- Nine in 10 Ugandans (91%) say they or their family members went without a cash income at least once during the past year. o Three-fourths (74%) say they went without medical care, while about two-thirds lacked cooking fuel (65%) and food (65%) at least once. Half (50%) had insufficient clean water on one or more occasions. o Rural Ugandans are more likely than their urban counterparts to have gone without water (+10 percentage points), food (+9 points), and medical care (+7 points).
- Seven in 10 Ugandans experienced high (30%) or moderate (40%) levels of lived poverty during the previous year. o The share of citizens experiencing moderate or high lived poverty is unchanged from 2022 (70%) but up by 23 percentage points from 2015 (47%).
- A majority (56%) of respondents say they sought financial assistance from family members in the preceding year, including 35% who did so “several times” or “often.” o Almost half (48%) say they turned to friends or neighbours for help to make ends meet.
- Nearly six in 10 Ugandans (58%) say the government is performing “fairly badly” or “very badly” in tackling poverty, while three-fourths (76%) disapprove of its efforts to reduce economic inequality.
Alongside disease, poverty is one of the biggest threats to human survival and flourishing. Globally, 8.5% of the world population, approximately 700 million people, are classified as living in extreme poverty, defined as surviving on less than U.S. $2.15 per day (World Bank, 2024). Although the COVID-19 pandemic is over, developing-world economies, particularly in
Africa, have been deeply scarred by pandemic-related job losses, investment declines, and interruptions in global trade flows (Sánchez-Páramo, Hill, Mahler, Narayan, & Yonzan, 2021). Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also had significant impacts on African economies, especially through commodity price shocks (Phillis & Raga, 2025). Even before COVID-19, African economies were not growing fast enough or with sufficient inclusion to reduce poverty (World Bank, 2024). Thus, while poverty levels have been trending downward in other developing countries, they are on the rise in sub-Saharan Africa, as has been captured in Afrobarometer surveys (United Nations Commission for Africa, 2024; Mattes & Lekalake, 2025).
In Uganda, the National Resistance Movement’s top priority when it came to power in 1986 was to build an “independent, integrated, self-sustaining national economy” (Mulera, 2020). Under this pillar of the governing party’s 10-point programme, the government has launched
a series of poverty-alleviation initiatives since the 1990s (Observer, 2022). However, these programmes have mostly failed due to high levels of graft, nepotism, inflated administrative costs, red tape, and financial illiteracy among intended beneficiaries (Sharon, 2025). Currently, the government is implementing the third iteration of the National Development Plan as a way to spur economic growth and tackle poverty (National Planning Authority, 2020). Yet even before the COVID-19 shocks, poverty in Uganda was barely coming down, declining from 31% in 2012/2013 to 30% in 2019/2020 (World Bank, 2023).
This dispatch presents findings on Ugandans’ experience of material deprivation based on Afrobarometer survey data from 2024. Lived poverty remains at record levels as majorities of households had to do without needed medical care, enough food, enough cooking fuel, and a cash income on one or more occasions during the previous year. More than half of respondents sought financial assistance from family members, while almost half requested help from friends or neighbours to make ends meet.
Despite government efforts to deal with poverty, nearly six in 10 Ugandans rate the government poorly on its poverty-fighting efforts. And majorities say it is doing a poor job of reducing inequality, creating jobs, and managing the economy.
