Climate Justice Begins with Her: Investing in Uganda’s Women and Girls for a Resilient Future

A woman using an energy-efficient domestic cookstove after training by JEEP (📷: JEEP)

At sunrise in the drought-prone plains of Karamoja (North Eastern Uganda), 15-year-old Akello lifts a yellow jerrycan onto her head and begins the long walk for water. Each year, the journey grows longer as seasonal streams dry earlier. When the rains finally come, they often arrive in violent bursts—flooding gardens and cutting off roads to schools and health centres. By the time Akello returns home, the school bell has often already rung.

For her, climate change is not a distant global debate. It determines whether she sits in a classroom or spends the morning searching for water.

Across Uganda, women and girls like Akello are on the frontline of climate change. Agriculture remains the backbone of the country’s economy, employing approximately 72% of the labour force and contributing around 24% of the national Gross National Product (GDP); yet, it is heavily dependent on increasingly unpredictable rainfall (World Bank, 2025).

Women make up nearly 80% of the agricultural labour force, but they often have far less access to land, credit, and agricultural extension services than men (FAO, 2023). When drought destroys harvests, or floods wash away crops, it is often women who must find new ways to feed their families, collect water, and care for children and elderly relatives.

It is therefore not by coincidence that the theme for International Women's Day in Uganda is: ‘Scaling up Investment to Accelerate Access to Justice for all Women and Girls in Uganda’

Climate risks in Uganda are intensifying. Over the past five years, 76% of Ugandans have reported experiencing severe heatwaves, and 71% have reported unusually severe droughts, according to Afrobarometer surveys (Afrobarometer, 2025).

Extreme weather events are also becoming more frequent. In 2024 alone, floods, landslides, and other climate-related disasters affected more than 413,000 people and displaced over 78,000 across the country, highlighting the growing humanitarian and development impacts of climate shocks (The New Humanitarian, 2025).

These impacts deepen existing inequalities. Evidence from across East Africa shows that prolonged droughts and economic stress increase risks of school dropout, child marriage, and gender-based violence among adolescent girls (UNICEF, 2023).

Yet vulnerability tells only half the story. Women are also among the most effective leaders of climate adaptation.

Across Uganda, women’s savings groups and cooperatives are already investing in solutions—from agroforestry and soil conservation to clean cooking technologies and climate-smart agriculture. Through resilience initiatives supported by international climate programmes, more than 1,600 women’s groups have mobilised about USD 2.8 million in community savings, supporting local adaptation projects and strengthening household livelihoods (UNFCCC, 2023).

These examples highlight a crucial lesson: climate justice requires intersectional adaptation. Climate policies must recognise that vulnerability is shaped not only by gender, but also by poverty, age, disability, and displacement. Uganda hosts over 1.5 million refugees, many of them women and children living in environmentally fragile settlements where land and water resources are limited (CARE, 2024).

Scaling investment for climate justice, therefore, requires three priorities.

First, expand gender-responsive climate finance that directly supports women-led adaptation initiatives at the community level. Uganda is estimated to require about USD 28 billion in climate adaptation investment by 2030, yet only a fraction of this funding has been secured so far (World Bank, 2025).

Second, strengthen women’s land and property rights, enabling long-term investment in climate-smart agriculture.

Third, invest in girls’ education and climate leadership, equipping young women with the knowledge and skills to lead local sustainable solutions for better energy use, water, tree planting, and others.

Back in Karamoja, Akello still dreams of becoming a teacher. She wants to help children understand changing weather patterns and teach farmers new ways to grow food in a hotter world.

Her dream reflects a deeper truth: climate justice will not be achieved through global pledges alone. It will be realised when investments reach villages, classrooms, and women’s groups—giving every woman and girl the power to adapt, lead, and shape a resilient future.

When Uganda invests in women and girls, it invests in its most powerful force for climate resilience.