As we commemorate International Women’s Day in Uganda under the theme “Empowerment of Rural Women and Girls: Opportunities and Challenges”, we are reminded that rural women and girls including refugee women and girls still have limited access to learning opportunities as a core empowerment strategy:

Uganda is home to 695,386 refugees and asylum seekers (Office of the Prime Minister, September 2016) mostly originating from neighboring countries within the Great Lakes Region of Africa such as South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Gambia, Benin, Ethiopia, and Eritrea among others.

Introduction Uganda hosts close to 1.5 million refugees (UNHCR as of May 2021) in different settlements across the country, most concentrated in south-western and north-western Uganda. Lauded for its open-door refugee policy, Uganda sees the number of refugees