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.

The right to rehabilitation of refugee survivors of torture is critical to the restoration of their human dignity. The study examines the extent to which the right has been realized in Uganda. The study explores the adequacy of the legal framework for the rehabilitation of refugee survivors of torture, their rehabilitation needs, available mechanisms, and challenges, before making appropriate conclusions and recommendations. The study adopts a qualitative methodology in the form of a desk review of primary and secondary sources, field observations, and key informant interviews and interviews to answer the research questions above. A total of twenty-seven (27) participants contributed to the study. These included nine (9) service provides from six (6) state and non-state actors, and eighteen (18) Kampala-based Urban Refugees of Congolese origin who had suffered torture in their country of origin or during transit en route to Uganda and had arrived in Uganda between 2011 and 2021. The study participants were interviewed after obtaining the necessary ethical clearances from the University School of Social Sciences Research and Ethics Committee (MAKSS REC), and the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology (UNCST). The study established that although the right to rehabilitation for survivors of torture is provided for by various international and regional human rights instruments, it is not expressly stipulated within the domestic legal framework. Domestic law provides for judicial-based rehabilitation of survivors of torture experienced within Uganda’s territories. The study further established that refugee survivors of torture in Uganda have several interlinked rehabilitation needs, ranging from medical, psychological, social, livelihood, legal, protection, and general needs. Even then, there is a lack of a specific government programme for the rehabilitation of such survivors. Medical and psychological rehabilitation services are part of the general health care system, and as such survivors of torture, including refugees, seek rehabilitation from public and private health facilities, including non-governmental organisations (NGOs). NGOs also provide social, economic, livelihood, and legal services aimed at the wholistic rehabilitation of survivors of torture, while each government ministry, department, or agent is expected to provide the services that fall within its mandate. However, the availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality of rehabilitation services is hampered by various challenges. These include an inadequate legal and policy framework as a basis for mandatory provision of rehabilitation services, lack of a systematic identification process of survivors of torture; limited capacity of service providers manifesting as inadequate human resources including language interpreters, health supplies, goods, and services. The refugee survivors of torture also face gender-based barriers to accessing rehabilitation services, and the challenges caused by the changed circumstances occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic The NGOs at the center of rehabilitation service provision are largely donor-dependent, leading to a lack of adequate financial resources for sustainable service delivery. Uganda should therefore conduct a comprehensive review of its domestic legal and policy framework to bring it into conformity with international human rights standards. Such steps would include, amending the Prevention and Prohibition of Torture Act to categorically provide for the right to rehabilitation of survivors of torture and for the State's obligation to provide holistic rehabilitation services for all, including survivors of torture experienced outside Uganda, through judicial and non-judicial mechanisms; enacting a legal aid policy and Act, revising the Refugee policy to include systematic identification of survivors of torture and the provision of livelihood support to urban refugees, and amending the minimum health care package to include trauma rehabilitation. Government should additionally fund NGOs providing rehabilitation services, and together with development partners increase funding for the rehabilitation of survivors of torture. Government should deliberately build the capacity of the health sector, including skilling the existing human resource to handle survivors of torture; and enhance collaborative efforts among stakeholders for effective service delivery. This would facilitate the provision of services towards the realisation of the right to rehabilitation of refugee survivors of torture.

Mastitis in dairy goats was investigated with the objective of establishing the effect of management and the identification of the key causative agents through common diagnostic procedures of somatic cell counts, bacteriological identification and, for the first time in goat mastitis, by use of Polymerase Chain Reaction. A cross-sectional survey, using a structured questionnaire was conducted in three agro-climatic regions of Coast, Nyanza and Rift Valley, with goat keeping clusters serving as sampling sub-units. The focus of the questions was on housing, feeding, labour, water sources, record keeping, socio-economic status of respondents and availability of extension service. California Mastitis Test (CMT) was done at the farm-level, Somatic Cell Counts (SCC) and bacterial isolation were done in the laboratory. Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) on the two key bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli were subsequently carried out on 16 randomly selected samples representative of the three dairy goat keeping agro-ecological zones. The management survey indicated that 56.9% of respondents were peasant farmers only 12% of respondents could afford hired labour. There was evidence of scarcity of quality water, with only 9% using water from rain catchment and the rest depending on wells, dams and rivers. There was no training package on dairy goats. The CMT scores for the two key organisms ranged between 2 and 3, making it a reliable test for udder infection. Somatic Cell Counts (SCC) was determined for 239 samples with scores ranging between 0.248 106 and 1.693 106 with a mean of 0.869 106. This study demonstrated significant SCC variations amongst the breeds, there was also significant variation in SCC scores for various locations. Other factors in the study were lactation length and parity all of which affected SCC scores. The bacterial isolation showed dominance of Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli respectively. The two species of bacteria are significant indicators of the state of hygiene on the farms. The PCR identification of the two organisms showed that they were distributed in all three regions of study. There is a need for more intensive studies on the various diagnostic tools especially CMT, SCC, bacteriology and PCR to enable the development of quality standards in Kenya for goat milk which do not exist at the moment.

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