By Mulengera Reporters
On Thursday while presiding over the launching of the 8th Uganda National Household Survey (UNHS) findings, Economic Planning Minister Amos Lugoloobi thanked the Dr. Chris Mukiza-led UBOS for consistently doing its work-and always producing high quality, accurate and timely statistics reports. Indeed, the Bureau has been doing this sort of work, producing UNHS reports, since the FY1999/2000.
Focussed on empirically establishing the character and actual quality of life lived by Ugandans at household level, the UNHS is done and the resultant report produced every 3 years. Like was the case with the latest one (FY2023-2024), the UNHS report has always profiled, captured and reported on the quality of life by tracking the quality of life indicators like the ease with which Ugandans access social services like education, health, job opportunities, sanitation & water among others.
The report also captures poverty and income level indicators besides labor force-related dynamics including how many people are being gainfully employed in the different productive sectors of the economy. These including agriculture, services, industry/manufacturing, mining and others-and which of these employs the largest number of Ugandans of the working age of 14-64 years.
In his speech, State Minister Lugoloobi who replaced his boss Matia Kasaija, the Finance Minister, observed that by ensuring that the relevant data collection is done and UNHS the report is qualitatively and accurately done, compiled and made available (besides all the other surveys it’s mandated to routinely do), UBOS had effectively done its job.
“It’s upon us in government, the civil society and the academia to make use of this high quality survey report while designing corrective measures and deliver the appropriate interventions,” said Amos Lugoloobi while thanking the UBOS Board Chairman Dr. Albert Byamugisha and his Executive Director Dr. Chris Mukiza for a job well done. He commended the Board for the effective strategic leadership it has rendered and the Mukiza-led management for prudently leading the teams involved in processing the UNHS survey report.
Lugoloobi added that, by laying all the facts bare, the UBOS report has made it possible for the GoU to know how it’s different interventions and programs (like PDM etc) aimed at amplifying the economic development and the socio-economic transformation agenda, have impacted the population. The GoU now knows the regions where the desired transformation has been achieved and where it hasn’t.
He implored the academia and institutions like Dr. Sarah Ssewanyana-led Economic Policy Research Center (EPRC) to leverage the UBOS report and go into details while helping the GoU to understand why sectors like services continue to employ more people while Agriculture, in which Uganda is supposed to have comparative advantage, is declining.
He also challenged EPRC to leverage the latest UNHS survey report to comprehensively advise the government on the appropriate affirmative action steps that can be taken to improve the income situation in sub regions like Karamoja where 74 in every 100 persons are living below the poverty line. This simply means that nearly 8 in every 10 people in Karamoja live on less than $1.04 (or Shs3,800) per person per day.
This is worse than was the case under the FY2019/2020 when a similar UNHS survey was last conducted. Yet in comparison, Acholi statistical sub region improved during the same period by reducing the number of people living below the poverty line from 68% to just 21%. In 2019/2020, Karamoja stood at 66% and in 2024, three/four years later, it had grown to 74%!
Board Chairman Byamugisha too heaped praises on Mukiza for leading the management side so well. Speaking immediately before Lugoloobi, Byamugisha said the statistical integrity and excellence that the Bureau had consistently exhibited while churching out such periodical survey reports had turned Uganda into a center of excellence of some sort that is envied and admired by its peers in the EAC region when it comes to performance of tasks mandated under the national statistics systems. He referred to a recent regional forum he attended as UBOS Chairman from where it turned out that only Uganda had up to date, latest and well-validated data on SDGs.
It was during the meeting of South-South Triangular Cooperation framework and Byamugisha told the audience at Hotel Africana, where the latest UNHS report was launched, that the Ugandan delegation managed to shine like never before-all courtesy of the great job UBOS had done on SDGs. Byamugisha, who heads Uganda’s SDG Secretariat at the OPM, added that with such reporting, key planners, policy and key decision-makers in the country can know where to start from and what to do to alleviate the suffering of the most vulnerable groups.
He elaborated that there are 232 SDG indicators on which a total of 147 countries have to report and, because of the excellent work by UBOS, Uganda’s reporting currently on the 201 indicators has been validated as globally comparable.
Speaking to an audience which had CSOs, public and private sector leaders, Dr. Byamugisha implored the UBOS management to quickly mitigate the missing link by doing equally well on the 53 data sets which are still problematic for Uganda when it comes to reporting on SDGs-related progress.
Dr. Byamugisha, himself a highly qualified and experienced statistician, confessed that he and his other board members were proud of being in position to render strategic leadership to such a Bureau. At the table of big people, Byamugisha was flanked by Prof Allen Kabagyenyi of Makerere University’s School of Statistics. The duo shared the same table with Minister Lugoloobi and Mukiza himself. Kabagyenyi represents the academia on the UBOS Board.
THE UNHS FINDINGS:
Jointly read out by Sharon Apio Barasa and Stephen Baryahirwa, both of them departmental heads at UBOS, who acted on behalf of their ED, the summary version of the report (comprising 24 pages of power point presentation) makes the following findings:
It was established that Ugandans were increasingly becoming more confident interacting with UBOS data collectors. The response rate stood at 92%-implying that 9 in every 10 respondents cooperated and willingly answered questions from data collectors. In rural areas, it was 94% and 88% in urban areas. A total of 17,350 households were sampled under the 1,735 enumeration areas that were scattered across the country to be adequately representative of all Uganda’s statistical regions.
On health services access indicators, it was established that 21.1% of the respondents had fallen sick or incurred injury in the 30 days preceding their engagement with data collectors. It was 19.2% at the preceding UNHS. 82% had responded to this sickness or injury by going to a health facility; and 18% hadn’t.
54% went to a private facility and the remaining 46% to a public one. 46% of those who didn’t go to any health facility at all did so because they felt the sickness was mild and not requiring hospital visits or contacting a medical person.
16% had their own medicine at home and opted for self-medication. 8.2% relied on home remedies and herbal medicine. 10.1% told the truth and confessed they didn’t go to a health facility because they didn’t have money or means to do so. On a positive note, the survey established that 90% of the population lived within the 5kms radius from a health facility, which has always been the objective of government. It was 91% during the preceding UNHS survey of 2019/2020.
Besides the education indicators for both primary and secondary education, which didn’t differ much from what was already captured under the census report whose final copy was proclaimed late last year, the UNHS survey report also made labor force-related findings. It was established that 47.3% of Uganda’s working age group (14-64 years) are currently employed under the services sector. It’s 12.6% for industrial sector and 40.1% for agriculture, forestry and fishing.
POVERTY INDICATORS:
The UNHS established that poverty remains a big problem for Uganda and the extremely poor, living below the poverty line (namely on less than $1.04 or Shs3,800 per person per day) were found to be 7m. This is amounts to 16.1% of the population of 46m people. Under the UNHS of 2019/2020, it was 8.3m people (accounting for 20.3% of the population of the country at that time).
Karamoja region was established to be the most poverty-stricken of all statistical regions of Uganda. 74.2% of the people in Karamoja live on less than Shs3,800 per day. In the 2019/2020 UNHS survey report, it was 65%. Of the 7m Ugandans living below the poverty line, 5.3m are in rural areas and the remaining 1.7m in urban.
The report indicates that in rural areas, the situation has improved to the extent that those below the poverty line are currently 19.4% down from 23.4% of 3-4 years ago. In urban areas, it was 12% in 2019/2020 and it currently stands at 10.3%.
With 166,300 people living below the poverty line, Kigezi sub region was established to be among the least afflicted when it comes to the poverty rate. Others are Kampala (19,200) and Ankole (106,800). Of the 7m living below the poverty line in the country, 0.9m are in Karamoja sub region.
The 74.2% for Karamoja simply means that 74 people in every 100 in the sub region are living on less than Shs3,800 per day. 0.9m out of 7m equally means that 13.4% of poor people in Uganda live in Karamoja, a region Minister Lugoloobi admitted needs affirmative action of some sort to overcome the poverty situation there.
Stephen Baryahirwa, the head of socio-economic surveys & census affairs who read out the poverty figures on UBOS ED Chris Mukiza’s behalf, proposed that the GoU should be allocating or dedicating 0.3% of the country’s resources annually to Karamoja sub region to mitigate the poverty situation.
On income inequalities, the UBOS report indicated that Buganda South (basically the Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area), Elgon, Karamoja and Lango were the most improved statistical sub regions of the country.
Teso was found to be the worst affected by income disparities whereby few people have amassed lots of wealth as majority of the people continue sinking in destitution and deprivation. In Teso, the report shows that the Gini Coefficiency, which is used to measure income inequality, rose from 0.288 in 2019/2020 to 0.346 in the FY2023/2024 UNHS report.
The closer or nearer it is to zero the better and the nearer it is to 1 the worse. Mukiza called on government to prioritize income redistribution for such statistical regions to address the situation.
The same UNHS report for 2023/2024 shows child poverty is nationally at 77.7%, which is very appalling news. Still in Teso, 3 in every 10 people still live below the poverty line. And in Elgon, its 14 in every 100.
Acholi sub region was established to have improved a lot significantly reducing the proportion of the population living under poverty. As of 2019/2020, the sub region had 7 in every 10 people living on less than Shs3,800 per day and this has since dropped to just 2 people in every 10. The Acholi improvement was partly attributed to the cross border trading boom with South Sudan which has greatly benefited the nascent City of Gulu. Kigezi has also equally improved from 3 in every 10 to currently 1 in every 10 persons.
Busoga has also had poverty levels drop from 29 in every 100 people living on less than Shs3,800 per person per day to 18. Lango sub region moved from 23% to 19%. Ankole has moved from 13.2% to currently 3.2%.
When it comes to expenditures, the latest UNHS report establishes that nationally, households in Uganda dedicate 44% of their expenditures on purchase of food. In villages, its 52% and 36% in towns.
This was described by speakers at the launch as not good; with Finance Ministry’s Development Economist/Commissioner Joseph Enyimu asserting that it simply means limited saving and inability to spend on investment into productive ventures capable of replicating and creating additional wealth.
And nationally, 16% of the households’ expenditure is dedicated to things like housing, water, electricity, fuels & gas. In rural areas, 14% of the households’ expenditure is dedicated to these same things and 18% in urban areas. For Northern Uganda, 52% of the expenditure for households is on food and non-alcoholic beverages. In Western Uganda, it’s at 52%, 49% in the Eastern and 34% in Buganda region.
Enyimu saluted UBOS for the latest report saying it gives very clear insights into the extent to which government programmes and interventions like significant investments into roads and energy infrastructure have impacted community members and households. He is also worried about much of the household expenditures going on consumptive things. He also called for increased food production to mitigate food inflation, which the UBOS clearly highlights.
Makerere-based Economic Police Research Center (EPRC) Executive Director Dr. Sarah Ssewanyana was the other panelist at the post-report presentation panel discussion at Hotel Africana; the other being Mr. Joseph Enyimu. She implored government to leverage the UBOS report to design interventions against income inequalities and to also mitigate against deprivation of a significant section of the population.
It was made clear in the subsequent plenary discussion, during which Gender Ministry PS Dr. Aggrey Kibenge submitted his views, that the latest findings by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) should give and enable the GoU, planners and policy makers to engage in evidence-based making of decisions that can amplify the realization of the country’s long term development planning objectives as is enshrined and mandated under the Vision 2040, the NDPs, SDGs 2030 and the African Union Agenda 2063. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
