She Works. She Hustles. She Still Can’t Get Ahead.

Inside the economic cycle trapping refugee women in Uganda.

Uganda is often praised internationally for having one of the most progressive refugee policies in the world. Refugees are legally allowed to work, move freely, and start businesses. However, legality and access are not the same thing.

Today, Uganda hosts nearly 2 million refugees, making it Africa’s largest refugee-hosting country. Most have fled conflict in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and other neighboring countries. Over one million are children. (unhcr.org)

Across Kampala and refugee settlements, many refugee women are constantly working. They sew clothes, braid hair, make soap, cook food, sell second-hand items, or hawk goods through the city streets. Entrepreneurship, hustle and effort is clearly a feature of refugee resilience in the city, however, what is absent is stability.

The issue is that survival itself is expensive:

To make money, you first need money.

Having interviewed several refugee women, they stated that to open a small shop, you need to have rent in advance. To secure a trading license, you often need proof of stock and stability. To access a loan, you need collateral, guarantors, savings, or financial history. To maintain a bank account, you need some money to open the account. To grow a business, you need time, safety, and protection from constant disruption.

Most refugee women arrive with almost none of these things.

Many fled war, violence, or political instability. Most lost homes, businesses, family members, and support systems overnight. Others arrived carrying only what they could physically bring with them. Some are raising children alone while trying to rebuild their lives from scratch.

So they begin where they can: the informal economy.

But informal work is unstable by nature.

A woman may spend the entire day selling goods roadside only to make barely enough for food and transport home. If authorities confiscate her products, if rain comes unexpectedly, if she is chased away from her selling point, or if violence occurs, that day’s income disappears immediately.

And when income disappears, so does dinner. School fees. Rent. Medication.

Research on Congolese refugee women in Uganda’s informal sector found that 74% of surveyed refugee households were female-headed, with most women relying on small-scale agriculture or informal economic activity to survive. The study also showed limited access to savings and loans systems, making it difficult for women to expand beyond day-to-day survival. (Aijuka, C)

What makes this cycle particularly difficult is that every emergency resets progress.

A sick child. An eviction threat. Theft. Reduced humanitarian aid. Inflation. A missed payment.

These are not temporary inconveniences when someone is already surviving on the edge. They become moments that collapse fragile stability altogether.

The cycle often looks like this:

No capital leads to informal work.Informal work leads to unstable income.Unstable income makes saving impossible. Without savings or collateral, formal opportunities remain inaccessible.And so survival work continues.

Again and again.

This reality has intensified as humanitarian funding in Uganda has significantly declined. In 2025, Uganda’s refugee response was reported to be only 25% funded. UNHCR warned that emergency funding was running out while refugee arrivals continued to rise by hundreds each day. (UNHCR).

Food assistance has also steadily reduced over the years due to donor funding cuts. UNHCR and WFP stated that reduced funding has forced ration reductions across refugee settlements, leaving many families increasingly dependent on informal work simply to survive. (UNHCR Help)

At the same time, reports have warned that women and girls become more vulnerable to exploitation and gender-based violence during funding crises and economic instability. (Reuters)

And yet, despite all this, many women continue trying to build.

That persistence matters.

Too often, conversations about refugees focus only on suffering or dependency. But what becomes clear when speaking to refugee women is the extent to which many are already creating, adapting, and innovating under extraordinary pressure. Some join savings groups. Others teach themselves trades. Others move between multiple small jobs simply to keep their children in school.

The problem is not a lack of ambition.

It is the cost of stability.

Refugee women are expected to participate in the economy while being excluded from many of the systems needed to stabilize participation within it: financial systems, lending structures, secure retail spaces, and long-term protections.

Resilience alone cannot solve structural exclusion.

And until stability itself becomes more accessible through safer informal economies, accessible financing, community savings systems, reduced barriers to formalization, and stronger social protections, many refugee women in Uganda will remain trapped in cycles of survival instead of being able to fully build toward the futures they are already fighting for every day.