By Oweyegha-Afunaduula
“You will have to work hard all your life to make it produce enough food for you…….You will have to work hard and sweat to make the soil produce anything….” Genesis, 3:17-19)
President Apollo Milton Obote made Poverty, Ignorance and Disease the triplets that his two-time regime (1962-71, 1981-85) had to focus time, energy and money to combat and conquer.
Accordingly, he emphasised education, health and household incomes the primary concerns of government. Foe this matter he believed and was convinced that all development was human development or social development. In his time ecological development and environmental development were not adequately known and factored in the development equation.
President Tibuhaburwa Museveni, however, did not only demystify the gun but also education, health and house hold incomes for all. His philosophy of development was “Infrastructure first and social development last. However, when it came to social development, he made conquering poverty the hallmark of his 40-year regime occupation and domination of Uganda. As the perennial Minister of Finance, the President disoriented the national budget to financially support his numerous, often defective schemes, to combat poverty.
The schemes included Bonna Bagaggawale, Operation Wealth Creation, Myooga and Parish Development Model. Unfortunately, while it was sold that the schemes were to make the poor rich, they ended up being tools for illusionary richness in the case of the poor. The schemes benefitted the already rich, who through corruption accessed those enormous amounts of money invested into the schemes to enrich themselves.
It, was, therefore, deceptive socio-economic development of the poor. As a result, the more time, energy and money were focused on those schemes, the more development time and energy were lost and the more poverty (in is diverse forms and/or dimensions it proliferated. It was as if the schemes were intended to sow seeds of poverty rather than conquer poverty.
Except Operation Wealth Creation, which emphasised giving the beneficiaries materials, plants and animals, the schemes involved giving money bonanzas to a few select individuals, often in a partisan way. It was difficult to make who ever got the money bonanza (s) to work had and produce to conquer poverty. So much public money, which would have been used to combat poverty in a more informed, less politicised way and improve the quality of education and health of our people was instead lost in the schemes. However, the more money was lost, the more The Parliament of Uganda invested in the developmentally fruitless schemes.
There was no day President did not talk about poverty the more time, energy and money were invested conquering the vice. In fact, it would not be far-fetched to state that the absolute majority of Ugandans are far more impoverished than ever before the schemes were initiated at the bottom of society. Many times, during his focus on poverty, the President decried the poverty that reigned in the country. He more or less was telling Ugandans that the schemes were not working although they consumed billions of Shillings.
Let me focus on one of the schemes: the Parish Development Model (PDM). I have written about it before, especially in connection with its capacity to destroy the total environment. Now I want to write about it in connection with its capacity to impoverish rather than improve the income levels of the absolute majority of Ugandan families.
PDM was initiated in 2022 almost in the middle of Myooga, which performed and continues to perform disastrously after consuming billions of shillings. It is a Uganda government strategy aimed at improving incomes and welfare of households by bringing services closer to the people. With the parish as the lowest administrative and operational hub for planning, budgeting, reporting and service delivery.
PDM primarily targets subsistence households and vulnerable grouped, ostensibly to include them in the money economy. However, it initially targeted 30 people but now targets only 100 people parish. The falsehood is that once these people start experiencing development and prosperity, these two will trickle down and proliferate throughout the parish communities and then be felt throughout Uganda.
The introduction of the PDM in Uganda raises the question of whether state-led local development initiatives, when undertaken in partnership with the private sector and civil society are feasible in a resource constrained country (Kayizzi, 2024). Katusiime (2025) submits that by prioritizing key commodities, promoting financial inclusion and providing affordable loans through SACCOs, the PDM has already demonstrated its potential to uplift vulnerable households and communities. However, Kayizzi (2024) identifies four specific challenges of PDM: (i) maintaining policy and institutional coherence; (ii) establishing credible partnerships for local development between the government, the private sector and civil society; (iii) mobilizing human and financial resources, including at the local level, to sustain program implementation; and (iv) fostering self-determination at the local administrative levels and preventing local-level system capture.
Kayizzi (2024) and Katusiime (2025) agree that the success of PDM programme hinges on addressing the critical challenges, including human and financial constraints and the inefficiencies in resource allocation. Katusiime (2025) stresses that tailoring solutions to meet the unique needs of different regions of the country and improving oversight mechanisms will be essential for achieving the PDM’s full potential. So far so bad. The majority of Ugandans, however, are outside the precincts of PDM and have yet to feel its usefulness in transforming their livelihoods. The absolute majority not targeted by PDM are likely to continue swimming in ever deepening poverty which paying taxes to support the programme. In fact, the poverty situation today is worse among them than ever before. Yet as of January 2025, the Uganda government has allocated a total of Shs 2.3 trillion for the Parish Development Model (PDM), with a plan to increase funding to Shs 200 million per parish.
Effectively the Government of Uganda is segregating the labour force at household level, seeking to enhance the incomes of 100 people in every household in a parish at the expense of the rest of households. All Ugandans of different households, except those ever waiting to steal taxpayers’ money without working, are labouring, as instructed by God in the Bible Book of Genesis 3:17-19, to make ends meet with little or no helping hand from the government, now focussing on PDM, Myooga, and Operation Wealth Creation at a very high cost to the tax payers.
It is against this background that we are celebrating the Labour Day, May 1 2025 in Uganda. Nationally, the Labour Day will be celebrated at Nakapiripit. I have learn’t that the theme will be the Parish Development Model. If what I have claimed, that PDM is segregating the labouring Ugandans, is correct, and Labour Day is for all labouring Ugandans and beyond, then Parish Development Model is a misnomer for the Labour Day 1 May 2025.
It should be remembered that in my article (Oweyegha-Afunaduula, 2025) titled “How the Parish Development Model is Destroying Uganda’s Environment”, I stated that PDM operates mainly in the socio-economic dimension of the environment and predates on the ecological-biological dimension of the environment, which is the theatre in which all projects are imposed, often at the exclusion of environmental guidance since the focus is just on increasing the incomes of the PDM beneficiaries. It also ignores the sociocultural and temporal dimensions of the environment.
Therefore, it is destroying the total environment in all its dimensions and reducing its productivity for majority of labouring Ugandans. It is being environmentally unconscious and environmentally ignorant if we put PDM at the centre of celebrating Labour Day 1 May 2025. We can say that the environmental costs of PDM are very high for the labouring Ugandans, especially in the rural areas. This means that the dire consequences on the productivity of the environment should also be very serious. These include climate change. But who cares where the focus is to invest money to make more money, even if it is public money lost in a non-performing programme! In the case of corruption, whereby the country is said to lose as much as 10 trillion shillings annually, it does not matter because the money lost is government money (read public money)!
No! Workers of Uganda are not only those targeted by Parish Development Model (PDM)! The absolute majority of the workers of Uganda are outside PDM! PDM segregated Uganda’s workers!
For God and My Country
Further Reading
Guloba, M. 2022. “Uganda’s new ‘parish’ model tries development from the grassroots,” The Conversation, March 8.
Muhamadi Matovu (2022). Parish Development Model to target only 39% of Ugandans. Nile Post,
Musinguzi Patrick, Donald Kayuza and Peter Byabenda (2023). Merits and Challenges of Parish Development Model (PDM): Strategies for Improvement. Researchgate, August 2023, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372951292_MERITS_AND_CHALLENGES_OF_THE_PARISH_DEVELOPMENT_MODEL_PDM_STRATEGIES_FOR_IMPROVEMENT Visited on 10 August April 2025 at 10:25 am EAT.
Oweyegha-Afunaduula (2025). How the Parish Development Model is Destroying Uganda’s Environment. MUWADO, March 6 2025. https://muwado.com/how-the-parish-development-model-is-destroyng-ugandas-environment/?v=2a0617accf8b Visited on 11:20 am EAT.
Steve Kayizzi-Mugerwa (2024). Uganda’s Parish Development Model in Practice: Rationale, Impact and Relevance for Bottom-Up Economic Development in Africa. Southern African Journal of Policy and Development, Volume 7 (2) May 2024. https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1101&context=sajpd Visited on 10 April 2025 at 10:11 am EAT.
Zacc Katusiime (2025). Uganda’s Parish Development Model: Uganda’s Solution to Poverty. The Borgen Project, Blog https://borgenproject.org/the-parish-development-model/ Visited on 10 April 2025 at 10:31 am EAT.
