“Everyone laughed at me when I said I was going to get a contract with the biggest hotel in town – but I did it.” Salima gestures to the piles of crisp, neatly folded white sheets and towels ready to be returned to her client.
I’m in the laundromat that she runs in the small town of Kamuli in the Busoga region of eastern Uganda, which is one of the poorest regions in the country, to hear how Salima and women like her have built successful businesses from scratch. Not only does Salima now take care of herself and her seven-year-old son, and pay the school fees for another family, but she has also employed five other women who support their own families on their wages.
