On June 11, Uganda listened as the Minister of Finance presented the National Budget for Financial Year 2026/2027 at Kololo Ceremonial Grounds. It was a budget about growth, jobs, production, and wealth creation. But one question remained hanging in the air: where are persons with disabilities in this national transformation? Uganda has made commendable progress in laws and policies. The Constitution recognises the rights of persons with disabilities.
The Persons with Disabilities Act, 2020, provides a legal framework for accessibility, participation, and equal opportunity. We have disability representation at all levels. On paper, Uganda speaks the language of inclusion. But in national planning and budgeting, persons with disabilities are still too often given tokenism.
The new budget is a good example. It mentions the National Special Grant for Persons with Disabilities, which has supported thousands of beneficiaries across local governments. This is important and should be appreciated. But a grant is not inclusion. A grant may help a person survive. It does not necessarily open the classroom, the farm, the market, the digital platform, the health facility, or the workplace.
That is the central weakness of the budget. Persons with disabilities appear mainly as beneficiaries of social protection, not as farmers, students, entrepreneurs, innovators, workers, taxpayers, and wealth creators. Yet these are the very identities the budget claims to promote for every Ugandan. Take education. Uganda speaks strongly about inclusive education. But inclusion is not achieved by enrolling a child with a disability in school and leaving the barriers untouched. A learner with a hearing impairment needs sign language support, trained teachers, visual learning materials, and accessible examinations. A visually impaired learner needs braille, screen readers, tactile materials, and accessible science and mathematics tools. Without these reasonable accommodations, the child is counted but not included.
The same applies to agriculture. The government rightly identifies agriculture as central to Uganda’s economy. But where are persons with disabilities in the agrifood budget? Where are the targets for farmers with disabilities in extension services, irrigation schemes, mechanisation centres, cooperatives, agricultural credit, and value chains? Where are adapted tools, accessible farmer trainings, sign language interpretation, braille and audio materials, accessible digital platforms, and deliberate mobilisation through organisations of persons with disabilities?
Wealth creation risks
We see the same risk in wealth-creation programmes such as PDM, Emyooga, youth funds, women’s funds, agricultural credit, and small-business financing. If community mobilisation is not accessible, if forms are not usable, if loan information is not available in formats that persons with disabilities can understand, and if local leaders do not deliberately include them, then these programmes may carry the name ‘for all’ while leaving many behind.
Digital transformation also needs caution. More Internet, smartphones, mobile money and e-government services are good. But digital progress without accessibility creates a new form of exclusion. Government websites, mobile applications, online forms, public information videos, and digital payment systems must be accessible to persons with different impairments. Otherwise, Uganda will build a digital economy where persons with disabilities are connected in statistics but disconnected in reality.
Real inclusion requires a twin-track approach. Persons with disabilities must be deliberately mainstreamed in all national programmes, while disability-specific interventions are also funded. That means budgeting for reasonable accommodation, assistive technologies, accessible infrastructure, inclusive communication, disability-disaggregated data, OPD participation and accountability.
The budget has already been approved by Parliament and the Executive. But implementation is still ahead. That is where change can still happen. Newly appointed ministers should not wait for the next budget cycle. Even where their ministry budgets were not designed inclusively, they can issue ministerial directives requiring that at least 10 percent of this financial year’s ministries’ targets deliberately reach persons with disabilities. Since recent census reporting places disability prevalence at about 13 percent, a 10 percent target is modest, practical, and fair.
Parliament, the Equal Opportunities Commission, the National Council for Persons with Disabilities, the National Planning Authority, the Ministry of Finance, local governments, and organisations of persons with disabilities all have a role. They must ask one simple question: how many persons with disabilities are benefiting, and what barriers have been removed? Persons with disabilities are not asking for pity. They are asking for systems that work.