That contradiction stayed with her

In 2016, Evelyn and Priscilla Nambajjwe founded Shared Action Africa with a clear purpose: to expand economic opportunities for rural women through women-led savings groups, financial literacy, and practical business support. They believed that when women had greater access to income and financial resources, they would be better able to shape their own futures.

Then SAA expanded into Nakivale and Oruchinga refugee settlements in 2018.

At first, the team believed that lack of income was the greatest barrier facing refugee and host-community women and girls. But the women themselves told a more complicated story.

They spoke about the struggle to earn a living, but also about reproductive health needs that went unmet, stigma surrounding contraception and adolescent sexuality, unintended pregnancies that interrupted school and training, and the limited power many women had to make decisions about their own bodies, livelihoods, and futures.

SAA’s listening campaign, launched in Nakivale and Oruchinga in 2019, reinforced a lesson that has shaped the organisation ever since:

Women’s lives do not fit neatly into separate programs.

A mother cannot sustain a small business while repeatedly missing work because of an untreated reproductive health condition. A young woman may struggle to remain in school or complete training when an unintended pregnancy changes the course of her life. And a woman cannot participate consistently in farming, savings groups, or enterprise development when poor health repeatedly interrupts her ability to work, plan, and earn.

SAA came to understand a simple but powerful connection:

Health disruptions become participation disruptions; participation disruptions become income disruptions; and income disruptions deepen poverty and dependence.

That realization changed the way SAA works.

Today, Shared Action Africa begins with health and builds from there—connecting reproductive health, economic opportunity, and women’s agency so that women and girls are better able to participate, earn, lead, and build more stable and self-reliant livelihoods.

That is the founders’ why: not simply to help women earn more, but to remove the interconnected barriers that prevent them from shaping their own futures.

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