Every so often, a report lands on the table and quietly confirms what the numbers — and lived experience — have been telling us all along. The World Bank’s December 2025 Uganda Economic Update is one such document.
It
acknowledges the good news first: Uganda is growing at about 6.3 percent,
inflation is contained, exports — especially coffee, gold and tourism are doing
the heavy lifting, and poverty has edged down. Then it delivers the
uncomfortable truth. Most Ugandans are still trapped in low-productivity
activity, and the centre of that trap is agriculture.
This matters because development is not a story of averages. It is a story of where people work, how much value they create there, and whether that value allows them to move. Nearly seven in ten Ugandans earn their livinag from agriculture. Yet the sector contributes roughly a quarter of GDP. That imbalance alone explains why growth often feels abstract to rural households, why inequality persists, and why every election cycle comes with the same anxieties.
An economy
cannot transform when the majority of its people are producing too little to
accumulate, save, invest or graduate to higher-value work.
For years,
this column has argued that Uganda’s development arithmetic has been upside
down. We talk industrialisation, services and digital futures, while leaving
the foundation — farm productivity largely untouched.
The World
Bank puts some hard numbers to it. Fertiliser use averages between 3 and 8
kilograms per hectare. Irrigation covers less than one percent of potential
farmland. Only a sliver of farmers use improved seeds. These are not marginal
gaps; they are structural failures. They explain why agriculture absorbs labour
without creating wealth.
Low productivity is not a moral failing of farmers. It is an economic outcome shaped by policy, incentives and neglect. A farmer producing just enough to eat has no surplus to sell. Without surplus, there is no cash flow. Without cash flow, there is no investment in better inputs, tools or practices. The result is a cycle where effort does not translate into progress. That cycle is what keeps poverty stubbornly rural and growth stubbornly urban.
This is where
the fashionable argument that Uganda should simply “move beyond agriculture”
collapses. No country has ever transformed by abandoning the sector that
employs most of its people while it is still unproductive. The historical
record is unambiguous. Structural transformation begins when agriculture
becomes more productive, not when it becomes irrelevant. Productivity raises
incomes, lowers food prices, expands domestic markets and releases labour. Only
then do factories, logistics and higher-value services become viable at scale.
The World
Bank’s emphasis on agro-industrialisation is therefore not a contradiction of
agriculture; it is its logical extension. But agro-industrialisation without
productivity is a hollow slogan. You cannot process what is not produced in
sufficient quantity or quality. You cannot build value chains on thin, volatile
supply. Coffee illustrates this clearly. Where yields and quality have
improved, processing capacity has followed, exports have surged and foreign
exchange has flowed in. Where productivity lags, everything downstream weakens.
There is also
a fiscal dimension that this column has warned about before and which the World
Bank now highlights politely. Rising debt service and recurrent spending are
crowding out the very investments that raise productivity — extension services,
irrigation, rural infrastructure, research and quality control. Interest
payments are visible and unavoidable; productivity gains are slow and quiet.
One gets prioritised, the other postponed. The cost of that postponement is
borne not in spreadsheets but in villages.
Raising agricultural productivity is not glamorous work. It requires getting the basics right at scale. Inputs must be genuine and affordable, not counterfeit and politicised. Extension must be present, practical and continuous, not episodic workshops. Water must be controlled, even at small scale, so farming stops being a bet on the weather. Markets must reward quality and consistency, not desperation. And institutions must function with boring reliability.
Climate
change sharpens the urgency. Low-productivity systems are the first to collapse
under stress. Productive systems adapt, diversify and recover. In that sense,
productivity is not just an economic imperative; it is a resilience strategy. A
country whose poor depend on rain-fed subsistence farming cannot afford to
treat climate adaptation as an afterthought.
What the
World Bank’s update does — and what Shillings & Cents has long insisted, is remind us
that Uganda’s transformation will not be announced; it will be built. Acre by
acre. Yield by yield. Farmer by farmer. No amount of rhetoric about
middle-income status can substitute for the quiet revolution of producing more
with the same land and labour.
Uganda’s choice is therefore stark, even if uncomfortable. Either we raise productivity where most Ugandans actually work, or we accept an economy that grows on paper while leaving millions behind. Transformation does not begin in boardrooms or conference halls. It begins on the farm.
