How Foreign Donations, Poverty and Corruption Are Fueling Uganda’s Unregulated Orphanage Industry

This article and corresponding video from Vice News explores the orphanage industry in Uganda. "Today, there are at least 300 unlicensed children’s homes throughout Uganda operating without government oversight. Their goal: foreign donations," say the authors. According to the article, orphanages have become a money-making operation in Uganda, pulling in "nearly a quarter of a billion dollars a year from international donors — mainly from the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Europe." The money that is donated to the orphanages, says Mondo Kyateka, an assistant commissioner for the government ministry tasked to regulate children’s institutions, goes directly to orphanage directors and operators. 

"The promise of financial windfall has pushed homes to recruit as many kids as possible — often forcing children to share beds in overcrowded dorm buildings without adequate supervision. A lack of government oversight combined with the open door to foreign volunteers means there’s no safeguard to protect children from abuse," says the article. Furthermore, "the number of Ugandan children in institutional care has ballooned from less than 3,000 in 1992 to more than 50,000 today. Four out of five of them have at least one living parent, according to the Ugandan government."

According to the article, the government has begun "cracking down" on these institutions, including the introduction of the Children's Act in 2016 which aims to better regulate the homes, and efforts have been made to close down unlicensed institutions, despite ongoing corruption.

The video takes a look inside the orphanage industry in Uganda and the ways in which it is funded by foreign donors and volunteers, as well as the corruption within Uganda that allows institutions to continue operating without licenses. It also shares the story of one woman, Immaculate, who grew up in an orphanage. Her family placed her at the orphanage with the promise that she would receive an education, and because they did not have the means to care for her. Immaculate attended the school attached to the orphanage, but that stopped when the foreign donors who were sponsoring her education stopped sending funds.