
When the chairperson later resigned after taking up a managerial position elsewhere, she was appointed to replace them. Dr.Biyinzika also headed the mobilization committee, responsibilities that required her to bring more people into the association and convince them of the benefits of saving together.
She moved through markets, churches, mosques and small trading centres, encouraging people to embrace collective savings and use access to credit to improve their livelihoods.
Her work soon attracted attention beyond Kawempe.
At a workshop involving leaders of different Financial Services Associations, she learnt that the community initiative she was helping to build belonged to a wider network supported by development partners, including the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, Plan International and the European Union.
Her contribution to KFSA impressed the initiative’s leadership, who subsequently asked her to visit other branches and train their workers.
She was also assigned to help establish financial services associations in Bwaise and Mpererwe, extending her responsibilities beyond Kawempe, where her journey had begun.
All this was happening while she was still on her Senior Six vacation. But when she subsequently joined Makerere University to pursue a Bachelor of Commerce degree, Biyinzika negotiated a flexible working arrangement that allowed her to continue working alongside her studies.
Her supervisor entrusted her with branch audits and staff training, including assignments in Rukungiri and the Greater Masaka region.
At just 20, she was travelling around the country, helping community institutions strengthen their operations. Her employer provided her with a vehicle and a phone to facilitate the work.
She also saved enough from her earnings to build her first house in Kawempe, demonstrating how the financial discipline she had begun learning as a teenager could translate into tangible assets.
In 2002, while still at Makerere, she became operations manager of FSA International Uganda, marking another major step in her professional development.
The experience subsequently opened doors to a career managing development programmes in partnership with international institutions, including the World Bank, the European Union, USAID and the African Development Bank.
Before taking up her current responsibility coordinating the World Bank-funded Generating Growth Opportunities and Productivity for Women Enterprises (GROW) initiative, implemented through the Private Sector Foundation Uganda, Dr. Ruth Biyinzika managed the Skills Development Fund, which focused on improving workers’ skills, productivity and national certification systems.
She also served as deputy chairperson of the board of the Presidential CEO Forum and held other senior programme management and technical advisory positions.
Her journey illustrates how an early lesson in saving, followed by a willingness to accept responsibility, can shape a professional career long before an individual acquires the qualifications or connections commonly associated with senior leadership.
The beach outing that never happened became an early lesson in choosing an investment in the future over immediate gratification for her.
And what began with a only UGX10,000 share in a community savings association in Kawempe eventually developed into a career centred on financial inclusion, economic development and helping women build stronger businesses. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
