May 2026
Corporal Punishment and Learning Outcomes: Evidence from Primary Schools in Uganda.
This paper examines the impact of corporal punishment on learning outcomes in primary schools in Uganda. Using nationally representative pupil and school-level data linked to household information, I exploit exogenous variation in awareness campaigns as an instrument for corporal punishment to identify causal effects. On average, exposure to corporal punishment reduces the probability of being proficient in English by 6.6 percentage points and in mathematics by 7.7 percentage points. Moreover, the negative effect of corporal punishment is strongest in communities in which corporal punishment is socially disapproved, while it is comparatively smaller in areas in which corporal punishm...
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April 2026
Drivers of willingness to repay Parish Revolving funds (PRF) under Uganda’s Parish Development Model: a Bayesian Latent Class Logistic Regression (LCLR) approach
This study examines the determinants of beneficiaries’ willingness to repay the Parish Revolving Fund (PRF) under Uganda’s Parish Development Model (PDM), using nation ally representative data from the 2024 EPRC PDM Survey. The study applies a Bayesian Latent Class Logistic Regression (LCLR) model to account for observed and unobserved heterogeneity in repayment behaviour. Results show significant variation in repayment willingness by gender, education, region and wealth. Financial literacy, awareness of repayment terms, larger PRF amounts and shorter disbursement periods increase repayment willingness, while long delays and low household wealth reduce it. The Bayesian model i...
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March 2026
Perceptions of doing business decline, on account of pessimistic outlook
Uganda’s Business Climate Index (BCI) declined during the quarter October–December 2025, by 25.5 index points from 125.6 to 100.1, signaling weakening business sentiments largely driven by pessimistic expectations about the near-term economic outlook. Particularly, business expectations for the January–March 2026 quarter remain subdued on account of anticipated weakened capacity utilisation, rising input costs and reduced profitability. The subdued business outlook emerged with the uncertainty that is associated with the General Election season. At the sectoral level, business sentiments across all sectors registered an improvement in the quarter under review. The industr...
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February 2026
Process Assessment of the Parish Development Model (PDM) Programme Implementation in Uganda
The Government of Uganda (GoU) launched the Parish Development Model (PDM) in February 2022 with the objective of transitioning 3.5 million households (33 percent) from subsistence to a monetised economy. The PDM is premised on seven pillars, that is, agriculture value-chain development (Pillar 1); infrastructure and economic services (Pillar 2); financial inclusion (Pillar 3); social Services (Pillar 4); community mobilisation and mind-set change (Pillar 5); Parish-Based Management Information System (PBMIS) (Pillar 6); and governance and administration (Pillar 7). The PDM programme aims for a holistic transformation of rural livelihoods by integrating subsistence households into the money...
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November 2021
Digital technologies uptake is still low in Ugandan Secondary and Tertiary institutions
The Ugandan Government has recognised the use of digital technologies in education as an avenue for providing learners and trainers’ opportunities to operate with ease in a highly digitalised economy and fast-evolving world of work. In this regard, policies and initiatives have been put in place to facilitate the implementation of digital technology in schools to improve the quality of education. However, findings reveal that several challenges such as lack of digital literacy skills among teachers/trainers, fragile ICT infrastructure and high computer student ratios still limit the uptake of digital technologies. This has left the majority of the students lagging behind in the era o...
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November 2025
Beyond Business Registration: Does the Regulatory Environment drive Uganda’s informal Sector?
This Note presents the link between Uganda’s regulatory environment and economywide informality in the country. It demonstrates how business licensing reforms and the wider regulatory environment for land, labour, as well as the Tier 4 microfinance regulatory environment may exacerbate both business and workers informality. The evidence indicates that outstanding reforms in key informal sectors are still a major barrier to legal registration, even though Uganda has been trying to reduce compliance costs since 2012. Sectors such as agriculture, trade, transport, logistics, and tourism, which have the highest prevalence of informality, also have the highest administrative licensing cos...
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August 2016
Early Childhood Development in Uganda’s Education Sector
The first pathway from ECD to human capital development is through education. Uganda recognizes pre-primary education as the first step to education in the 2008 Pre-Primary, Primary and Post Primary Education Act. Owing to the fact that this act did not provide a consolidated approach to ECD, the country has recently developed and launched a National Integrated Early Childhood Development (NIECD) policy. This was indeed a significant effort towards enhancing ECD. The mission of the policy is to ensure equitable access to quality and relevant ECD services for holistic development of all Children from conception to 8 years. Apart from improving the policy environment, what progress...
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September 1996
Nature and Determinants ofDomestic Savings in Uganda
Adequate saving is an essential precondition for sustained economic growth. A higher rate of savings means less consumption now in return for increased wealth and future consumption. The increased Wealth will reflect reduced foreign liabilities; and where concerns about foreign indebtedness are constraining economic growth, increased domestic savings will mean more domestic investment. An open economy like that of Uganda can attract foreign savings to help finance growth, but risk and other considerations limit the extent to which domestic investment can proceed independently of domestic savings. The close correlation between levels of investmentand rates ofdomestic saving across count...
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