CPRC - Partners

CPRC's work in Uganda is led by Development Research and Training and coordinated by its director, Charles Lwanga-Ntale.

Introduction to chronic poverty in Uganda

Uganda is a medium-sized country of just under 25 million people, situated in the Great Lakes region of central/east Africa. While the 1970s and early 1980s saw the country plunged into terrible violence and economic decline, more recently Uganda’s successes in absolute poverty reduction have been widely acknowledged. The most often quoted figures tell us that poverty defined in terms of household consumption has decreased from 56% of the population living below the poverty line in 1992, to an estimated 34% in 2001. With much donor support, Government has steered Uganda’s economic recovery from the collapse of the 1970s and early 1980s. Nevertheless, we estimate that of 20% of the country’s households - more than 7 million Ugandans or 26% of the total population - live in chronic poverty.

Chronically poor people are sometimes dependents, but often working poor. According to the poor themselves, they include people with a disability, widows, and the elderly with no social support. Other vulnerable groups comprise orphans and street children; those affected by HIV (especially where the breadwinner is ill or has died) and the long-term sick; internally displaced people (especially those in camps); and isolated communities. Reliance on “own account” agriculture or on casual jobs is a cross-cutting characteristic, as well as the likelihood of chronically poor households being female-headed.

Being chronically poor stems from a web of inter-related factors, amongst which lack of assets, lack of education, chronic illness, belonging to a large and expanding household and remoteness appear prominently. Exclusion or self-exclusion from decision-making and development also features.

Poor women are particularly vulnerable to chronic poverty. In addition to gender inequities, there are additional factors which can worsen their plight. For example, widows may lose assets (notably land) to relatives on the death of their husbands. Unemployment for elderly persons, being landless and having to care for numerous dependent children, especially orphans, also feature as difficult burdens.

Different shocks, including insecurity and HIV, and more long-term processes, such as land fragmentation, trap people - and their descendants - into chronic poverty. The web of factors causing chronic poverty makes for a limited range of coping strategies, among which are casual labour, scavenging, begging, selling/borrowing assets, or migration.

Non-agricultural income is an important “interruptor” of chronic poverty, for which education is essential. The poor often mention “hard work” but the chronically poor can rarely accumulate assets through selling their labour.

Attention and action on chronic poverty in Uganda

After a focus on rehabilitating key social and economic infrastructure, then establishing and maintaining a stable macroeconomic environment, the government has turned its attention to structural strategies aimed at translating macroeconomic success into real improvements in people’s standards of living.

This has been concretised in Uganda’s main policy framework, the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP), initially formulated in 1997 and – with revisions - in implementation since then. The aim is eventually to reduce absolute poverty to less than 28% by 2013/14 and reach most of the Millenium Development Goals by then.

The PEAP is implemented through a series of sector-wide and local government development and investment plans, such as the 3 year Education Sector Investment Plan, the Plan for the Modernisation of Agriculture (PMA), and the Medium-term Competitiveness Strategy for the private sector. These are operationalised through the Medium Term Expenditure Framework, the Poverty Action Fund (PAF), and annual national and district Budget Framework Papers. Implementation is carried out within a decentralised framework, with the private sector playing a growing role in service delivery.

Uganda has a positive framework for poverty reduction. Macro-economic policy, and the growth it has generated, has benefited chronically poor people, especially during certain periods over the past 15 years, and a number of government initiatives have benefited people in chronic poverty, such as Universal Primary Education. Nevertheless, the emphasis has been on the “active poor” or the “working poor” and, despite earlier gains, a significant number of people in Uganda remain poor. Amongst these, many live well below the poverty line for many years: thus, a majority of those that were poor in 1992 had escaped by 1999, but a substantial minority were left behind and many others fell into poverty over this period. People in chronic poverty are too often excluded and/or excluding themselves from such opportunities. A question thus arises as to the effectiveness of current growth objectives, and the current “universalist” approach to poverty reduction, in reaching certain sectors of the population, while increasing numbers have been “left behind”. With around 20% of the population not benefiting from the Country’s current development path, it is doubtful whether the PEAP long-term poverty reduction goals can be reached, if policy changes and (in some cases) innovations are not introduced.

Chronically poor people are especially vulnerable to shocks. Policy has had relatively little to say about vulnerability, whether this is to health shocks, mitigating the consequences of HIV/AIDS, domestic conflict and divorce, wider insecurity problems, and internal displacement. CPRC Uganda’s research suggests a rebalancing of the effort on modernisation, entrepreneurship and human development with a greater emphasis on security and protection.

Four priority areas emerge:

Bringing peace to the north and, in a first instance, improving services in conflict-affected areas for the very poor.
Evidence from other low-income countries suggests that social protection measures, while clearly desirable, are also often affordable. Further policy analysis and pilot initiatives are required to determine the most effective entry points and what might be feasible, including targeting at household level and location-specific interventions.
Enhancing access to assets for the chronically poor, consisting of a two-pronged approach: assuring women’s land rights, as well as accelerating the implementation of a national school feeding programme and widening access to post-primary education for the very poor.
Reflecting the centrality of smallholder agriculture in the livelihood of the chronically poor, the pro-poorest focus of current programmes must be enhanced and new initiatives, including free extension services for the very poor, developed.

CPRC’s work in Uganda

CPRC researchers, based at various Ugandan institutions (see partner details list), are currently carrying out research on a wide range of subjects. Key areas include: disabled and elderly poor, isolated rural areas, conflict areas, landless peasants, urban poverty, health and poverty. CPRC’s work in Uganda is coordinated by Development Research and Training (DRT), who are also leading on the elderly and disabled poor research. DRT have also been engaged, with other CPRC partners, with the Ugandan government over the possibility of piloting a social protection programme for the country.

Key CPRC publications

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Contact details for CPRC’s partners in Uganda

Development Research and Training

Charles Lwanga-Ntale

Development Research and Training
PO Box 22459
Kampala
UGANDA

+256 41 4 269495 , +256 31 2 263 692/30 (Tel)

Chronic Poverty Research Centre

Partners Pages

CPRC Uganda

Introduction to chronic poverty in Uganda

Attention and action on chronic poverty in Uganda

CPRC’s work in Uganda

Key CPRC publications

CPRC-Uganda Policy Briefs

CPRC-Uganda Report (summary only)

CPRC Working Papers

Contact details for CPRC’s partners in Uganda