Uganda’s chances of eliminating poverty by 2030 as per Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are very minimal, Researchers at Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC) have revealed. The Ugandan Government committed itself to attaining SDGs.
Authored by Madina Guloba, Sarah Ssewanyana, Medard Kakuru and Ibrahim Kasirye, the team argues that poverty is declining at a very slow pace to meet the SDG 1 target. Uganda households are vulnerable to poverty with nearly 48.7 percent of the households in and out of poverty.
“Given the above poverty trends, it is unlikely for Uganda to attain the SDG 1 goal on Zero Poverty by 2030 unless profound development planning and implementation is well targeted towards who the poor are,” the team wrote.
The researchers stated that the poverty dynamics indicate that the prevailing income fluctuations were mainly from agricultural related production shocks.
“The persistent poverty we are observing is a cost that comes as smallholder farmers attempt to smooth their income with less resilient coping strategies,” researchers revealed.
The team called for development of well-functioning financial markets (insurance and credit) targeting farmers would in the end compensate for reduced agricultural incomes in bad years.
The development comes at the time a report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on the impact of covid-19 ON Uganda revealed that if the mitigation measures are further extended, due to difficultly containing the spread of the virus, the pandemic has the potential to increase the poverty rate by approximately 9% and could potentially leave 3.6 million additional Ugandans in poverty.
