The corruption, fraud and inefficiency in Uganda that is frustrating the fight against poverty and unemployment in Uganda

by Administrator · Published February 22, 2022 · Updated February 3, 2024

More than eighty percent of Ugandan youth are either unemployed or under employed despite the fact that the Government of Uganda claims that the unemployment rate in Uganda is just 12%. The Government of Uganda appropriates billions of shillings to various agencies to put in place various measures to reduce poverty and unemployment amongst Ugandans. Since 1996, despite of trillions of shillings in expenditure poverty and unemployment remain very high in Uganda.

Uganda has failed to realize that its poverty alleviation programmes are plagued by wide spread corruption and inefficiency. It has failed to learn from all its failed efforts because every few years it implements a new program that is plagued by the same problems of corruption, fraud and political interference and therefore doomed to fail miserably. For example, despite the miserable failure of Operation Wealth Creation, the Government created Emyooga and allocated it billions of shillings without addressing fraud, corruption and political interference. A few months later, the government allocated billions shillings to Emyooga and other Government programs to support investment and job Creation. Government appropriated the money Uganda Microfinance Support Centre, Emyooga (Shs260b), Youth Fund (Shs130b) and Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Programme (Shs29.5b) to support investment and job Creation.

As we write this, parliament is investigating the failure of the agencies in issue to properly account for the money given that no visible positive impact has been created by the agencies. Ugandans are poorer than before, the youth are languishing in odd jobs struggling to survive under the heavy burden of Covid-19 and Government lock downs and no one knows how Ushs 520bn disappeared in thin air. Obviously as we argued before, the parliament of Uganda has fused Itsself with the executive and therefore lacks sufficient independence to provide meaningful oversight to the executive. We have had many investigations by Parliament that have not borne any meaningful results. There is no reason to hope that this investigation into emyooga cash will be any different.