The Parish Development Model (PDM) is a government strategy for organizing and delivering public and private sector interventions for wealth creation and employment generation at parish level as the lowest economic planning unit. It is a model for socioeconomic transformation of smallholder farmers by moving them out of the non-monetary subsistence to a money economy. The model is fully backed by the Government of Uganda. Legally, PDM is backed by the Local Government Act 1997 that designates a parish as one of the planning units for government. The model was developed in line with the National Development Plan III (NDPIII), the NRM 2021-2026 manifesto, but also address two Sustainable Development Goals – no poverty (SDG 1) and zero hunger (SDG 2). According to 2019/2020 Uganda National Household Survey report, 39% of Ugandan households (approximately 16 million people) are under the subsistence economy. The targeted subsistence households are characteristic of low-income earnings, limited access to land (mostly tenants), mainly subsistence food growers for home consumption who sometimes depend on hand-outs. Majority of household heads barely afford earning more than UGX 7000 (1.9 USD) per day which is the international poverty line level. In response to the challenges associated with the subsistence economy, the PDM targets a parish (in a rural setting) and a ward (in a city/urban setting) as the lowest reference unit for planning, budgeting and delivering of public services. The strategy is expected to move Ugandans from a subsistence economy into a money economy.
The Government of Uganda launched the operationalization of the PDM in the financial year 2021/22. The President of the Republic of Uganda, His Excellence Yoweri Tibuhaburwa Kaguta Museveni launched the model on Saturday 26th February 2022 in Kibuku district. The Government prioritized the implementation of the model even in the financial year 2022-2023. The Prime Minister on Monday 11th October 2022 flagged off a direct payment of PDM money to SACCOs. The PDM is being rolled out across the country with intensive campaign for the public to make use of the program.
The main goal of the PDM is to increase household incomes and improve the quality of life of Ugandans with a specific focus on total transformation of subsistence households (both on-farm and off-farm, in rural and urban settings) into the money economy, thus eradication poverty. The main objective is to increase the effectiveness of the interaction 2 of government and its people at a lower level in order to accelerate the realization of government’s long-term goal of socio-economic transformation.
