CPRC Uganda

Introduction to chronic poverty in Uganda

Uganda is a medium-sized country of just under 25 million people, situated in the Great Lakes region of central/east Africa. While the 1970s and early 1980s saw the country plunged into terrible violence and economic decline, more recently Uganda’s successes in absolute poverty reduction have been widely acknowledged. The most often quoted figures tell us that poverty defined in terms of household consumption has decreased from 56% of the population living below the poverty line in 1992, to an estimated 34% in 2001. With much donor support, Government has steered Uganda’s economic recovery from  the collapse of the 1970s and early 1980s. Nevertheless, we estimate that of 20% of the country’s households - more than 7 million Ugandans or 26% of the total population - live in chronic poverty.

Chronically poor people are sometimes dependents, but often working poor. According to the poor themselves, they include people with a disability, widows, and the elderly with no social support. Other vulnerable groups comprise orphans and street children; those affected by HIV (especially where the breadwinner is ill or has died) and the long-term sick; internally displaced people (especially those in camps); and isolated communities. Reliance on “own account” agriculture or on casual jobs is a cross-cutting characteristic, as well as the likelihood of chronically poor households being female-headed.

Being chronically poor stems from a web of inter-related factors, amongst which lack of assets, lack of education, chronic illness, belonging to a large and expanding household and remoteness appear prominently. Exclusion or self-exclusion from decision-making and development also features.

Poor women are particularly vulnerable to chronic poverty. In addition to gender inequities, there are additional factors which can worsen their plight. For example, widows may lose assets (notably land) to relatives on the death of their husbands. Unemployment for elderly persons, being landless and having to care for numerous dependent children, especially orphans, also feature as difficult burdens.

Different shocks, including insecurity and HIV, and more long-term processes, such as land fragmentation, trap people - and their descendants -  into chronic poverty. The web of factors causing chronic poverty makes for a limited range of coping strategies, among which are casual labour, scavenging, begging, selling/borrowing assets, or migration.

Non-agricultural income is an important “interruptor” of chronic poverty, for which education is essential. The poor often mention “hard work” but the chronically poor can rarely accumulate assets through selling their labour.