Education initiative gives hope to girls in Busoga  

Ms Winfred Namagaya, a first-year student at Makerere University, says she was on the verge of dropping out of school after her Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) in which she scored aggregate 12.

This was after her mother failed to raise her tuition and that of her four other siblings. But that was until the Rebecca Alitwala Kadaga Education Initiative (RAKEI) came in and started supporting her.

Ms Kadaga, the First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for East African Community (EAC) Affairs has been supporting and transforming the education of the Girl Child through RAKEI, which has more than 2,000 direct and over 10,000 indirect beneficiaries.

“I am now at university and very positive about the future. This has given a chance to my other four siblings who might have dropped out of school,” Ms Namagaya said in a testimony in Kamuli last week.

Ms Namagaya is a representation of more than one million girls in Busoga Sub-region, which comprises 12 districts, grappling with high school dropout rates and teenage pregnancies, food and income security among other troubles.

The RAKEI programme, which was started in Kamuli District in 2020, has now spread to Buyende, Luuka, Bugiri, Kaliro, Namayingo and Iganga districts. Dr Nelson Muzira Mugumira, the RAKEI executive director, says the dropout rate has continued to rise, with more than 30 per cent of the children who join primary unable to sit for the Primary Living Education (PLE).

“We clearly know that our biggest problem is poverty but how do we tackle this? We want to have many people, especially girls and women, getting a good education. That is why we are making these strides in Busoga and probably we could go across the whole country,” Dr Mbazira said in an interview last Friday.

RAKEI’s mission is to identify and work with the most vulnerable women and children, and support them to achieve their full potential through sustainable development initiatives to return and stay in school.

Subsequently, Ms Kadaga has been supporting girls who perform well in academics but are constrained financially, by taking them to schools within the sub-region.

While launching RAKEI at Kamuli Township last April, the Busoga Kingdom minister of gender, women and children affairs, Ms Joyce Abaliwano, called upon the government and stakeholders to focus on critical actions and budgetary allocations to facilitate obligations for their protection.

“You need to manage yourselves well, fight for spaces through education and put books first because while marriage can wait, education doesn’t yet it holds the master key to a better future,” Ms Kadaga said at the time.

According to Ms Kadaga, among her priority issues are education support, child and family health, gender and women economic empowerment, food and income security as well as climate and environmental conservation.