Refugees in Uganda are turning food assistance into farms, trades, and savings

For two years, Natalia, 38, measured hunger by the kilo. She fled renewed fighting in eastern DRC in 2022, crossed into Uganda at Nyakabande and made her home in Nakivale’s Rubondo zone. She received a small piece of land, a few tarpaulins, and some saucepans. Starting over would not be easy.

“When they welcomed us, WFP [World Food Programme] could give us 12 kilograms of maize per person, 3 kilograms of beans, and a quarter kilogram of salt,” Natalia says.

Later, however, refugees were divided into categories — most at risk, medium, and self-sufficient. Natalia, with eight children, was placed in the middle category. Her family’s share fell to about 40 kilograms of maize, a liter of oil, and a cup of salt — gone in two weeks.

“When I saw hunger was too much, I decided to divide a kilogram into a half so that it could last longer,” she says — rationing each kilogram of maize across two days to feed her eight children. Complicating things further, food rations were later replaced with a small monthly mobile money transfer — but the transfer sometimes failed to arrive, leaving the family with nothing.

Natalia sent her children to herd cattle, gather firewood, and offer cheap labor in the surrounding host community. She went out to do the same — work she still does today, because the mobile money transfer now goes only to newly arrived refugees.

Across the settlement, Natalia’s story is familiar to many families. The support kept people alive. But for families trying to rebuild their lives, survival was only the beginning. They needed a way to turn it into stability.

Natalia’s experience reflects a national collapse in support. In early 2025, WFP was supporting 1.6 million refugees in Uganda. Today, it reaches fewer than half that number — even as food insecurity among refugees has more than tripled in a single year. The agency says it needs an additional $47 million to prevent further cuts through 2026. Monthly support for refugees facing the greatest need has fallen as low as $4.90 per person, among the lowest ration levels WFP provides anywhere in East Africa.

Building a way forward through self-reliance

That is where CARE and its partners stepped in.

Emergency Food Assistance and Self Reliance (EFASeR) began by helping newly arrived refugees in Uganda meet an immediate need: food.

Led by CARE in Uganda with local partners and funding from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the program provided at least 10,000 people in Nakivale and Kiryandongo, another large refugee settlement in central Uganda, with a one-time food voucher worth 440,000 Ugandan shillings (around $116). But participants made it clear that short-term assistance was not enough. They wanted the skills and resources to provide for themselves. That request changed everything.

CARE works alongside local partners on EFASeR, while those partners lead implementation. Andre Foods International (AFI) and the refugee-led organization Tumaine handled food distribution. The Directorate of Possibility — a Nakivale-based organization working on livelihoods, savings, and entrepreneurship — led the self-reliance work that followed. The settlement is managed by Uganda’s Office of the Prime Minister, in coordination with UNHCR.

Working through the Directorate of Possibility, at least 900 households in Nakivale were organized into 36 groups, with around 30 members in each. Every group chose one of four paths: cultivation, livestock, tailoring, or soap-making. Together, these groups set out on the road from assistance toward self-reliance, from July 2025 to August 2026.

Natalia chose cultivation, so her home would not run short on food again. Her group members elected her as chairperson. The participants learned to dig irrigation trenches, read the seasonal calendar, and save together.

The cabbages standing in the garden are proof of her progress. “These cabbages came from the training,” she says. “We learn, then we practice.”

Before EFASeR, she says, managing money was a struggle. “I had never had any plan or budget. If I had money, I would just buy what impressed my eyes.”

Financial literacy training provided by the program taught her about saving, budgeting, and debt management — knowledge she has now passed on to her husband and older children.

“Even if I leave them with a sack of beans at home,” she adds, “they know how to plan for it.”

“Our monthly income as a family still stands at 200,000 shillings ($53),” she says. Even though her income has not changed, Natalia sees a significant difference.  “Now, I can manage this amount very well.”

The cultivation group did more than grow food; it turned strangers into neighbors. Members arrive each week carrying water for the plots, and when one of them falls behind, the others carry her slowly rather than leave her.

The change has reached inside Natalia’s home, too.

Her husband, Silverano, remembers when the two of them saved separately and rarely agreed.

“During the trainings, we were shown different ways to work together, and now we plan and save together,” he says. “If either of us goes out to work, we report back to each other. Today we also own animals we didn’t have before.”

Tailoring, livestock, and soap: New trades take root among refugees in Uganda

A short way off, Oliva — also Congolese — made a different bet. She arrived in Nakivale in December 2022 with her children and nothing else. She used to travel to host communities for casual labor just to feed them and cover their school costs.

When her group was asked to choose a livelihood for training, she pushed for tailoring. She’d sewn a little back home. And, she reasoned, unlike farming, tailoring doesn’t depend on the rains. “That knowledge stays in your head,” she says. “Even if you move, you take your machine and continue.”

She started sewing in January 2026. Her first customer was a neighbor. Now she earns roughly 30,000 shillings ($8) most weeks, and up to 70,000 shillings ($19) in a good month — enough that no child of hers is sent home for unpaid school fees, and her trips to the host community for food have dropped.

In the Juru zone, Amani Munyakazi, 40, arrived in Nakivale from the DRC in August 2023. He looked at a goat and saw more than a meal. His group chose livestock and poultry farming because Nakivale has poor soil and long droughts. The poultry provide a steady supply of eggs for his family’s table. Their droppings, along with those from the goats, go into the gardens as fertilizer, with any surplus sold to nearby farms. As the flock grows, Amani expects to sell eggs too.

Each member of the livestock group received one female goat. The group shares a single male and 15 additional females. “If you give me one goat, next time you come, find me with ten,” he says.

As the group’s chairperson, Amani was trained by the Directorate of Possibility in savings, marketing, nutrition, and group progress tracking — skills he then passed on to his fellow group members. “We used to eat beans from Monday to Sunday and think we were building our bodies,” he says. “Now we eat more balanced meals.”

For Shantal, who as a new arrival worked in other people’s fields for food, the soap her group makes has given her a measure of independence. She leads the group’s soap production. She also runs her own business selling phone cases — protective covers for mobile phones — using a loan she applied for through her group.

“Being engaged as women helps us support ourselves, and not wait on our husbands,” she says.

Pascal, the group’s secretary, remembers the December phone call that first offered food. It led to soap, 50 bars a week, savings, and two goats. And it brought him somewhere the hungry years would never have allowed. He is writing religious books he hopes to publish.

What makes these livelihoods last is not one skill or one goat, but the way the pieces connect. Manure collected by the livestock groups feeds the gardens grown by the cultivation group; the gardens feed families and provide goods for the market; savings turn into loans that help businesses grow; a trade learned once keeps earning regardless of location.

The Directorate of Possibility, CARE, and their partners simply provided the scaffolding. The communities built the groups, the savings, and the market links. And now, the communities are beginning to thrive.

Why refugee self-reliance matters in Uganda

Nakivale’s story is unfolding against a wider strain. Around the world, humanitarian needs are rising while the funding to meet them shrinks, forcing governments and organizations to make hard choices about who is helped, and for how long. In that squeeze, these families are making an argument of their own: that the most powerful response is not only the one that helps people survive today, but the one that helps them build tomorrow.

The WFP has ended general food support in Nakivale; only those facing the greatest need still receive rations. For families like Natalia’s, self-reliance is no longer an aspiration. It is the only road left. The measure of humanitarian action is not only how long people receive support, but whether that support helps open a path toward greater choice, dignity, and self-reliance.

The families of Nakivale are not asking to be defined by their displacement. They are asking to be seen for what they are becoming: farmers, tailors, livestock keepers, soap makers, savers, parents, entrepreneurs, and writers.

Natalia wants to buy the land she farms outright and eventually start a small retail business of her own. “I want to stop depending on others and stand on my own financially,” she says.

Oliva hopes to learn to sew suits and sell to customers as far away as Kampala.

Amani’s ambition is smaller, but just as specific: he wants local shopkeepers to come to him for eggs.

The food that kept them alive did its work. What they are building now — confidence, skills, and the means to earn — cannot be taken away.

About CARE in Uganda: CARE has been working in Uganda since 1969, responding to the most urgent needs of conflict and disaster-affected populations. With a particular focus on women and girls, CARE currently reaches more than 1 million people annually in Uganda, approximately 60% of whom are refugees and members of host districts.