Why western Uganda takes lion’s share of varsity loans

A further breakdown of the figures also reveals that the western sub-region of Ankole -- home area of President Museveni -- accounts for 20 percent of all beneficiaries attributed to the west.

According to the EOC assessment, the eastern region with 3,501 students comes next, accounting for 26.1 percent of total beneficiaries. Central Uganda is third overall with 3,168 (23.6 percent), while the smallest number of recipients are to be found in the north, standing at 1,673 (12.5 percent).

When it was launched almost a decade ago in 2014, the loan scheme was touted as a measure to help qualifying post-secondary school students from poor backgrounds, persons with disabilities, and those from marginalised areas, who cannot afford higher education.

But findings in the report show that the poorest parts of the country, which ideally should enjoy more access to loans, continue to lag behind.

Northern Uganda is the poorest part of the country with its socio-economic fabric having been devastated by two decades of civil war, suggesting therefore that the HESFB should pay more attention here. The region posted the highest poverty levels, recorded at 36.2 percent, in the June 2022 multidimensional poverty index report released by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics.

As a result of the economic hardships prevalent in the area, only a small fraction of its students can afford costly university education.

However, in 2018/19 alone, the EOC noted that up to 1,139 students from the comparatively well-off western Uganda were enrolled in the scheme, a figure almost double what was separately allocated to the eastern and central regions, who each accounted for 787 and 732 beneficiaries, respectively.

The highest number of beneficiaries ever recorded in the north has been 347 in 2021/2022.

State Minister for Higher Education, Mr John Chrysostom Muyingo, told this newspaper on Tuesday that the north has not equitably benefited because of the low quality of education in the area.

‘‘Students there are unable to excel in science subjects and yet it is those subjects which are considered for funding under the loan scheme,’’ he observed.

In central Uganda, the Buganda sub-region which is classified as north and south comes behind Ankole with 13.6 percent and 10 percent, respectively. Eastern Uganda’s Busoga sub-region holds fourth position with 7.9 percent, followed by Bukedi at 7.6 percent.

Trailing behind these areas is the southwestern Kigezi sub-region at 7.1 percent; far-western Tooro at 6.4 percent; and the far-eastern sub-regions of Elgon (6 percent) and Teso at 4.5 percent.

Lango Sub-region in northern Uganda claims 4.4 percent; Bunyoro in the mid-west accounted for 4 percent; Acholi in the north stood at 3.3 percent; West Nile claimed only 3.1 percent, while the restive and least developed Karamoja came last at 1.7 percent.

Amudat District in Karamoja has only had one beneficiary ever since the scheme’s inception. Similarly disturbing is that over the nine-year lifespan, only 224 students from Karamoja have received HESFB funding, compared to 2,713 in Ankole.

The study links the western region’s dominance to the higher performance of its students in national examinations, a point alluded to by the minister.

“Government has decided to construct at least one state-of-the-art secondary school in every sub-county, including all those regions performing poorly, to enable students who are performing poorly also attain quality education that will help them qualify for the loan scheme,” he explained.

“We have also fully equipped these schools with laboratories that are needed for one to excel in sciences, increased the salaries of teachers which have attracted them to rural schools,” Mr Muyingo added.

The EOC report listed other challenges faced by students in Karamoja, including lack of information about the loan scheme; the fact that fewer numbers progress to higher secondary due to extreme poverty, and the generally low quality of schooling which inhibits performance.

To counter these regional imbalances, sector experts have asked the government to fix quality disparities through increased funding.

“We need to look at it holistically but starting with increasing the budget for public education from the current nine percent to at least 20 percent so that we ensure that we have enough teachers, well facilitated, well-constructed and equipped libraries and laboratories,” Mr Filbert Bates Baguma, the secretary general of Uganda National Teachers’ Union, said.

This, he said, will enable rural schools in financially depressed areas to improve performance, making it possible for their students to equally benefit from the loan scheme.

Buganda sub-region returned the best result in last year’s Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) examination with 45 percent of candidates passing, followed by western Uganda at 36.4 percent, according to the EOC evaluation of the 2022 UACE data.

A district aggregation of the loan scheme shows that Wakiso, Ntungamo, Mbarara, Sheema, Busia, Bushenyi, Kasese, and Rukungiri have had the highest number of beneficiaries with over 300 students.

And again, none of the 20 districts with the highest number of beneficiaries is found in northern Uganda.

The lowest benefitting districts are Amudat (1); Karenga, Madi-Okollo, Obongi, Kalaki, Kapelebyong, Nabilatuk, Kazo, Kakumiro, and Kikuube, with most accounting for less than 10 students in the last nine years.

Elsewhere, the EOC criticised the structuring of the entire scheme which he suggested is discriminatory.

“Students studying sciences are given priority over those studying humanities. It should be noted that the majority of the students who pass science subjects are not from poor schools and communities because it takes resources for a child to pass sciences -- which schools in needy communities do not have. Hence, you find most of them not qualifying for the student’s university loan scheme,” the report said.

This week, Mr Aaron Mugaiga, president of the Uganda Professional Science Teachers Union, called for a reinstatement of the hard-to-reach allowance to motivate teachers in those areas.

Another proposal for how the regional imbalance can be addressed was made by Mr Hasadu Kirabira, national chair of the National Private Education Institutions Association, who urged the government to ensure that all schools have laboratory equipment.

Speaking on condition of anonymity this week, a former official at the HEFSB, the body that manages the loan scheme, told Daily Monitor that efforts are being made to improve access in the north and the remote islands of Buvuma and Kalangala.

“At first we used to give them five points but when we realised that the numbers were still small, we raised them to seven points in 2021/22. That explains why the number of beneficiaries has increased [in those areas],” the former official said.