🧩 The Challenge
Uganda is currently home to Africa's largest refugee population. Most refugees live in the underdeveloped West Nile region, an area with high poverty and without adequate infrastructure. Eighty two percent of refugees are women and children, and many girls must manage early marriages, pregnancies, heavy domestic work, and limited schooling. Uganda uses economic policy to help refugees and host communities, but because of remote, rural conditions, few jobs, and limited access to market, both communities are struggling.
🛠️ The Intervention
The World Bank-supported Uganda: Roads and Bridges in the Refugee Hosting Districts/Koboko-Yumbe-Moyo Road Corridor Project (P171339), which runs from 2021–2026, is upgrading 105 kilometers of road to link refugees and host communities to markets and jobs.
The project addresses barriers to employment and mobility for women, particularly in refugee settings.
Key activities include:
- Employment: The project aims to increase job opportunities for women in road construction and maintenance by incorporating bidding documents that encourage their participation. It seeks to raise the proportion of women workers in both construction and administrative roles to 30%.
- Infrastructure: The project includes roadside vending and market areas, bus bays, lighting, and road safety features. These improvements are based on consultations with local women.
- Capacity Building: The project strengthens the Uganda National Roads Authority’s ability to analyze women’s needs and design plans to address them.
- Data Management: The country's Road Accident Database will be sorted by male/female and refugee/host community status to better inform policies.
🏗️ Implementation Challenges and Successes
Community consultations give local women a voice in the project, address employment barriers, and collect feedback on women’s workforce participation. The project dovetails with other World Bank operations to support women’s cooperatives and improve market access.
The project faced some early delays, and some jobs, particularly those requiring advanced skills, are difficult to fill with female candidates. Nevertheless, the project already employed up to 100 women in road works with the support of the training which is addressing these skills gaps.
💡 Lessons Learned
Key lessons learned from this project include:
- Community Engagement: Consultations with women from local communities gathered useful insights and feedback, which was used to inform infrastructure design. These consultations underscored the importance of making sure women’s economic empowerment strategies meet local needs, from safety measures to economic infrastructure.
- Existing Programs: Collaborating with planners and managers from other projects addressing women’s employment built on established resources and networks.
- Baseline: The importance of relevant data and a thorough baseline study cannot be overstated. Without baseline data, it is difficult to establish realistic targets.
- Monitoring and Evaluation: Consistent monitoring of key success metrics such as women’s workforce participation and safety compliance with the help of a dedicated M&E consultant, is crucial for assessing progress.
These lessons offer insights for future infrastructure projects, especially in places with unique dynamics such as refugee-hosting areas.
Note: The case study was prepared based on a desk review of project documents and an interview with Ivan Emmanuel Mwondha, World Bank Task Team Leader for the Uganda: Roads and Bridges in the Refugee Hosting Districts/Koboko-Yumbe-Moyo Road Corridor Project.