The OVC monograph presents the status of Orphans and other Vulnerable Children in Uganda based on the 2024 National Population and Housing Census while observing trends through a re-analysis of the 2002 and 2014 Census datasets. The data shows a continuous growth in the number of children between 2002 and 2024. In 2002, the total number of children was 13,374,904, which rose to 18,866,480 in 2014, and further increased to 22,152,538 in 2024. This significant increase indicates that the number of children aged 0-17 years nearly doubled over the 22-year period.
Orphanhood: 86.3 percent (19,115,735) of the children enumerated had both their parents alive while 2,873,622 (13.0%) of the children had either lost one or both parents. Of the orphans, 42.4 percent the survivor status of both parents was not known, 8.5 percent whose mother is dead did not know the survivorship of their father, and 6.6 percent whose father is dead did not know the survivorship of their mother.
Child marriage: 610,790 children aged 10-17 (6.7%) were either currently married or have ever been married, and 197,031 did not state if they have ever married or not. The lowest proportion was among children with some primary education (5.4%) then 6.9 percent among those with some secondary education and 11.9 percent among those with post-secondary or higher. Findings further show that orphaned children are more likely to be married (9.5%) compared to their counterparts who are not orphaned (6.1%). The Karamoja Sub region had the highest proportion of married children in Uganda at 12.6%, followed by Sebei (8.4%), Lango (7.9%), and Bugisu (7.3%).
Child motherhood: Out of the 4,619,063 girls aged 10–17 years in 2024, a total of 68,787 (1.5%) were child mothers. The highest proportion of child mothers was recorded in the Bunyoro sub-region (2.2%), followed by the Rwenzori sub-region (2.07%). Namayingo district had the highest proportion of child mothers at 31.2 child mothers per 1,000 girls aged 10-17 years, closely followed by Buvuma District at 30.3 per 1,000. The prevalence of child mothers was higher among orphans (2.1%) than non-orphans at 1.4 percent.
Refugee Children: 430,575 children (1.9% of total children population) were Refugees/Asylum seekers. The level of orphanhood among refugee children (24.5%) is more than two times that of the non-refugee children (12.7%). Among refugee children, 10,562 out of 430,575 had an unknown parental survival status.
Birth registration: In 2024, 2,267,947 (10.2%) of children aged 0-17 had their births registered with a birth certificate, while another 8,086,641 had a birth notification but without a birth certificate. The possession of a birth certificate by orphanhood status showed that the prevalence of birth registration was higher among non-orphans (10.4%) than orphans (9.3%).
