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The study aimed at assessing the implementation, achievements, experiences and challenges of MDG 2 for UPEProgramme in Uganda. Opinions of key stakeholders were sought. The study revealed some significant successes inensuring access to free and compulsory education and in reducing gender disparities at the primary school level. Thegreatest challenge remains that of more girls than boys not completing the primary cycle. The lessons learnt are: politicalcommitment, government support, quality education to motivate learners to stay at school, motivation of teachers for theirhigh commitment and stakeholder involvement.

In 1961, soon after the beginning of the first United Nations Development Decade, a conference of African Ministers of Education was convened by Unesco. The meeting resolved, inter alia, that by the year 1980 primary schooling throughout the continent should be 'universal, compulsory and free'.1 As we have now reached that date, it is appropriate to review progress. A few countries have achieved the goal, but many others have fallen short. This article will examine the experience of the last two decades, and assess its implications for ultimate objectives and the strategies for achieving them. Despite national policy variations and divergent social and economic conditions, instructive overall patterns may be discerned.

The Federal Military Government of Nigeria has decided as a matter of policy, to embark on a scheme of Universal Free and Compulsory Primary Education (U.P.E.) as from September, 1976. The book documents the need and rationale for the U.P.E. in Nigeria at this time, and touches on the vital issues of effective planning, the role of Federal and State governments in the scheme, the recruitment and training of teachers, the importance of guidance and counselling in such a national scheme, the need to consider the welfare of the children exposed to such a scheme, the consideration of the problems of wastage which can negate the whole scheme, and finally the future that awaits the products of the scheme. (DÜI-Hff)

In recent years several democratically elected African governments have abolished primary school fees following pledges made during presidential election campaigns. Among these cases, Uganda's universal primary education (UPE) programme, launched in 1997, has received particular attention, due to the massive increase in primary school enrolment, as well the sustained increase in public spending on education that it has entailed. This paper asks whether the Ugandan government's policies in this area can be explained by the prior establishment of competitive elections in 1996. It provides several reasons to believe that the move to UPE has indeed been linked to democratic politics, and that this outcome has depended on the salience of education as an issue, as well as on the public's access to information about UPE. As a result, recent Ugandan experience helps show why the establishment of competitive elections might prompt an African government to spend more on primary education. However, it also suggests why in many African countries a democratic transition will have little effect on primary education provision.