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Rural poverty approaches, policies and strategies in Uganda

The government looks to the agricultural sector to drive growth and contribute to further reduction of rural poverty. Agriculture, which accounts for about 30 per cent of the gross domestic product, has a potential for vibrant and diversified growth. But agricultural development in Uganda faces several challenges. One of the major challenges is improving access to markets. Because the country is land-locked, international and regional exports and imports involve long overland hauls through neighbouring countries to and from distant seaports. And poor internal road linkages hinder domestic marketing. There is a need for improvement of transport infrastructure, particularly rural access roads and the national road network.

The Government of Uganda addresses rural poverty through its Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP), a comprehensive national policy that guides development planning. The policy’s objectives are to:

• support rapid economic growth and structural transformation
• foster good governance and security
• improve the ability of poor rural people to increase their incomes
• help rural people improve their living conditions

In 2001 as part of the broader plan to eradicate poverty, the government launched the Plan for Modernization of Agriculture (PMA). The objective of the PMA is to transform Uganda’s economy into a modern one, enabling all sectors to participate actively in economic growth and transforming subsistence agriculture into commercial agriculture. In support of the PEAP, the government has developed further policy measures, including the Local Government Sector Investment Plan, the Rural Financial Services Strategy and the recently introduced Prosperity for All programme. The Local Government Sector Investment Plan provides a framework for guiding investments at the local level towards such critical areas as the delivery of services, good governance and local economic development. The Rural Financial Services Strategy facilitates access to financial services in rural areas to encourage savings and their use as a source of investment capital for rural enterprises. The Prosperity for All programme is a national development effort that addresses a range of activities.

In 2007 Uganda ranked 154th among 170 countries on the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index (HDI) and reached a rating of 0.5 on the HDI scale. This means that Uganda is no longer eligible for development assistance in the form of grants from multilateral financial institutions such as the World Bank. Development financing from these institutions, including IFAD, will necessarily be in the form of highly concessional loans.

The international drive for increased development effectiveness and impact has brought changes in the way Uganda’s development partners work in the country and has led to an intensification of coordination, harmonization and a ‘division of labour’ among partners, in which each donor focuses on a limited number of sectors.

Source: IFAD