Stanbic Bank Uganda under the leadership of its able Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Kenneth Mumba, has invested at least Shs1 trillion in various initiatives in a bid to drive Uganda’s socio-economic transformation, mirroring the government’s efforts to fight poverty in the country.
As one of the avenues of aligning with the national content, Stanbic Bank Uganda is undertaking several poverty alleviation initiatives, which align with various projects that were rolled out by the government of Uganda to fight poverty across the country.
Although there are many, some of the notable initiatives that Stanbic Bank is undertaking in Uganda to fight poverty, which aim at achieving financial inclusion for all underserved Ugandans from the grassroots level to the top, include;
According to Francis Karuhanga, Chief Executive of Stanbic Uganda Holdings Limited, empowering Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) is crucial to fostering economic resilience and sustainable growth.
However, Ugandan SMEs face significant challenges, including sustainability and short lifespan; that was how the Stanbic Bank Business Incubator was born to provide lasting solutions to this problem.
Karuhanga contends that the Stanbic Business Incubator, just like the Uganda Women Entrepreneurship and the Parish Development Model programmes, aims to address challenges faced by SMEs through providing training, coaching, and mentoring to entrepreneurs, equipping them with the necessary skills to drive growth and become bankable.
An initiative under Stanbic Holdings, the Stanbic For Her programme aims to support women entrepreneurs across the country. The objective of the initiative is to bring every woman closer to her dreams.
Stanbic Bank is driving this with the Grow Loan, an initiative by the World Bank and the Private Sector Foundation (PSFU), through empowering women entrepreneurs with access to affordable finance at an interest rate of 10% per annum only.
Stanbic For Her also offers non-financial initiatives, including education, market information, networking, and market linkages across all sectors, which align with the government’s Uganda Women Entrepreneurs Programme (UWEP) programme under the MGLSD.
The project also offers financial literacy training modules, including expanding your customer base, marketing businesses online, cash flow and loan management, record keeping, managing savings and debt.
Stanbic National School Championship (NSC)
Through this initiative, Stanbic Bank is on an intense campaign to drive science and innovation among students in select schools across the country. The schools that excel in the Championship win a range of prizes, with the winner walking away with funding of up to Shs20 million from Stanbic Bank for their respective projects that stand out among others.
Through the NSC, Stanbic Bank is not only inspiring innovators and inventors but also promoting the government’s initiatives of digital skilling and inclusion, plus science and technology.
Stanbic WYF Agenda
It is important to note that whereas Stanbic Bank is undertaking the poverty alleviation projects mentioned above, they are all encompassed in the Bank’s initiative, dubbed the Stanbic WYF, which is a combination of them all.
The Stanbic WYF, or Women, Youth agenda, is tailored to empowering and supporting these categories of Ugandans, because they are the most underserved.
Since it caters for Women, Youth and Farmers, the initiative perfectly aligns with government programmes like the Parish Development Model (PDM), Emyooga, Youth Livelihood Programme, Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Programme (UWEP) and others.
Indeed, a recent report by the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development MGLSD) indicates that 70% of Ugandans fall in the WYF category, yet this huge percentage of the population is underserved and underbanked, which is why Stanbic Bank’s intervention comes in timely.
Content Creator Economy
In a bid to promote digital inclusion and creativity, Stanbic Bank also intends to invest in the Ugandan content creators’ economy after realising that it is also underbanked, yet with great potential to grow.
As such, under the WYF Agenda, Stanbic Bank is planning to hold the Content Creators Summit later this year as one of the initiatives to fight poverty under the WYF Agenda. This is mainly because most of the content creators are youths, among them women.
This initiative aims to enable content creators to achieve digital inclusion and access to banking services, business development and entrepreneurship training, plus capacity building and skills development.
In essence, the goal of the Stanbic WYF, just like all the other initiatives by the Bank, is to align with the government programmes aimed at promoting economic growth, job creation, and financial stability among all the Women, Youth and Farmers in the country, ultimately contributing to Uganda’s overall socio-economic transformation and growth.