Emyooga at six: performance top-ups reward the SACCOs that kept their books

In Kassanda District this month, the Microfinance Support Centre (MSC) did something unusual for a government grant: it invited members of Parliament, district officials and the Resident District Commissioner's office to watch the money arrive. Thirty-three of the district's best-performing Emyooga SACCOs each received an additional Shs20m, a total of Shs660m, as a reward for managing their seed capital well.

The MSC zonal manager for Kabarole, Boaz Tuhumure, explained why. In the past, he said, a few leaders would receive and withdraw funds without informing the rest of their members. Making the disbursement public, with political and administrative leaders present, was meant to ensure that everyone knew the money had come — and to make misuse harder.

The beneficiaries span the whole Emyooga map. In Bukuya County they include SACCOs of local leaders, market vendors, performing artists, persons with disabilities, produce dealers, restaurant owners, salon operators and welders; in Kassanda North and South, boda boda riders, carpenters, fishermen, journalists, mechanics, tailors and veterans, among others. Kassanda South MP-elect Abdu Bisaso told members the money was theirs, not government's, and urged them to use it as planned. It is a small ceremony with a large lesson: six years after Emyooga was launched, the programme is beginning to treat transparency and performance, rather than mere registration, as the price of continued support.

The Presidential Initiative on Wealth and Job Creation, better known as Emyooga, was launched on 19 August 2019. It organises Ugandans into 18 enterprise categories — among them boda boda riders, taxi drivers, market vendors, salon operators, welders, tailors, mechanics, carpenters, journalists, performing artists, fishermen, veterans, women entrepreneurs, youth leaders, persons with disabilities and elected leaders.

Groups were mobilised at village level, formed into associations at parish level and then into SACCOs at constituency level, typically 18 per constituency. Each category SACCO received Shs30m in seed capital per constituency, while elected local leaders' SACCOs received Shs50m. In Kagadi District, for example, 936 associations were formed across two constituencies, but only 796 remained active after the rest failed to comply with the guidelines.

The district-level picture has been uneven. Lamwo District, which received Shs1.06b for 34 SACCOs and 665 associations, reported very low remittance of money as required by the guidelines — a reminder that seed capital was always meant to circulate, not to be spent once.

Emyooga's governance problems were flagged early. In his 2021 audit report, then Auditor General John Muwanga found that 6,326 Emyooga SACCOs were operating without licences from the Uganda Microfinance Regulatory Authority (UMRA) even though they had received government money through the MSC. He warned that this exposed members to poor governance and loss of savings, since UMRA could not enforce compliance on unlicensed institutions.

UMRA has since worked with the MSC on sensitisation workshops to prepare Emyooga SACCOs for licensing across the regions. But the programme's underlying model — rapid formation of thousands of SACCOs, financed before they had built a savings culture or internal controls — made the gap almost inevitable.

The Uganda Cooperative Alliance has said as much, calling in 2025 for heavy investment in capacity building and continued handholding for groups under Emyooga and PDM, which it described as still being in their early stages.

The Kassanda approach suggests a better path. Assistant RDC Saulo Kityo said every qualifying SACCO is meant to receive Shs20m each year, which over five years could add up to about Shs100m for those that perform well. Local leaders are also to set up joint monitoring and audit committees to identify weak SACCOs and offer technical support.

The same logic is visible elsewhere. In December 2025, President Museveni pledged Shs1b for each of the five mechanics' SACCOs in Kampala's divisions after concluding that earlier Shs100m allocations were insufficient — while also ordering a probe into how funds given to mechanics' associations a decade earlier had been used. Support and scrutiny are increasingly arriving together.

For Emyooga SACCO boards, the message is clear. The next shilling will go to those who can show where the last one went. That is not bureaucracy; it is the cooperative principle of democratic member control, finally being backed by money.