FSD Uganda2025 Annual Report Letter from the Executive Director
A decade of building
In 2025, FSD Uganda turned ten.
A decade ago, we set out to help build a financial system that works for all Ugandans. Looking back, the progress is real and worth recognising. 81 percent of Ugandans can now access formal or informal financial services. Mobile money has transformed how people transact. Financial inclusion has become a national priority. We are proud to have contributed to that progress.
At the same time, our experience over the last decade has reinforced an important lesson: access is only the starting line. The next frontier is ensuring that financial inclusion translates into lasting outcomes. Financial services create value when people can use them safely, affordably, and in ways that strengthen resilience, support livelihoods, and enable growth. For many women, enterprises, and underserved communities, the barriers are no longer only about entering the system. They are also about trust, safety, affordability, and usability.
This understanding is increasingly shaping our work. It is influencing how we design interventions, where we focus our partnerships, and how we define success. As a result, we are not only expanding reach, but also placing greater emphasis on improving the quality of inclusion, so that financial systems work better for the people and businesses they are intended to serve.
In 2025, this was reflected in the choices we made across our portfolio. We increased our focus on young women following evidence that, despite broader gains in inclusion, the gender gap widened between 2018 and 2023. We continued to expand access to finance for micro and small businesses, particularly women led enterprises, through the Micro and Small Enterprise Recovery Fund, while the Deal Flow Facility worked to strengthen pathways for long term private capital. In the digital economy, we focused on reducing friction and building trust through stronger payments infrastructure, fraud prevention, fintech participation, and innovations that expand access to appropriate financial services and investment opportunities.
In 2025, we also rolled out FSD Uganda’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Framework, an important step in strengthening how we embed sustainability, accountability, and sound governance across the institution. The framework is helping us take a more deliberate approach to how we manage our operations, understand the broader effects of our work, and strengthen the systems required for long term institutional stewardship. During the year, we focused on internal alignment, identifying priority ESG areas, and laying the foundations for phased implementation and reporting over time.
The next decade will be defined not only by how many more people we reach, but by whether the systems we help build are usable, safe, affordable, and trusted. We will pursue this with the same discipline, partnership, and commitment to evidence that have shaped our first decade.
To our Board, funders, and partners, thank you for the trust that makes this work possible. To the FSD Uganda team, thank you for the conviction and care you bring to this work every day.
Sarah Y. Byabazaire
Ag. Executive Director
