SDG 10 IN UGANDA

Anna Akullu lives in Te-Oboke village, which is in Otuke district in Northern Uganda. She is 52 years old and a mother to 6 grown children. Her family use the recently rehabilitated borehole at Te-Oboke as their principle water source. She recounts that, prior to the rehabilitation of the borehole at Te-Oboke, her family had immense challenges to access water, having to travel to a pool 2 kilometres away in order to collect water. Typically, she would personally spend around 5 hours a day collecting water to contribute to her family’s water needs. Her children also had to spend large parts of their evening gathering water, time which could otherwise have been spent doing homework or at play. In addition to gathering water, large amounts of time would also need to be spent gathering firewood to boil the water in order to make it safe, which again took up valuable hours. Additionally, the quality of the water would frequently make family members sick, with money having to be spent on medications and the children missing countless days of school.

All this has changed since the family has had access to the borehole in Te-Oboke. Anna can now gather all the water needed for the family’s needs within half an hour. She usually gets this done first thing in the morning and then has the rest of the day to spend on much more productive activities. With the time saved, she has joined the women’s business group which is based in the village, and learnt from her fellow members how to produce shea butter from the abundant shea nuts in the area, and to do other crafts such as fashioning shopping bags from papyrus. Products such as these have a significant market value, and the group earns income from selling produce in the weekly market in the nearby village of Barjobi. Anna’s participation in this group brings her a steady income to invest in her own agricultural activities, and she also has the opportunity to take a loan from the group, should she wish to pursue her own business idea.

Overall, the women’s group is allowing its members to advance their situation by ensuring that they have income and can therefore influence decision-making at the household level. It is also an example of a key driver in the growth of the rural economy, enabling marginalised rural people to use their skills and the resources at their disposal to increase their income and gain valuable skills. Anna and many other members of the group would never have had this opportunity without the borehole, which has saved them several hours a day to invest in productive activities.

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