In the speech he delivered during the national celebrations to commemorate the International Women’s Day on Saturday held in Kyankwanzi District, President Yoweri Museveni expressed the commitment by his government towards empowering women economically, so that they are able to live better lives.
Giving an example of his family, the president noted that his mother the Late Esteri Kokundeka lived a stressful life because they were poor and therefore couldn’t afford certain things, but his wife (Hon Janet Museveni) has lived a completely different life and so is his daughters.
In a short statement President Yoweri Museveni posted on X, Uganda’s president who has been in power since 1986, said his government desires to see every woman in Uganda live a life of her wife and not the one of her mother:
“On this day of celebrating women, I have three women who have been pivotal to my life: Mama Esteri Kokundeka, who toiled with us on her back and cooked with rudimentary methods, such as firewood, etc. The second woman is Maama Janet; however, unlike my mother, she never carried any of our children on her back or used firewood to cook. This also applies to the third- my daughters; they have also lived a very different life from my mother. The NRM desires that every Ugandan woman should live the life of Maama Janet and not my mother, Esteri.
is for this reason that the NRM advocates for five routes to accelerating actions for gender equality and getting our people out of poverty: educating the masses on wealth creation (Boona Bagagawale); secondly, empowering the Ugandan woman through free education (Boona Basoome); thirdly, skilling the girl child, which we are doing through our skilling hubs countrywide; the testimonies are loud and clear.
Nonetheless, we cannot talk about women’s emancipation without emancipating the whole society, and it is a good opportunity to hear how the people in Kyankwanzi are very unsatisfied with some of our programmes. I take all this feedback well, and we shall act on it.”