Self-employment for People with Disabilities: The Case of the iSAVE Programme in Uganda

This study examines how prolonged participation in savings groups (SGs) impacts self-employment among people with disabilities. SGs, also known as village savings and loan associations (VSLA), provide their members with financial capital, social capital and more, which can potentially increase their chances of self-employment. This study uses current survey data on SGs in the iSAVE programme in Uganda, comprising responses from 14,260 individuals, of whom 72 percent report having some form of disability. Estimates from a variety of logistic regression models show that people with disabilities are 37.5 percentage points less likely to be self-employed. However, the interaction effect of prolonged participation in SGs increases the expected probability of self-employment among people with disabilities by 0.343, which corresponds to a 34.3 percentage point higher chances of starting a business or an income generation enterprise. While prolonged participation in SGs promotes selfemployment, we find that entrepreneurial role models within SGs accounts for a 19.3 percentage points increase in willingness for self-employment among people with disabilities. This highlights the critical importance and impact of role models in disabled communities, such as the iSAVE programme, in encouraging self-employment.