The government has attempted to alleviate poverty among the populace using various means and approaches for more than three decades with discouraging results.

As a country, we are facing many challenges and opportunities not fully exploited, including but not limited to being a very young country, at 50.5 percent of the population under the age of 17 and with more than 40 percent as dependent on the 55.5 percent working age population.

From the Entandikwa programme, the Poverty Action Plan programme, Bonna Bagaggawale, NAADs and Operation Wealth Creation, among others, there have been many initiatives over the years, some of which have been targeted at specific groups and regions while others were open to general subscription. Yet poverty persists.

In the third quarter of 2021, the government launched the Parish Development Model, the latest in a raft of measures designed to boost the sluggish socio-economic transformation agenda.

In measuring poverty, experts have employed the Multi-Dimensional approach as in the Multi-dimensional Poverty Index 2022 by the Uganda Bureau of statistics, looking at poverty at household level using the dimensions of education, health, living standards and financial inclusion.

In 2022, at national level, the incidence of multi-dimensional poverty was 42.1 percent, with rural areas having three times the incidence of poverty as urban areas. 

In some areas such as Karamoja, multi-dimensional poverty stands at a whopping 85 per cent. These measured populations were found to be highly deprived in areas of access to clean water, sanitation, clean energy, housing, asset ownership and productive employment, among others.

According to the Poverty Status Report 2021, although the poverty rate decreased between 2016/17 and 2019/20, in absolute terms, the number of poor persons increased from 8.03 million to 8.31 million. This indicates that as much as the poverty rate is falling, the number of poor people is increasing.

Recently, the Prime Minister, Ms Robinah Nabbanja, was quoted in the media expressing her frustration that despite government’s concerted efforts and billions of shillings sunk into poverty eradication, Ugandans seem resistant to efforts by the authorities to lift them out of poverty and that perhaps as a last resort, they should be tasked to answer for it.

Government needs to pause and reflect on the state of poverty and instead of blaming the populace, perhaps devise means of plugging leakages in the national resource tap, among other approaches. Assessing the needs of the people before providing appropriate interventions is the way to go.