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Up With Africa · About
Up With Africa is refugee-led. Founded in Kampala in 2020 on weekly contributions of UGX 10,000, we unlock the abilities and potential of refugees and low-income people through education, leadership, and entrepreneurship.
Vision and mission. The first describes the world we are working toward. The second describes what we do, every day, to get there.
Communities that improve their socio-economic life by developing their abilities toward employment, life opportunities, and self-reliance for sustainable development.
Unlocking the abilities and potential of refugees and low-income people through a long-term solution of advanced learning, leadership, and entrepreneurship experience to create positive change.
Refugees and migrants hold significant economic potential. Young Africans have the ability to support our planet's needs for the coming generations.
UWA did not start with a grant or a strategy deck. It started with a computer-networking class, a lockdown, and a group of refugees who decided to keep going.
In 2019, Jesuit Refugee Service Uganda graduated several students from a computer-networking course in Kampala. A handful received scholarships to continue at Netlabs / Makerere University. Then the world locked down — and what followed turned a small training programme into a refugee-led organisation.
The story below is told the way we lived it: in five short chapters, across roughly eighteen months that changed everything.
Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS Uganda) graduated several refugee students from a computer-networking course in Kampala. A handful received scholarships to continue at Netlabs / Makerere University.
Uganda entered its first Covid-19 lockdown. Classrooms closed. Public transport shut down. The students were stuck at home — but their training had given them something most of their neighbours did not have: digital skills.
JRS started responding to the lockdown by providing food and medical assistance to refugees in Kampala. The scholarship students were brought in to help with data entry — managing the JRS Database. The idea of Up With Africa was conceived in those weeks of work.
Schools reopened. Members of the new collective began contributing UGX 10,000 (about $2.70) every week into a shared fund — enough to cover the documents needed to register Up With Africa as a Ugandan nonprofit and begin operations.
UWA is run by refugees, for refugees and the wider community. Programs span education, employability, sport-for-development, and entrepreneurship. The horizon is long — but the model is simple: invest in people, and the rest follows.
Six people in Kampala. Refugees, neighbours, and friends — united by the work of empowering refugee communities across Uganda.
Executive Director
Program Manager
Monitoring & Evaluation Lead
Education Coordinator
Youth Empowerment Coordinator
Communication Officer
Whether you would like to volunteer, partner, donate, or simply learn more — your support helps us create lasting change for refugee communities across Uganda. There is room for many kinds of help.