Introduction Risky sexual behaviors among people living with HIV/AIDS is a public health concern because of risk of HIV transmission, acquiring resistant strains and STIs. The main objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of risky sexual behaviors and associated factors among HIV positive adults on ART at Wakiso Health Centre IV. Methods The study employed a descriptive cross sectional design. A pretested interviewer administered questionnaire was used to collect data. Systematic random sampling technique was used, 207 respondents participated in this study. The data were entered into SPSS version 20 and analyzed. Descriptive, bivariate and multivariate analysis were done. A P˂0.05 was considered to determine the statistical significance of the association between factors and risky sexual behaviors. Results A total of 207 respondents participated in this study. The prevalence of risky sexual behavior was 60.9%. The factors associated with risky sexual behaviors at multivariate analysis were, disclosure to close friends (AOR=2.113 P=0.015), social support (AOR=0.499 P=0.028) and people on ART not likely to use condoms (AOR=3.115 P=0.000). Conclusion: The prevalence of risky sexual behaviour among HIV positive adults who attended the HIV clinic at Wakiso Health Centre IV is 60.9%. Majority of the participants did not disclose to close friends, a quarter of the participants are still using alcohol and more than half reported no social support.

The study investigates money demand and financial innovation with evidence from African. We employed system GMM estimation technique and found a significant negative relationship between financial innovation inform of bank concentration, mobile phone concentration and private sector credit with real money demand in Africa. On the other hand, we found no evidence of any significant effect of Automated teller machines per 100,000 people as well as internet usage on real money demand. While the opportunity cost of holding money proxied by inflation was found adversely associated with real money demand, the scale variable proxied by income was observed to have a significantly positive relationship with the real money demand for the African countries. Similarly, the CUSUM and CUSMUQ stability tests show that the majority of African countries totalling to 36 portrayed a stable money demand function. Our findings call for the African governments to account for financial innovation in money demand models if the latter are to be well specified and produce unbiased estimates. The evidence provided necessitates putting in place policies to further promote financial innovation so as to encourage more people to be savers and investors. Policies to spur increased bank concentration, mobile phone concentration as well as private sector credit ought to be fully implemented, albeit with appropriate regulatory framework and enhanced supervisory oversight to avert the risks, without stifling the productive innovation. Relatedly, African policy makers ought to strengthen financial depth by enhancing private sector credit, as doing so would result into a stable money demand function required for the success of monetary policy and perhaps for the eventual success of the African Monetary Union once in place. On the other hand, policies that focus on driving economic growth and exchange rate stability are critical. Moreover, evidence provided point to the prioritization of macroeconomic stability in policy-making and implementation.

This study examines the impact of Domestic savings on Economic growth in Uganda using quarterly data for the period 2000 to 2019. The study employed a time series analysis using the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) methodology augmented by the bounds test. In the long run, Gross Capital Formation, Labor, Inflation, Gross Domestic Savings, and Trade Openness are positive and significantly related to Gross Domestic Product while Foreign Direct Investment has a negative significant relationship to Gross Domestic Product. The results reveal that Gross Domestic Savings as the major focus of this study has a significant positive impact on Gross Domestic Product in the long run. This implies that over time, policymakers should focus on increasing the level of domestic private savings. Secondly, appropriate strategies regarding trade openness such as; reduction of both tariff and non-tariff barriers and the promotion of integration among countries should be emphasized for a meaningful contribution to the economic growth of Uganda.

The purpose of this study was to assess the quality of education services offered in Universal Primary Schools in Uganda. The education sector in Uganda has witnessed comprehensive policy reforms that have put it decisively on the economic development path. Key among the reforms was the adoption of the Universal Primary Education programme in 1997 whose objective was to provide free primary education to four children per household. Later, the implementation was scaled up to cater for all children of primary school going age (6-12 years). This programme made an immediate impact on primary school enrolment level from 2.8 million to 8.4 million in 1996. This study sought to provide an in-depth investigation on how school supervision and teacher training affect the quality of education in UPE schools since the two factors are envisaged to contribute to success of UPE program in Uganda. The study employed a quantitative research design using secondary data obtained from the 2012/13 Uganda National Household Survey by Uganda Bureau of Statistics. The data management and analysis procedure were done using Statistical package for Social Scientists. Univariate, bivariate and multivariate analysis of the variables was conducted. A logistic binary regression model was used to estimate the effect of school supervision and teacher’s training on the quality of services offered by UPE schools in Uganda. The report found that there exists a significant effect of the level of teacher training on quality of services offered by UPE schools. The study discovered that supervision has no significant effect on quality of services offered by UPE schools. It was also discovered that most of the schools that were frequently supervised were in a better condition compared to their counterparts. More so, the analysis revealed that primary schools are available and accessible which corresponds to majority of government reports that highlight government’s efforts to have UPE schools all over the country. Finally, the study recommended that government’s interventions to address the quality challenges in UPE schools should focus on critical areas that include: teachers’ development, management and motivation as well as strengthening the inspection by centralizing its function as well as making it independent.

This study is an empirical investigation to assess the impact of domestic debt on Uganda’s Economic growth during the period 1980-2017. We use data on Domestic Debt, Net Fiscal Deficit, Exports, Savings, Real Gross Domestic Product, Population and Terms of Trade. This study adopts the ARDL Co-Integration technique to investigate the impact of public domestic debt on economic growth in Uganda and other selected key variables. The study also employs various post estimation tests to validate the fitness and stability of the models based on Gauss Markov assumptions, after employing the ordinary least square regression on various models. We find that debt negatively impacts economic growth while savings has a positive impact. The main findings indicate that public debt has a reducing effect on economic growth in the short-run while it has a positive long-run effect on economic growth. Other key variables that positively influence long-run economic growth in Uganda include exports, gross capital formation, private sector credit, FDI and government expenditures, while debt financing negatively affect economic growth in the long-run. The policy implication from these results indicate that government needs to promote trade in terms of exports earning, promote the private sector and ensure a sustainable fiscal discipline.

The main objective of the study was to examine the effects of contraceptive use on fertility rates in Uganda. This paper made use of the 2016 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey data set. The data base for the analysis was constructed using the woman questionnaire. Three levels of analysis were employed. The descriptive characteristics of the respondents were done. The bivariate analysis of the predictors and the number of children ever born was also explored. Finally, the count data model, the Poisson regression was used to examine the contribution of the different predictors of children ever born The findings show that contraceptive use was strongly associated with increase in fertility. The results also show that Women’s education, wealth status of the households, place of residence and access to healthcare were associated with reduction in fertility rates. It can be concluded that contraceptive use does not reduce fertility rates. The results suggest that government should prioritise education of women to post-secondary level as a critical aspect to lower fertility rates in the country. Economic empowerment of women with resources is needed. Finally, improvement in transport infrastructure to make health facilities accessible to the population is needed. Key words: Contraceptive use, Fertility, Women and Uganda

This paper provides new evidence on the impact of high and medium technology exports and gross capital formation on economic growth in the East African economies. The study utilizes data from the World Bank Development Indicators. This study estimates Panel Random Effects model as indicated by the Hausman test to determine the impact of high-tech and medium-tech exports and gross capital formation on economic growth on panel data for 6 East African countries for the period 1990–2021. The results indicate that in the long run, high-tech and medium-tech exports have a significant effect on economic growth in East Africa and gross capital formation has a positive but insignificant effect. The study recommends that the East African governments and policy makers need to increase their production and export of high and medium technology exports and this can be done through increased investment in human capital development, research and development (R&D) together with technology development and innovation.

This paper examined the impact of food and energy price shocks on the cost of living for rural and urban households in Uganda using the SAM-multiplier approach to test the hypothesis that an increase in either food or energy prices leads to an increase in the cost of living for the three types of households i.e. rural and urban households in Uganda. Rural households are disaggregated into two categories of rural farm for households with crop and/or livestock incomes and rural non-farm for households without crop and/or livestock incomes while Urban households refers to households with or without crop and/or livestock incomes. The study used secondary data of the 2013 social accounting matrix for Uganda collected by the International Food Policy Institute (IFPRI). The results revealed that an increase in food or energy prices have adverse impacts on the cost of living of both rural and urban households in Uganda. Specifically, a 10 percent increase in food prices increases the cost of living by 2.36 percent with the largest proportion of this effect coming from the indirect effects that account for 56.4 percent of the total effect. Though the effect on the different households takes the same direction, it varies with the 10 percent increase in food prices causing the cost of living of rural farm, rural non-farm, and urban households to increase by 2.76, 2.42, and 1.89 percent, respectively. On the other hand, a 10 percent increase in oil prices increases the cost of living by 42.8 percent with indirect effects accounting for 57.2 percent of the total effect. Specifically, a 10 percent increase causes the cost of living of rural farm, rural non-farm, and urban households to increase by 41.65, 43.69, and 43.08 percent, respectively. The impact on the cost of living was larger for the oil prices probably because oil is used as an input for most of the activities in the economy and has limited substitutes compared to the cereals. Therefore, any volatility in oil prices will automatically affect the costs of production that in turns lead to an increase in the cost of living. Further, the producer price index measured as average movements of prices received by the producers of various commodities increased by 2.26 percent following a 10 percent increase in the price of cereals with the direct effect accounting for 21.28 percent of the total effect while the indirect effect accounts for 78.72 percent. For a 10 percent energy price increase, the producer price index increases by 56.09 percent where 42.41 percent of this increase results from the direct effects of the price of the energy price increase while the remaining 57.59 percent results from the indirect effects. Based on the above findings, the government of Uganda should adopt policies like supporting initiatives aimed at providing alternative energy sources, developing a fuel pricing policy, increase investment in activities that reduce the cost of production and designing policies towards improving both rural and urban households purchasing power.

The rapid growth in government spending in Uganda has caused concern among policy makers on the implication of such growth. Over the three decades, government expenditure in the country grew at a faster rate than the growth rate of GDP. Given this fiscal scenario, an explanation of this requires studying the effect of government spending on economic growth. This study therefore investigates the effect of government spending on economic growth in Uganda from 1992 to 2021. This is achieved through the simultaneous use of the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model. The study employs the unit root test, Philips Perron and the cointegration analysis of the bounds test procedure. The empirical findings reveal that military expenditure in the long run is positive and significantly related to economic growth implying that an increase in government expenditure in military increases economic growth. The study concludes that the composition of government expenditure matter for economic growth and therefore recommends that government should increase government spending through increased spending on public investment (in areas such as education, health); operation and maintenance of investment; public pay and employment; subsidies and public spending on low-cost services to alleviate poverty.

This study is a feminist analysis of how victims of rape experience the criminal justice system as they report and prosecute cases and the impact that this has on their access to justice. Anchored in feminist theory, the study takes the position that male-perpetrated rape against women is a crime of sexual violence and that it is a common experience in the lives of girls and women and causes great harm to the survivors. This marks a significant departure from the common law position that considered rape as an offence against ‘morality’ rather than as assault against the person. The study explored three main research questions. First, what is the implication of the definition of rape in Uganda’s Penal Code Act for victims of rape? Secondly, what legal and institutional frameworks exist for the protection of the rights of victims of rape in the reporting and prosecution of rape cases ? and thirdly, what key issues and challenges do the victims of rape face in the reporting and prosecution of rape cases and how do these impact on their access to justice? Through a qualitative analysis of the functioning of Uganda’s legal system as experienced by victims of rape, the key findings show that the definition of the crime of rape in Uganda is artificially narrow and that victims of rape who report and prosecute cases do so in a patriarchal colonial criminal justice system that is massively rigged against them. Secondly, rape survivors are re-traumatized in a context fraught with shame, stigma, victim blaming, poverty and a criminal justice framework where they have no legally-defined position, rights or voice. Third, the criminal justice system does not provide substantive access to justice for women who report and prosecute cases of rape; instead they experience the process as a series of continued gendered violations. In sum, the justice they undergo is highly gendered. The study concludes that many of the difficulties that women face in the criminal justice system are an inherent aspect of the patriarchal colonial common law adversarial criminal justice system and cannot be wholly addressed by legal and policy reforms without rooting out those of patriarchal structures and legacies. The study therefore recommends a recourse to restorative justice which will guarantee full and comprehensive justice and accountability for rape survivors.