Government urged to pick up pieces as UNCDF’s 6-year digital inclusion program ends

Stakeholders have asked the government to take over and sustain digital services introduced under the United Nations Capital Development Fund’s Leaving No One Behind in the Digital Era programme after the six-year initiative officially closed on Wednesday, August 26, 2026.

The call dominated the programme’s closing event at the Kampala Sheraton, where government officials, development partners and implementers reflected on gains made since its launch in 2019.

The programme sought to expand access to digital services, finance, education and healthcare, with much of its work concentrated in underserved communities in northern Uganda and the West Nile sub-region.

Over six years, more than 3.4 million people registered for digital services supported by the programme. More than one million became active digital users, while over 500,000 women participated.

The programme also recruited more than 21,000 digital agents and community enablers and piloted 26 digital services and business models.

But speakers warned that those gains could disappear unless government institutions take responsibility for systems that development partners can no longer finance.

Maracha District Health Officer Russel Okudra offered one of the strongest warnings.

He said UNCDF, working with BRAC Uganda, had helped Maracha implement the government’s Electronic Community Health Information System, or eCHIS.

The Ministry of Health developed eCHIS to replace paper-based community health records and help Village Health Teams collect and transmit information using digital devices.

Maracha has 1,382 VHTs and 182 community health extension workers who supervise them.

Okudra said eCHIS reached the district in 2021. BRAC trained VHTs and provided smartphones to many of them.

The system improved reporting, feedback and decision-making, particularly in maternal health.

“The most important thing has been reporting about maternal health. If a mother is due to deliver and they contact a VHT, but also through the VHTs monitoring the pregnant mothers in the village, we have been able to save many lives,” Okudra said.

He linked the system to an improvement in maternal health outcomes in the district.

“The whole of last year we only lost two mothers and this year so far we have lost none; because of this monitoring and surveillance,” he said.

However, Okudra said the end of external support had already affected the system.

“The sad bit is that with the programme now coming to a close, all this success is collapsing. For instance, our VHT reporting rate has dropped from 75% to around 15%,” he said.

“The government is watching this and doing nothing and we could soon lose this amazing system. Why can’t the government take over this system because the infrastructure is there; over 92% of our households in Maracha have smartphones. My call to the government is to find a way of picking up and sustaining this initiative.”

Similar sentiments were shared by Ian King, the Deputy Resident Representative at the UNDP Uganda Country Office, who noted that while 

Digital projects can demonstrate that new systems work, but their long-term success depends on sustainable financing and institutions capable of maintaining them.

“Closing the digital divide cannot be achieved by one institution or one sector. It requires sustained collaboration between the government and development partners including the UN, private sector and most importantly, the communities we seek to serve,” King said.

King further argued that expanding network coverage or distributing devices was only part of the solution.

“People need the confidence, knowledge and skills to turn access into everyday use. This includes strengthening the capabilities of communities,” King said.

“The true measure is not simply how many people gain access to a network or a device; our project has demonstrated that new approaches could work.”

That lesson also emerged from the experience of Quest Digital Finance, one of the programme’s implementing partners.

Its chief executive, Jean Onyait, said digital registration alone did not guarantee that people would use financial services or improve their incomes.

“While the focus of the programme was not leaving anyone behind in the digital era, digitisation itself does not give value to the people. Focus should not be on just digitising people but what value do they get and how are they helped to improve their economic status,” Onyait said.

“In our case, we digitised about 68,000. But of these, only 21,000 were the ones that utilised these services.”

According to the UNCDF’s programme review report, successful digital inclusion required more than connecting people to platforms. Users also needed products that solved real problems, trusted institutions, digital skills and affordable financing.

One initiative involved Ensibuuko, which digitised transaction records for village savings and loan associations.

The system converted informal savings and repayment histories into digital records that financial institutions could use when assessing borrowers.

This helped address a long-standing challenge for rural borrowers whose economic activity is often invisible to banks because they lack formal records, collateral or credit histories.

The report found signs that lenders were becoming more willing to work with digitised savings groups. However, it also noted that expanding these models remained expensive because onboarding, training and monitoring communities required continued investment.

The programme also brought digital systems into education.

James Okello, director of Grace Nursery School in Dokolo District, said his school adopted SchoolPay through the programme.

The platform allowed parents to pay school fees without carrying cash and helped the school manage its records.

“We have benefited greatly from SchoolPay. One of the best bits about it has been enabling us to generate report cards of our learners for every term’s assessment through the system,” Okello said.

“The report cards that were on pieces of paper were hard to keep; but this digital one can be kept as long as the system is there, and it can be easily accessed by the parents.”

He said the platform had also simplified financial management.

“The system has also helped us with our accounts; we no longer struggle with balancing books. Everything is easily done in the system,” he said.

UNCDF’s review said the programme demonstrated that digital adoption could open a path towards financial inclusion, but only when accompanied by systems that helped people generate reliable financial records.

It also found that limited access to finance among small businesses was often driven by weak information, high delivery costs and lenders’ perception of risk rather than a lack of demand.

The report urged future programmes to link successful pilot projects with financing that can help them expand.

It also recommended treating last-mile digital infrastructure and community support as a public good because commercial revenues alone may not cover the cost of serving remote communities.