Around the world, USAID incorporates practices and policies into our programs to ensure that Indigenous peoples’ rights are upheld and their voices heard. Uganda is home to a rich diversity of Indigenous peoples — including the Benet, the Tepeth, the Batwa, the Ik, and the Basongora — and it is critically important to include their perspectives when...
Uganda language policy requires rural schools to choose a dominant local language to use as the language of learning and teaching for the first three years of primary school, while English is taught as a subject. The Tepeth and Ik people face the worst case scenario with only a few elders still able to speak...
On 15th December 2022, teams from the USAID Uganda Economic Growth and Partnership Office visited Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST). The presence of the USAID Uganda Economic Growth and Partnership Offices at the meeting provided an opportunity to track the progress of project implementation and provide feedback on areas of emphasis and improvement....
Uganda is home to a number of Indigenous peoples, including the Benet (Northeastern Uganda), Batwa (Southwestern), Basongora (Western) and the Tepeth, Ik, Kadama, and Nyangia (Karamoja region). The indigenous groups in Karamoja are also referred to as “the mountain tribes of Karamoja'' because each group uniquely occupies a mountainous terrain including Mt. Morungole by the...
Teachers are a key factor in student success, but literature is limited in exploring how the well-being of teachers—affections, attitudes, and perspectives of their occupation—affects teachers’ practice and students’ learning in the global south. Teacher well-being is particularly important to consider in a context such as Uganda, where teachers’ job satisfaction is low, teacher shortages...
The current LASER PULSE funded project is a second-generation investigation of implementation of this work. In collaboration with Ministry of Education, Teacher Training Colleges, and Mental Health professionals, we are testing new scalable implementation strategies to integrated the program into national teacher training curriculum, which would benefit more students, teachers, and families. In addition, because...
The Laser Pulse East Africa Project on Water Security (LPEAWS) aims to provide water information, data access, decision support, and training to improve water resources (quantity, quality) management and, ultimately, water security in East Africa. This project focuses on the three East African countries—Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda; water resources challenges are similar among the three...
A new LASER PULSE project to develop and test an early childhood evidence-based intervention for social emotional learning in Uganda has begun to implement a train-the-trainer scale-up model. Due to travel constrictions, the team conducted trainings via teleconference with Nakaseke Primary Teachers College (PTC) trainers. While this approach allowed the project to complete critical training...
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID)/Uganda is partnering with USAID/LAB/Centre for Development Research (CDR) to leverage the expertise of Ugandan universities and researchers to undertake development research that will inform subsequent interventions by USAID/Uganda to strengthen the voices of Uganda’s indigenous peoples. By working with the local universities, the Mission seeks to encourage...
