Every Ugandan parent dreams of a better future for their child. We imagine a world where they’re confident, capable, self-reliant and where they grow up with opportunities that may have been out of reach for us. We believe in the power of education to make those dreams real.

But far too often, our ambitions are interrupted by something as simple and as heavy as school fees.

Every term, families across Uganda face the same difficult question: will we afford to keep the children in school this time? Will they start late, or be sent home before exams? And how much will we need to borrow or sell to make it through?

For many, this is not about whether they value education. It’s about timing, cash flow, and survival. And it’s deeply stressful.

The World Bank reports that over 40% of Ugandans name school fees as their biggest financial worry — and for many families in Uganda’s growing middle class, that worry is well-founded. These parents, often referred to as the “missing middle,” earn just enough to cover daily needs and invest in their children’s future, but not enough to absorb the ever-rising lump-sum school fees when they’re due. While they earn money from their endeavours and want to pay these fees in time, their income cycle rarely aligns with the timelines of school calendars. 

This mismatch turns a term’s worth of learning into a race against time — and it’s one of the main reasons I wake up every day motivated to work at Furaha. Through daily conversations and brainstorming, we are building a platform that not only utilises technology aspects of credit decisioning, onboarding and loan collection but also convenes other players within the ecosystem such as financial institutions such as Opportunity Bank, aggregators like SchoolPay, and PegPay to bridge the gap when income arrives and when school fees are due.

The result has been the Furaha app, where parents can apply for school fees loans that are paid directly to schools, with repayment schedules spread over manageable installments to match their income cycles. As a result, parents are less burdened about the thought of trying to support their child’s dreams but not being fully able to when the school fees stress comes. 

And I am glad to say that we are making progress. To date, we have supported over 3,000 parents to consistently ensure that their children go to school and are on the path to realising their dreams. But I believe these are more than numbers. These are parents like me, who can breathe a little easier knowing they are doing right by their children because when education is uninterrupted, dreams are not just imagined, they are lived.