Is Uganda losing battle on poverty?

The Uganda National Household Survey 2016/17 report released on Wednesday by the Uganda Bureau Statistics, shows that more Ugandans are slipping into poverty with the number of poor people increasing from 6.6 million in 2012/13 to 10 million in 2016/17. The report also shows that the income poverty levels are rising with the worst hit areas being in eastern Uganda.

This shows that the government’s multiple development efforts of eradicating poverty have not yielded much. In 1995, President Museveni launched the Entandikwa scheme to reduce poverty and facilitate the small scale entrepreneurs. This was followed in 1997 by the Uganda Poverty Eradication Action Plan, which has been replaced with National Development Plan with the intention of transforming the economy into a modern one in which people in all sectors can participate in economic growth.

The Bona Bagagawale effort was later launched too, intended to make everyone in Uganda at least wealthy. The latest being operation wealth creation which has replaced National Agricultural Advisory Services (Naads). All these programmes were introduced to improve people’s incomes. The lingering question now is, what happened to these well-intentioned poverty alleviation efforts?
The answer might lie in the unbridled greed and unprecedented corruption that have characterised the implementation of these programmes. Now the trickle-down effect has not been felt, and not only stagnating but also beginning to retard growth. In the end, the country is now slipping into more poverty.

Government is now blaming it on the worsening situation on drought, sharp changes in prices of goods and services, crop diseases/pests, livestock diseases, storm, human epidemic, floods, power outages among others. We need to take stock of the cause of failure of these different efforts to increase income levels of the ordinary person. Government needs to properly assess the programmes and their implementation beyond and above politicising them. Sadly, poverty alleviation programmes tend to coincide with political campaigns for purposes of winning votes and not purely focused on getting the impoverished population out of poverty.

If eastern Uganda is worst hit, there should be affirmative action to reduce the poverty levels in the region. A proper audit of why the poverty alleviation efforts are not working is where focus should be. It’s high time government prioritised modern methods of agriculture, including irrigating arid areas; reintroduce agricultural extension workers to take the farmers through modern methods of farming that will lead to high yields. It’s these and other efforts that will help to get the country out of this vicious cycle of poverty which is now hitting its lowest ebb.