In a quiet homestead in rural eastern Uganda lives Christine Betty Amayo, a 60-year-old member of the Omunyolo Women’s Group supported by WAGRAU.
When she reflects on her journey, her voice carries both gratitude and longing:
“Through WAGRAU’s economic empowerment project, I now believe in agriculture as a way out of poverty. How I wish it had been like this in my youthful years.”
Today, Betty owns a bull. But her journey to that moment began with just UGX 120,000($34).
From One Piglet to a Bull
In 2024, Betty received UGX 120,000($34) from her share of the group’s simsim and millet harvest. Instead of spending it, she invested it in a piglet.
The piglet grew and reproduced, producing six piglets.
- She sold four piglets at UGX 60,000 ($17) each, earning UGX 240,000 ($69).
- She retained two female piglets to start building a new herd.
- She later sold the mother pig for UGX 300,000($86) after it became aggressive and began attacking neighbors’ chickens.
The two retained piglets are now nearly ready for breeding- a foundation for long-term growth.
In January 2026, women’s groups under WAGRAU divided their earnings from the 2025 farming season. Betty combined her share with the savings from her pig sales and purchased a bull worth UGX 800,000 (about $229). She still had enough left to buy a goat.
“Who knew that someday I would own a bull? From my own sweat I now own my first-ever bull. Let it not be my last. May God give me strength to keep working with the women’s group, and may WAGRAU find more friends to help rent land, plough, and buy seeds so other women can experience the joy I have right now. This is beyond owning a bull. It gives me the opportunity to die with respect in my own land someday- to own land where I can plant food, or even when I am too old to dig, rent it out and earn from it to sustain myself. An alone, childless mother like me, it means a lot.” Tears streamed in her face as she spoke.
Building for the Future
Betty’s dream does not stop with one bull.
She hopes her pigs and the 2026 farming profits will enable her to buy a cow, mate it with her bull, and begin growing her cattle herd.
Yet despite her progress, her housing situation remains uncertain.
“I will never leave the women’s farming group-no matter how many cattle I have-until I fulfill my heart’s one desire: to get land registered in my own name.
My brothers have mostly sons, and I hear they are already saying they want their land back. It is only a matter of time before they ask me to leave. I have nowhere else to go.
But I am hopeful that with WAGRAU’s continued support and working closely with my group, I will soon have a place to call my own home- even if it doesn’t have a house. I will continue working until I have both: land and a house of my own.”
From Homelessness to Hope
Betty’s resilience was forged through hardship.
After her husband accused her of causing the mysterious deaths of their three children, she was left homeless. She returned to her parents’ home, where her brothers allowed her to build a small hut- but refused to allocate land for cultivation.
“I pleaded for a garden where I could cultivate, but they refused. They said the land belongs to men and their sons. Before WAGRAU, I survived by working in other people’s gardens. During drought seasons, that meant going to bed hungry.”
From her 2024 farming share, she quietly invested UGX 20,000 in a small cassava chips business at a nearby primary school. That small enterprise now helps feed her and enabled her to purchase iron sheets to roof her hut-an important upgrade after surviving a fire in 2020 and facing rising costs and scarcity of grass thatching.
She sees the iron sheets not just as protection, but as an asset she can transfer to her future permanent home when she acquires land of her own.
The Bigger Question
Betty has cultivated land since she was 12 years old and farmed independently since she was married off at 15-more than 45 years of agricultural labor.
Yet for decades, she did not control the produce she planted or the income it generated.
Today, her livestock functions as:
- Savings
- Insurance
- Investment capital
- A pathway to land ownership
Years ago, such assets might have helped her seek treatment for her children, who died of measles and malaria — preventable and treatable diseases. The sale of one bull today could fund a year of vocational training or university education.
Her story raises critical questions:
- What would families look like if women had secure rights to land?
- What would communities become if women controlled productive resources?
- How much poverty persists simply because women lack ownership?
Women Rising from the Dust
For generations, many rural women had no rights to land- or even to the crops they harvested.
Today, the few women working with WAGRAU are making independent decisions:
- Buying piglets
- Purchasing goats
- Investing in cows and bulls
- Starting small businesses
Their hands have become engines of prosperity. They are decision-makers, not dependents. Empowered, not abandoned.
Service is about action — not promises. And in the homes where WAGRAU works, change is visible.
Help Us Reach More Families
Betty’s story is one of many.
With your support, more women can rent land, plant crops, build assets, and move from survival to stability.
Any donation- large or small-makes a difference.
Please consider supporting our farming groups here: https://wagrau.org/give/
Thank you for standing with women rising from the dust.
