H.E. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, President of Uganda, considered how to completely eradicate poverty and began the Parish Development Model, which was the major policy in the NRM manifesto. He investigated ways to increase the country’s yearly GDP growth rate to at least 7% by 2040, up from 5.1% in 2022.

It is a bottom-up budgeting technique aiming at bringing national development planning to the grassroots. Uganda’s constitution, in Article 176, calls for decentralization “to ensure people’s participation and democratic control in decision making.” At the sub-county level, Uganda’s Local Government Act recognizes two types of administrative units: parishes and villages. Uganda has a total of 10,694 parishes, each with a population of 450 to 30,000 people.

The government has lately established mechanisms and processes for planning, budgeting, and delivering public services under the parish development model. People at the parish level will determine development priorities in accordance with national plans.
The notion is that by empowering citizens at the lowest administrative levels to identify and allocate resources for their own social needs, development can be skewed toward the disadvantaged. According to the strategy, the overarching goal is to strengthen the decentralization process, raise household incomes, and increase responsibility at the local level.

The objective of Parish Development Model;
The Parish Development Model (PDM) is a multi-sectoral method for creating socioeconomic transformation by moving the 39% of Ugandan households locked in the subsistence economy into the money economy, with the parish/ward serving as the epicenter for development.
Subsistence farming had become a typical issue for Ugandan growth because everyone was just concerned with what to eat and survive, but PDM allows everyone to plan for a better tomorrow.

This is in line with the NDP-III Goal, with the ultimate goal of inclusive, sustainable, balanced, and equitable socioeconomic transformation. PDM is built on seven pillars:

1. Boost output and productivity across the whole value chain, from production to post-harvest handling, value addition, transportation, storage, and marketing.
2. Build the social and economic infrastructure required to sustain production and livelihoods.
3. Increase household engagement in the financial sector.
4. Provide community-based, accessible, and high-quality social services.
5. Raise population knowledge, mobilization, organization, and attitude adjustment to embrace progressive social norms and values and take responsibility for improving their livelihoods and earnings.
6. Maintain a community information system that provides administrative and economic data at the Parish level and allows local governments to use the information for planning and development.
7. Expand decentralization by improving local governance and administration and fostering a culture of transparency and accountability.

Each of these pillars illustrates a procedure that, if properly performed, can elevate our country to the middle class.
The Ugandan government funds parishes through SACCOS established by the parish executive committee, which consists of 11 members led by the LC 2. Each parish is entitled to 100 million, and each beneficiary is entitled to 1 million shillings from any bank of his or her choosing. This money is a revolving fund, and whomever receives it must understand that he or she must return it after a period of time, but before doing so, ensure that you have profited from it.