When Uganda recruited more than 1,400 girls and women from rural villages and took them to the country’s capital, Kampala, in 2002, the east African state dreamed big.
They were told that they would work in a textile firm, which would export clothes made in Uganda to the United States under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), generating a lot of revenue for the country. They were promised good pay, better working conditions and a “bright future”.
They were employed by Tri-Star Apparel from Sri Lanka, which had set up in Uganda to take advantage of the Agoa initiative. But relations between the company and its workers soon turned sour.
A year later, in 2003, the workers went on strike, citing mistreatment by their employer and pitiful pay. Each woman earned just $40 (about 75,000 Ugandan shillings at that time) a month. As a result of their protest, roughly 300 of them were fired.
Despite huge subsidies, including tax waivers and loan guarantees to boost its production, Tri-Star Apparel went bust in 2006. Their dreams shattered, most of the Agoa workers went back to their villages; others sought petty employment in the city. The episode was perhaps the first sign that Uganda would benefit little from Agoa.
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