OF CREDIT, COLLATERAL AND COURAGE: WHAT THE GROW LOAN IS TEACHING US

When the GROW Loan started rolling out its billions last year, I was sceptical. Not because the idea was bad—on paper, it sounded like the kind of thing development wonks dream up over coffee in climate-controlled boardrooms. But because I’ve seen this movie before: government-backed loan schemes that arrive with fanfare, fizzle quietly, and leave little more than PowerPoint decks and donor reports in their wake.

This one, it seems is different.

To be fair, the GROW Loan—part of the larger GROW Financing Facility (GFF)—isn’t just about chucking money at a problem and hoping it sticks. It’s about deliberately targeting women entrepreneurs, including refugee women and those in host districts, and giving them a financial ladder to climb out of informality and survival-mode hustling.

"By April this year, over UGX 50 billion had been disbursed through six commercial banks—Centenary, DFCU, Equity, PostBank, Finance Trust and Stanbic. There are three lending levels based on loan size (UGX 4m to UGX 200m), and performance grants to sweeten the deal—5% for women, 8% for refugees, and 10% if you tick both boxes.

The average loan for Level 1 (the smallest category)? Around UGX 10 million. That’s your classic salon, poultry project or boda spare parts shop. But here’s the kicker: 28% of borrowers had never touched formal credit before. That’s not just a number; it’s a quiet revolution in how women engage with money and formal finance.

And yet, not everyone is toasting champagne.

The demand is undeniable, with more women being turned away than qualify for the facility. The eligibility hurdles are real. Many women assumed “GROW” meant “free money” or “soft cash.” But when they turned up at bank counters, they were asked for cash flow statements, business records, and—brace yourself—collateral.

Even though PFIs accepted everything from land sale agreements to livestock and even Bibanja land, the reality is that many women—especially younger or unmarried ones—don’t own property or control assets in their names.

So what happened?

Well, the women who made it through the vetting process did something quietly transformative. They converted informal networks into formal credit behaviour. Some roped in their spouses as guarantors. Others leveraged group savings schemes to back their applications. And quite a few went back to the drawing board—pulling together the paperwork, the proof of business, the receipts.

This tells us something profound: women aren’t credit risks. They’re system survivors.

Still, if we zoom out, some uncomfortable patterns emerge. For one, Greater Kampala alone took 45% of the loans. Meanwhile, refugee-hosting districts got a measly 3%. That’s a far cry from the equity narrative being spun in the project’s mission statements.

Then there’s the age gap: just 4.2% of borrowers were under 30. It seems the banks still don’t trust our young women—or maybe they haven’t figured out how to speak their language yet. Because trust me, Uganda’s young women aren’t short of hustle. What they’re short of is formal documentation and someone willing to take a chance on them.

To be fair to the project managers, they’re not blind to these gaps. Plans are already underway to onboard SACCOs and MFIs—especially in underbanked areas—to push GROW Loans deeper into the grassroots. They’re also investing in post-loan business development support, so these women don’t just get a cheque and a prayer.

But what really gives me hope is this: they’re listening. Not just to disbursement figures but to borrower voices. Field visits, testimonial videos, even those brutally honest borrower engagement sessions—they all point to a project that understands that money alone doesn’t change lives. Trust does.

And that’s the real story here.

"The GROW Loan isn’t just about expanding access to credit. It’s about rewriting the terms on which women interact with Uganda’s financial system. It’s about seeing Bibanja land not as a bureaucratic headache but as real-world collateral. It’s about understanding that a boda-stage matron with no paperwork could still be running one of the most consistent cashflow businesses in her parish.

It’s about credit with empathy.

The next few months will tell us a lot. If the PFIs can crack inclusion in refugee districts, if SACCOs can step up, and if the system starts trusting youth a bit more, then GROW could end up being more than just another acronym in Uganda’s development alphabet soup.

It could become the blueprint for inclusive finance.