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By Kasirye Ronald, Journalist and CEO Ronkas Media
For decades, Ugandans have been promised transformation through glittering government initiatives such as Entandikwa, NAADS, Operation Wealth Creation, and now the Parish Development Model, known as PDM. Yet behind every grand launch, speech, and budget allocation lies the same bitter truth: ordinary Ugandans remain trapped in the same cycle of poverty, corruption, and neglect.
The Parish Development Model was introduced with ambitious intent to shift thirty-nine percent of Ugandan households from a subsistence economy into the money economy. Billions of shillings were allocated, committees formed, and structures established. But in execution, the program has been marred by incompetence, mismanagement, and greed at nearly every level.
“The PDM was supposed to empower the grassroots,” notes an economist who preferred anonymity for fear of reprisal. “What we are seeing instead is yet another top-down project run by the same elites who benefit from every government scheme. It is a pattern, not a coincidence.”
Across the country, stories echo of misappropriated funds, ghost beneficiaries, and politically motivated allocations. The Auditor General’s 2023 report revealed that over Shs 46 billion released to several districts could not be fully accounted for, with funds either lying idle on parish accounts or withdrawn without proper documentation. In Soroti, Bukedea, Lira, and Kayunga, beneficiaries complained of being coerced to pay bribes before accessing the revolving funds.
In Oyam District, where government reports boast of Shs 15.26 billion disbursed to 15,358 households, local investigations found that many supposed beneficiaries could not be traced. Similarly, in Luwero, out of the Shs 31 billion allocated, large portions were reportedly redirected to ghost groups or politically aligned cooperatives with no physical presence on the ground.
Youths remain unemployed, smallholder farmers still lack access to reliable markets, and local leaders, many without the technical skills for accountability, continue to divert funds without consequence.
The painful irony is that the very people who should be empowered by the PDM are the ones most excluded from it. “The program has become a political tool rather than an economic solution,” says one community leader from Luweero. “They parade a few beneficiaries on television to show progress, but at the village level there is nothing to show for it.”
Even the Ministry of Local Government’s own midterm review quietly admitted that less than thirty percent of the funds reached productive use by the intended households. The rest was delayed by bureaucracy, corruption, or misallocation.
As Uganda approaches the 2026 general elections, the PDM stands as a mirror reflecting the broader decay in governance, inflated figures, empty reports, and manufactured success stories meant to pacify rather than uplift. Forty years of recycled programs have not delivered real change because the system itself resists accountability and transparency.
Real transformation will not come through endless rebranding of failed projects. It will come through a new political will where leadership prioritizes results over rhetoric and where every shilling spent is tracked, audited, and justified before the people it claims to serve.
It is time Ugandans demand more than promises. It is time to hold every official, every minister, and every technocrat accountable for the lives they claim to uplift but continue to impoverish.
The Parish Development Model is not development; it is deception dressed in policy. The 2026 elections must not be another cycle of recycled leadership and renewed suffering.
Uganda deserves a leadership that invests in people, not propaganda.
The time for change is now.
