Uganda counts to the so called HIPCs (Highly Indebted Poor Countries) and is in debt, even though parts have been cancelled. The flow chart below is a short summary of how Uganda got into this situation.
But what role does debt play in maintaining a development gap?
Uganda has a troubled past and heavy future. The nation’s dept will hold them on poor side of the development gap. Due to the amounts of money they owe to different countries, it’s hard to move forward and increase living standards. At the moment every child born in Uganda is 350US$ in debt. And the interest adds to that, so the mountain of debt keeps growing.
The land is actually very fertile and rich of natural resources, but there is a lack of knowledge and of money to cultivate it properly. There are several social projects and parts of the debt have been cancelled, so the situation did get better over the years. But the debts still have their effect on the education and health system, the development moves very slowly and a school degree or a hospital bed is not assured. A problem not only in Uganda, but in many developing countries is the inferior role of women. They get married very young, need to stay home and take care of their children. So they don’t get educated or proper jobs, if they do they earn less than men. If women would get the education men have, they would have more perspectives in the future. Another problem is the shortage of sex education, either because the religion forbids protection or there are no education programs. Uganda has a very high fertile and HIV rate. Uganda’s government did support awareness programs and the HIV rate decreased over the past years. This shows how important education is. Thanks to foreign aid and debt cancelling Uganda was able to recover a little, but there still is a long way ahead. While the wealthy countries keep on growing, those in debt have stopped developing, paying for mistakes of the past. Debts definitely hinder developing countries of crossing the developing gap and are a major contributing factor that it maintains.
Uganda is a country that possess the potential to increase the output of it’s primary economic sector.
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