UGANDA AND MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS – PROGRESS

  • This third MDG Country Report for Uganda has shown that much progress has been made towards many of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that were agreed upon at the Millennium Summit in 2000 by the leaders of the world’s countries, including Uganda.
  • Progress has been most impressive in reducing the share of the population that lives in poverty and suffers from hunger. Moreover, the target of gender parity in primary education has been achieved, and the country is on track to meet the important targets for access to HIV/AIDS treatment and access to safe water.
  • There has also been significant progress in areas related to the global partnership for development, notably in ensuring debt relief and sustainability, as well as in expanding access to information and communication

technologies.

  • In other areas, progress has been slow — and, in a few cases namely MDG target 6A on reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS and MDG target 8B on addressing the special needs of least developed countries — there has been a reverse trend compared to the progress made in the past. While access to primary education has improved, the rates of completion of a full course of primary education have stagnated in recent years.
  • Several of the health targets, including those related to child mortality, maternal mortality, access to reproductive health, and the incidence of malaria and other diseases, have also progressed slowly for the national and international targets to be realised. Thesame is true of environmental management and biodiversity loss.
  • In the area of HIV/AIDS, Uganda’s fight against the epidemic has long been seen as one of the world’s success stories. Nevertheless, the data used for this report revealed that progress has stagnated and that new infections are on the increase. A reversal was noted in the flows of overseas development assistance to Uganda. The report has also showed that, even in areas where there has been progress in the national averages, this often masks great unevenness between different population groups and between different geographical areas of the country.
  • These findings point to the need for Uganda to take special measures to accelerate progress towards the MDGs in the final stretch towards the 2015 deadline.