Determinants of Self-Employment in Uganda: A Case Study of Katakwi District

Abstract

This research mainly intended to assess the determinants of self-employment in Uganda with a focus on Katakwi district. The study sought to achieve these objectives; i) to find out the determinants of self-employment in Uganda, ii) to investigate the effect of individual’s socio- demographic characteristics on self-employment (age, gender, one’s educational level, marital status and previous business experience), iii) to determine the effect of access to credit on selfemployment decision of an individual. The research findings were based on secondary data with 15033 observations from Katakwi sub county and Akoboi sub county in Katakwi district. A descriptive summary of variables in this study was made at a univariate level of analysis and a chi square statistic was used to determine if there is a relationship between self- employment and the selected variables. In addition, a binary logistic regression was used to determine the effect of the explanatory variables on self-employment. It was found that self-employment is only 6.89 percent in Katakwi district. It was found that age, one’s educational level, marital status, previous business experience and access to credit were significant determinants of self-employment since their p-values (0.000 and 0.036) were less than the critical value (0.05). It was also found that accessing credit in Katakwi district was a big challenge since most of the credit facilities that seem available were more than 5km away from the households