By Mulengera Reporters
Women are being left with a disproportionately small share of financing under Uganda’s Agricultural Credit Facility (ACF), with new figures showing that female borrowers received just 2% of total disbursements compared with 19% for men.
The figures are contained in the Independent Evaluation of the Agricultural Credit Facility conducted by the National Planning Authority (NPA) and released in May 2026.
The evaluation reveals a stark gender gap in access to ACF financing despite the facility’s broad mandate to promote agricultural commercialization and inclusive economic transformation.
As of September 2024, men accounted for 71% of funded projects, while women accounted for only 19%. Companies and groups made up the remaining 10% of projects.
But the disparity becomes even more pronounced when the value of financing is considered.
Companies and groups received a staggering 79% of total ACF disbursements, while male borrowers received 19% and female borrowers just 2%.
The figures mean that women, despite accounting for nearly one in five funded projects, captured only a tiny fraction of the money available through the government-backed facility.
The gap is also reflected in the size of individual loans.
According to the NPA evaluation, the average loan for a female borrower was UGX21 million, less than half the UGX50 million average accessed by male borrowers.
The difference becomes even more dramatic when compared with corporate borrowers, whose average loan size stood at approximately UGX1.492 billion.
Women get smaller loans, fewer opportunities
The evaluation says the figures point to persistent gender disparities in agricultural financing and highlight barriers that continue to restrict women’s access to larger loans.
Among the challenges identified are limited collateral, lower financial literacy and fewer engagement opportunities with financial institutions.
The result is a financing system in which women are participating, but largely at the lower end of the credit spectrum.
For a country where women play a major role in agricultural production and household food security, the NPA says the gender gap represents a significant missed opportunity.
The evaluation argues that expanding women’s access to agricultural finance could improve household welfare, strengthen food security and increase community resilience—all priorities within Uganda’s national development agenda.
NPA calls for 50% female participation
The NPA recommends that ACF mainstream gender-responsive financing across its operations rather than relying on general access to credit to deliver equal outcomes.
Among the proposed measures are tailored loan products for women, targeted financial literacy programmes and incentives for Participating Financial Institutions (PFIs) that increase lending to female borrowers.
The evaluation also calls for institutionalising gender-disaggregated reporting and recognising PFIs that demonstrate strong performance in promoting women’s access to finance.
Most significantly, the NPA recommends that 50% gender distribution become ACF’s minimum threshold for measuring progress.
The target is intended to align ACF’s lending with Uganda’s population structure, where women account for approximately 51% of the population, and to ensure that women—who form a significant part of the country’s agricultural workforce—are not left behind in access to development finance.
Billions mobilised, but women remain on the margins
The gender imbalance is emerging as ACF expands its role in Uganda’s agricultural economy.
Established in 2009, ACF was created to provide short-, medium- and long-term financing for agricultural production, mechanisation, modernization, agro-processing and grain trade on favourable terms compared with conventional loans.
The facility is managed by the Bank of Uganda in partnership with PFIs and is recognised as a key Development Financing Mechanism under Uganda Vision 2040 and the Fourth National Development Plan.
Over the past 15 years, ACF has effectively doubled the volume of credit available to agricultural borrowers, with PFIs cumulatively lending about UGX485 billion, an annual average of roughly UGX32 billion, alongside UGX495.6 billion from government.
But the NPA figures raise questions about who is benefiting most from that expansion.
For women, the problem is not simply that fewer projects are funded. The loans they receive are also dramatically smaller.
The result is a system where women are present in ACF’s portfolio, but their share of the financial resources remains disproportionately low.
The evaluation therefore puts pressure on ACF and its partner financial institutions to move beyond counting female beneficiaries and focus on the size, quality and economic impact of financing reaching women.
Until that happens, the NPA findings suggest, Uganda’s agricultural financing system risks perpetuating a gender gap in which women are encouraged to participate in agriculture but remain largely excluded from the bigger pools of capital needed to grow commercially viable enterprises. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
