Uganda Poverty and Development: Statistics, Trends and Programmes

Uganda's poverty rate has declined substantially since the early 1990s — from above 56 percent to 39.3 percent in the 2023/24 National Household Survey. That trajectory is real, documented, and consequential. It also masks a more complex picture: the decline has been uneven across regions, slowed markedly after the 2016 drought and the COVID-19 disruption, and the poverty line of USD 1.77 per person per day is set at a level that captures only the most acute material deprivation. The articles in this collection examine Uganda's poverty data without simplification: the statistics as they are, the trends over two decades, the role of subsistence agriculture in the majority household economy, the programmes designed to accelerate the exit from poverty, and what the labour market data reveals about the economy's capacity to absorb a rapidly growing workforce.

During visits to southwest Uganda in June 2026, I photographed three children from the neighbourhood of a local orphanage in Buhoma — children who were not statistics but were visibly affected by the conditions those statistics describe. That proximity informs how I read the data and what I choose to report about it.