Key facts: Uganda

Last updated: September 2008

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DFID: Working to reduce poverty in Uganda

Governance | Health | HIV/AIDS | Education | Humanitarian aid | Water/sanitation | Trade/growth | Millennium Development Goals

DFID supports the government of Uganda’s efforts to implement its 2004 Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP). This sets out the country’s ambition to get rid of mass poverty and become a middle-income country within the next 20 years. It argues for a shift of policy focus from recovery to sustainable growth and structural transformation.

Twelve of the country’s main development partners have agreed a new joint strategy for development assistance to Uganda, and more may sign up. The Uganda Joint Assistance Strategy (UJAS) shows how we will all work more effectively together to support the Ugandan government to implement the PEAP.

A key instrument for our support is Poverty Reduction Budget Support (PRBS). In the 2006-07 financial year, DFID gave £70 million of aid to Uganda, of which £35 million was PRBS.

Governance

Poor governance is a cause of poverty. People suffer when governments don’t allow participation in political life, provide access to justice, deliver adequate public services or control corruption. Working with the government of Uganda, DFID is helping to:

• strengthen public financial management systems in both central and local government
• establish the institutions required to fight corruption in Uganda, including financing the government’s public service reform programme
• support both Parliament and civil society to improve government accountability.

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Health

Through budget support, we have helped the Ugandan government to achieve the following results:

• an increase in immunisations from 41% (1999-00) to 90% (2006-07).
• a rise in new outpatient attendance at government and PNFP (private not-for-profit) health units between 1999-00 and 2006-07 from 0.4 attendances per capita to 0.9.
• malaria treatment for 400,000 children
• 70,000 bed nets to women and children and anti-malarial protection to 600,000 people through residual indoor spraying
• basic essential medicines for 600,000 people
• polio vaccinations for 500,000 children.

More now needs to be done to address:

• the low percentage of births attended by skilled delivery care – only 32% (2006-07)
• the low level of contraceptive prevalence
• shortages of essential drugs in health facilities – only 35% of health facilities didn’t run out of at least one essential drug in 2006-07.

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HIV/AIDS

HIV prevalence in Uganda has stagnated over the last five years, following a reduction during the 1990s. Currently, 6.4% of Ugandan adults aged 15 to 49 are infected with HIV/AIDS, and the number of new infections is increasing, demonstrating the huge and ongoing challenge of tackling the epidemic.

DFID has provided £7.4 million for fighting HIV/AIDS in Uganda, and we will give a further £9 million over the next three years. As a result, Uganda has made significant progress in increasing the availability of treatment: to date, about 106,000 people with HIV/AIDS have been able to access therapy.

Our support has also helped to provide 200,000 HIV test kits and 27 million condoms.

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Education

Budget support has helped the government to deliver the following improvements in education:

• an increase to 84% of the 6– to 12-year-olds now in primary school, compared to 62% in 1992, with the actual number of children in school having more than doubled in the last ten years to more than 7 million
• recruitment of an additional 70,000 teachers
• construction of 50,000 new classrooms
• supply of 20 million new textbooks
• introduction of new policies to improve efficiency, promote gender equity, tackle HIV/AIDS and fight corruption.

Major challenges remain, including enabling more children to complete primary education and improving their learning achievement. The government recognises this and is taking action, which includes introducing more flexibility in education.

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Humanitarian aid

Between 2005 and 2007, DFID provided about £38 million in humanitarian assistance, primarily through the UN. This support helped to provide IDPs (internally displaced persons) with approximately 10% of their overall food aid requirements.

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Water and sanitation

Humanitarian assistance from DFID has also helped provide:

• 36 motorised water systems that produce in excess of 600,000 litres of safe water per day to more than 750,000 people, including in schools and health facilities
• 60 new boreholes
• rehabilitation of a further 25 boreholes
• 35 shallow wells in areas where people are returning to live nearer to their previous homes
• 1,357 latrines for IDPs and 100 latrine blocks for schools
• latrine construction kits for 2,800 households returning home.

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Trade and growth

Uganda has experienced significant economic growth for over a decade. DFID is underpinning the government’s efforts to transform agriculture through policy support for the Plan for Modernisation of Agriculture (PMA) Secretariat.

We are also supporting private sector development by helping government–led initiatives to reduce the costs of doing business in Uganda.

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Progress towards Millennium Development Goals

Uganda still faces huge challenges in achieving the MDGs, particularly in the areas of health and education. Regional differences in poverty remain, with the highest levels in the north, a region ravaged by the protracted civil conflict. In the public sector, a performance-based incentive system is urgently needed to ensure that Uganda has health and education workers with the right skills, in the right place and at the right time to make progress.

MDG 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Uganda is on track to meet the income poverty MDG - in 2005-06, 31% of the population lived below the national poverty line, compared to 56% in 1992-93. However, in 2006 20% of children were underweight - only a 3% reduction from 2000-01. Uganda is off track against the malnutrition target.

MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education
Uganda is unlikely to meet this target. Net primary school enrolment has fallen from 86% in 2002-03 to 84% in 2005-06, a small but significant sign that primary school enrolment is no longer improving. In addition, the percentage of children completing primary school is also decreasing, with not quite 50% of them making it in 2006.

MDG 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
Uganda has already met this target: in 2005-06, the percentage of girls to boys in primary education was nearly 100%.

MDG 4: Reduce child mortality
Uganda is off track to meet this MDG, despite the fact that deaths among the under-5s have decreased from 158 per 1,000 live births (2000-01) to 137 (2006), and deaths of infants have declined from 89 per 1,000 live births (2000-01) to 75 (2006).

MDG 5: Improve maternal health
Uganda is off track to meet this MDG, as maternal mortality is 435 deaths per 100,000 live births (2006). However, this is a decrease from the rate in 2000-01, which was 505 deaths per 100,000 live births.

MDG 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Since 2003, HIV prevalence reduction has stabilised at 6.4%. However, the number of new infections is increasing, demonstrating the huge, ongoing challenge of tackling the epidemic in Uganda.

MDG 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
Uganda is also off track to meet this MDG. While in 2005-06, 89% of households had access to a toilet facility, an increase of 2% from 2002-03, only 68% of households had access to safe drinking water during the same period.

MDG 8: Develop a global partnership for development
An element of this MDG is access to communications technology. From 2000 to 2006, according to the UN, the number of people in Uganda with a mobile phone subscription rose massively from 0.52 per 100 to 6.73.

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