Gender and reception of credit among farmers in Uganda

Abstract

Much as the Ugandan government has put more effort such as Operation Wealth Creation (OWC), Emyooga, Youth Livelihood Program and Parish model in resolving barriers regarding reception of agricultural credit, farmer’s access to credit in Uganda is still very low. Women’s access to credit in Uganda is limited compared to men. Furthermore, female gender is still struggling to have reception to key agricultural resources such as financial assistance to increase their productivity as compared to their male counterparts. The overall objective of the study is to investigate whether the factors that affect reception of credit are the same for women and men. The study used secondary data obtained from the AAS 2019 conducted by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics where a total of 7,115 Ag HHs were selected countrywide using a two-stage sampling design. Data was analyzed using Stata software version 17 for descriptive statistics, bivariate analysis and probit models together with the accompanying marginal effects for male only, females only and both male and female farmers. It was revealed that factors which influenced males and females largely differed. Reception of credit for both females and males was negatively affected by age and positively affected by being married and household size. Females only model showed that reception of credit was positively affected by being divorced/separated/widowed and attending secondary+ education and negatively affected by possessing mailo tenure system. The males only model revealed that reception of credit was positively affected by residing in the northern region, western region and access to information on credit facilities. The overall model indicated that reception of credit was positively significant for gender in favor of the female, divorced/separated/widowed, married, northern region, western region, household size, primary education, secondary+ education, group membership and access to information on credit facilities. However, age negatively affected reception to credit of the overall model. Based on the above findings, it is recommended that government should continue to fine-tune policies to close the gender gap in financial inclusion, promote formalization of land ownership, ensure rational credit products segmentation to include various age groups, marital categories and gender and strategically expand credit service footprint to ensure regional balance. Famers should be encouraged to pursue higher education to enhance technology adoption, join and actively save in farmer groups and intensify family planning to manage household size.