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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February 2026
Ensuring Continuity: Succession Planning Strategies for Ugandan Family Enterprises
Family businesses are central to Uganda’s economy, contributing over 70 percent of GDP and forming the majority of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises. Despite their importance, most family businesses cannot transition beyond the founding generation. This policy brief examines succession planning practices and implementation challenges among established family businesses in Uganda. The findings show that some established family businesses are adopting promising succession planning practices, including early exposure of the younger generation to the business, hands on learning across operational levels, deliberate transfer of business networks, and gradual formalisation of transitio...
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April 2025
Agricultural Finance Yearbook 2024
The 2024 Agricultural Finance Yearbook, which is the thirteenth edition in the series, offers the key highlights of Uganda’s Agricultural financing environment. The theme for this edition is “Achieving sustainable financing of Agriculture leveraging Wealth Creation Funds”.
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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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June 2012
UGANDA’S ELECTRICITY SECTOR REFORMS AND INSTITUTIONAL RESTRUCTURING
Using time series and the Uganda National Household Survey data, this paper seeks to examine the impact of the electricity reforms on the performance of the sector. Specifically, we investigate the effectiveness of the reforms in terms of sector performance taking into consideration various performance indicators such as electricity access, generation per capita, distribution efficiency, price trends, subsidies and customer growth. These indicators were selected on the basis of the rationale of the reforms. Results show that connectivity is increasing, but cannot be statistically linked to the reforms. In addition, we show that the reforms have tended to favour the urban dwellers with conne...
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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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