posted on 2024-09-06, 07:23authored byChristine Obbo
A great deal of research and comments have been made about African urban male migrants who leave the villages because of economic insecurities, which most often include unemployment, under employment and under productiveness of land. Little is known about the female migrants, except that they are prostitutes. This study is a contribution t o the research vacuum that exists with regards to African female migrants: and the efforts have been concentrated on the Namuwongo-Wabigalo area. An attempt has been made to find out what women do when they come to urban areas. Economic insecurity seems t o be a dominant factor behind almost every reason that the women give for leaving the rural areas.
It has been observed that women discover that hard work and self-reliance are useful assets to have in the urban environment as well, where life is based on a money economy.
The material in this study is arranged around the question of how women support themselves. The women that have been studied are largely uneducated and therefore possess hardly any to warrant their employment in the industries or in government created jobs; they have no alternative but to be self-employed.
They are overlooked by planners and other people, particularly men, competing for formal j obs. This makes the informal sector invisible, and it is not surprising that people operating in this sector are usually labelled lazy and apathetic. Namuwonga-Wabigalo area is one of those called low income areas of Kampala. This is misleading because it implies that the residents are poor or unemployed. Yet the area is categorized so because the migrants who are in formal jobs receive a salary of not more than 500/-. The data suggests that residents of the so called low income areas are not necessarily of the bottom of the income scale.
It has been observed that women are playing an important role in nation building or economic development, by for example feeding the workers and building lodging houses. Women are striving t o be socially and economically independent of men; and the findings indicate that they are very much concerned about their individuality as persons and