Uganda: Technical Assistance Report—The Cost of Meeting the Sustainable Development Goals in Human Capital and Infrastructure Development
Technical Assistance Reports, December 11, 2024
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Bibliographic details
- Published: December 11, 2024
- Series: Technical Assistance Reports
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9798400293931.019
Summary
- The mission estimates that making substantial progress in critical SDG sectors in Uganda would require additional annual spending of about 18.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030.
- Relative to low-income developing countries (LIDCs), additional spending in Uganda is higher in the social sectors and lower in the infrastructure sectors. Overall, Uganda’s additional spending is above the median LIDC and similar to the median Sub-Saharan African (SSA) country.
- This analysis assesses the spending to achieve a high performance in selected SDGs in Uganda and does not include an examination of options to finance the spending needs.
Health — expanding the supply of medical staff
- Current total health care spending: 4.2 percent of GDP.
- Estimated additional total health care spending required by 2030: 7.4 percent of GDP (gradual increase relative to today’s spending).
- Major driver: need to increase the supply of doctors by more than 16-fold and to nearly triple the number of other health personnel.
- Note: substantial room to increase the efficiency of spending; health outcomes are below those of several other countries with similar spending.
Education — strengthening both quality and quantity of services
- Demographics: 60 percent of the population are school-aged (higher share than EAC and LIDC peers).
- Current total expenditures on education: 7.1 percent of GDP.
- Estimated additional education spending required by 2030: 6.7 percent of GDP (implying total education spending would need to increase to 13.8 percent of GDP if combined with current levels).
- Structural targets: reduce student-teacher ratio from 28 to 19 by hiring more teachers.
- Public spending would need to triple as a share of GDP to help deliver on enrollment and quality goals.
Water and sanitation — aiming at safely managed water and sanitation for all
- Gap: Uganda is below regional and income-group peers in water and sanitation standards; sanitation services have hardly improved in the past two decades.
- Estimated additional annual spending required: 1.1 percent of GDP (includes maintenance costs to counteract depreciation).
- Major cost component: safely managed water in rural areas due to relatively high unit costs and a large unserved rural population.
Electricity — investing in transmission and distribution networks to increase access
- Generation mix: vast majority generated by renewable energy (hydropower).
- Electricity consumption per capita: 83 kilowatt-hour (kWh) (lags LIDCs and below expected for its GDP per capita).
- Installed capacity: 1,347 megawatts (MW); peak demand: 793 MW.
- Estimated annual investments required by 2030 to expand access, serve the future population, and increase consumption in line with economic growth: 0.4 percent of GDP.
Roads — gradually increasing rural access
- Current rural road access: 53 percent of the rural population.
- Target by 2030: 75 percent of the rural population.
- Infrastructure requirement: about 20.4 thousand additional kilometers of all-weather roads.
- Estimated annual investments required by 2030: 2.8 percent of GDP.
- Note: expansion must include upgrading roads in poor condition because road quality lags subregional peers.
International Monetary Fund. Uganda: Technical Assistance Report—The Cost of Meeting the Sustainable Development Goals in Human Capital and Infrastructure Development (Technical Assistance Reports 2024, No. 104), December 11, 2024.