Uganda (view map)

Despite a long-running civil conflict in the north, Uganda has experienced significant economic growth in the last decade and substantial progress towards achieving a number of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. Around 84% of children enrolled in primary school in 2005/06 and positive progress has been made in health with 89% of children immunised against childhood communicable diseases in 2004/2005. The country has won praise for its vigorous campaign against HIV/AIDS with prevalence of the virus falling from 18% of the population to 6% during the last ten years.

Uganda’s Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) of 2004 outlined objectives for eliminating poverty and becoming a middle income country in the next twenty years. The country’s main exports include coffee, fish products, tea, tobacco, and cotton.

Nevertheless Uganda remains one of the poorest countries in the world with per capita income of around $300 per annum and a third of its 27 million population living below the poverty line of $1 per day.

Poverty is predominant in the north amongst the region’s subsistence farmers who have been badly affected by a civil conflict since 1986 between the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), who have wanted to overthrow the national government, and the Ugandan armed forces. The LRA has been responsible for countless massacres and atrocities during its raids on villages with an estimated 1.6 million people displaced from their villages, now living in camps for internally displaced people (IDPs).

The conflict has seen the abduction of thousands of young boys and girls by the LRA who have used the abductees as child soldiers and sex slaves/wives for the commanders respectively. The fear of abductions in northern Uganda led to a phenomenon known as Night Commuters in which children would take refuge in secured compounds before sunset and stay during the night before returning home to their families in the morning at sunrise.

The political situation took a positive turn at the end of 2006 with the signing of a truce between the LRA and the Ugandan government. Talks between the two sides are ongoing but many thousands remain in the IDP camps, too frightened to return to their villages for fear the LRA will attack again.

The development challenges facing Uganda include the resettlement of the internally displaced population, rehabilitation, reintegration and resettlement of former child soldiers/abductees to their communities, establishing local sustainable peace building initiatives, settling land ownership conflicts between returnees and current occupants, addressing HIV/AIDS, as well as promoting agriculture/livelihood development, and disaster management – in relation to environmental events such as the widespread flooding in 2007.

SCIAF has been supporting partners in Uganda since 1981 and works with partners at grass roots level to promote food security, HIV/AIDS reduction, peace and justice, and sustainable livelihoods. At present, SCIAF is working with ten partners in the country and has supplied grants totaling nearly £454,000 in 2006/07.

Last Updated: November 2007