In the lakeside town of Entebbe, over four days in May, Uganda's government, employers, workers' organizations, parliamentarians and civil society representatives gathered around a shared question: How can a nation build a social protection system that truly leaves no one behind? The answer, they found, lay not in starting from scratch but in learning from the world's best practices and aligning Uganda's evolving policies with international human rights standards. The seminar, organized by the International Labour Organization with support from the Kingdom of the Netherlands' PROSPECTS programme, arrived at a pivotal moment—as Uganda undertakes a major revision of its National Social Protection Policy 2015, an opportunity to strengthen protections for the most vulnerable.
Uganda has already earned international recognition for its progressive refugee policy and inclusive development approach. Now it is extending that commitment inward, to its own workers and communities. The timing matters: with a new political term and the Sustainable Development Goals demanding action, Uganda's tripartite partners recognized that revising the social protection framework without grounding it in proven international standards would miss a critical chance for lasting change.
During the seminar, participants studied the Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention, 1952 (No. 102) and the Social Protection Floors Recommendation, 2012 (No. 202)—instruments designed to help countries build comprehensive, adequate and sustainable systems across the entire life cycle. These aren't abstract guidelines; they articulate core principles that work: collective financing, risk pooling, solidarity, equality of treatment and non-discrimination, and the guarantee of predictable benefits when contingencies strike. Understanding what Convention No. 102 requires is, as Commissioner Lawrence Egulu of Uganda's Employment Services noted, the first step toward identifying where the current system falls short.
Uganda has made real progress. The National Social Security Fund (NSSF) has expanded coverage, and non-contributory schemes like the Senior Citizen's Grant reach some of the poorest. Yet significant gaps persist. The NSSF operates as a provident fund, offering lump-sum payouts for old age, invalidity and death—but not the periodic income security that truly protects. Even more pressing: effective coverage remains limited among workers in the informal economy, who constitute a large share of Uganda's labor force. The Senior Citizen's Grant, while vital, lacks legal protection, a prerequisite for a rights-based system.
The seminar catalyzed concrete action. Patrick Ajuna, policy officer at the Federation of Uganda Employers, articulated the employers' vision: anchoring all social security branches in national law, strengthening institutional coordination, and weaving in a robust national health insurance scheme to reduce the direct healthcare burden. Honourable Flavia Kabahenda, Chairperson of Uganda's Parliamentary Forum on Social Protection, emphasized that the training had equipped tripartite partners with tools to identify coverage gaps and design reforms that reduce barriers.
As participants departed Entebbe, they carried a roadmap for reform. The vision is clear: a social protection system that safeguards workers in the formal and informal economies alike, that embeds dignity and rights in law, and that builds the kind of collective resilience that protects not just today's generation but those to come.