Despite Uganda’s progressive legal and policy commitments to disability rights, persons with disabilities in many urban communities continue to face significant barriers to accessing healthcare. This study examined access to healthcare for persons with disabilities, using Mulimira Zone, Bukoto I, Kampala as a case study, guided by objectives establishing patterns of healthcare utilization, identifying physical, communication, attitudinal, and economic barriers, assessing health worker perceptions and practices, and exploring coping strategies. A descriptive cross-sectional mixed-methods design was adopted, drawing on a total population sample of 50 persons with disabilities/caregivers and 15 key informants, using structured questionnaires, in-depth interviews, a focus group discussion, and facility observation. Descriptive results showed high physical access barriers (mean = 3.40) and severe communication barriers among deaf respondents (mean = 4.56), alongside moderate-to-high economic barriers (mean = 3.44). All four barrier domains were significantly and negatively correlated with healthcare utilization, with economic barriers showing the strongest association (r = −0.641, p < 0.01). Regression analysis showed the four barrier domains jointly explained 57.1 percent of the variance in healthcare utilization (R² = 0.571), with economic barriers (β = −0.398) and physical barriers (β = −0.312) as the strongest significant predictors. Path analysis revealed that physical and communication barriers exert significant indirect effects on utilization through their influence on economic burden (β = 0.481 and 0.296 respectively), with a total effect of physical barriers on utilization of −0.503 compared to a direct effect of −0.312. The study concludes that healthcare access barriers for persons with disabilities in Mulimira Zone are multidimensional and interlinked, with physical and communication barriers compounding economic burden, and recommends facility infrastructure retrofitting, sign language interpretation services, disability-inclusive health worker training, targeted transport/cost subsidies, and strengthened community-based monitoring.

Over the past two decades, Uganda has implemented a series of public service delivery reforms, including decentralization, results-oriented management, client charters, and the integration of information technology into service provision, all aimed at improving the efficiency, responsiveness, and quality of services delivered to citizens by local government institutions. This study examined the effectiveness of public service delivery reforms and citizens’ satisfaction, using Wakiso District, Uganda as a study area, guided by objectives that sought to assess the level of implementation of key public service delivery reforms within the district, establish citizens’ level of satisfaction with services received, determine the relationship between reform implementation and citizens’ satisfaction, and identify the challenges limiting the effectiveness of these reforms. A descriptive correlational research design combining quantitative and qualitative approaches was adopted, with data collected from a sample of 214 respondents comprising citizens accessing services at district and sub-county offices, district technical staff, and local council leaders, using questionnaires, interviews, and review of service delivery performance records. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, multiple regression, and path analysis (AMOS). Results showed moderate implementation of service delivery reforms (mean = 3.32) and a significant positive correlation between reform implementation and citizens’ satisfaction (r = 0.586, p < 0.01). Regression analysis showed that reform implementation and service quality jointly explained 43.7 percent of the variance in citizens’ satisfaction (R² = 0.437). Path analysis revealed that perceived service quality significantly mediates the relationship between reform implementation and citizens’ satisfaction, with a significant indirect effect (β = 0.267, p < 0.01) alongside a significant direct effect (β = 0.301, p < 0.01), yielding a total effect of 0.568. The study concludes that public service delivery reforms in Wakiso District have produced a measurable but moderate improvement in citizens’ satisfaction, operating substantially through improvements in perceived service quality, and recommends strengthened implementation monitoring, continued investment in service quality improvements such as reduced waiting times and staff responsiveness, and enhanced citizen feedback mechanisms.

This study examined private security deployments in critical national infrastructure (CNI) and the protection of foreign assets in Uganda, analyzing the governance frameworks, operational performance, and strategic risks associated with the increasing reliance on licensed private security organisations (PSOs) to provide protective security for Uganda's oil and gas infrastructure, telecommunications networks, banking systems, strategic government facilities, diplomatic missions, and multinational corporate assets. As Uganda's Albertine Rift oil and gas sector approached first commercial production with attendant international investment and infrastructure development, and as the proliferation of foreign direct investment across telecommunications, banking, construction, and agribusiness sectors dramatically expanded the footprint of foreign-owned assets requiring protective security, the strategic, governance, and legal dimensions of private security CNI deployments had assumed unprecedented national security importance. Drawing on a cross-sectional study of 196 respondents comprising CNI security managers, PSO operations directors, Uganda Revenue Authority and Bank of Uganda asset protection officials, foreign diplomatic mission security coordinators, Internal Security Organisation (ISO) liaison officials, and UPDF liaison officers at CNI sites, supplemented by structured CNI site security assessment protocols and analysis of PSO contract documentation, the study employed descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, multiple linear regression, and Structural Equation Modelling to examine how CNI-specific PSO vetting and clearance standards, CNI security protocol compliance, and intelligence sharing and state coordination mechanisms influenced CNI security effectiveness outcomes including threat detection capability, incident response performance, and protective security resilience ratings. Descriptive statistics revealed significant gaps in CNI-specific security governance (means 2.94–3.47). All three governance dimensions were significantly correlated with CNI security effectiveness (r = 0.583–0.748, p < .001). The three dimensions collectively explained 65.2% of variance in CNI security effectiveness (R² = 0.652, F = 41.87, p < .001). SEM confirmed intelligence sharing and state coordination as the strongest total effect predictor (total β = 0.521), with CNI protocol compliance partially mediating this relationship. Recommendations address CNI security tiering legislation, intelligence coordination protocols, foreign asset security governance frameworks, and national CNI protection strategies.

This study examined the influence of profitability ratio analysis on business decision-making at Mukwano Group of Companies, Uganda's largest indigenous manufacturing conglomerate. As businesses operating in Uganda's increasingly competitive consumer goods market faced intensifying pressure to make informed, data-driven strategic and operational decisions, the systematic use of profitability ratios — including return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), gross profit margin (GPM), net profit margin (NPM), and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) margins — as inputs to investment, pricing, production, and financing decisions had emerged as a critical determinant of corporate performance. Drawing on a cross-sectional survey of 142 management, finance, and operations staff at Mukwano Group, supplemented by analysis of audited financial statements for the period 2018–2023 and key informant interviews with senior management, the study employed descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, multiple linear regression, and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to examine how the quality of profitability ratio analysis, the frequency of ratio-informed decision review cycles, and management capacity for ratio interpretation influenced investment decision quality, pricing decision quality, and financing decision quality. The structural model revealed that analytical quality exerted the strongest total effect on decision quality (total path coefficient = 0.512), with interpretation capacity partially mediating this relationship (indirect path β = 0.168). Collectively, the three profitability ratio dimensions explained 65.4% of the variance in business decision quality (R² = 0.654, F = 41.38, p < .001). The study recommended systematic financial dashboard adoption, ratio interpretation training, and board-level financial literacy strengthening as priority interventions.

This study examined the influence of public relations practices on journalistic independence at Daily Monitor, Uganda's leading independent daily newspaper and one of the East African region's most prominent voices for press freedom and accountability journalism. The study was motivated by growing concerns within Uganda's media landscape about the intensification of PR-driven information management strategies by government agencies, corporations, and political actors, and their potential influence on editorial independence, story framing, and investigative reporting capacity at major news organisations. Drawing on a cross-sectional survey of 108 editorial, reporting, and management staff at Daily Monitor, supplemented by key informant interviews with senior editors and focus group discussions with beat reporters, the study examined how media relations pressure, sponsored content arrangements, and source management dynamics influenced editorial autonomy, investigative journalism quality, and news framing independence. Descriptive statistics revealed moderate to high levels of PR pressure across all dimensions (means 3.42–3.87). Pearson correlation revealed significant negative relationships between PR practice intensity and journalistic independence (r = -0.584 to -0.718, p < .001). Multiple regression demonstrated that the three PR dimensions collectively explained 62.7% of variance in journalistic independence limitations (R² = 0.627, F = 37.14, p < .001). SEM path analysis confirmed media relations pressure as the strongest total effect predictor of independence reduction (total β = -0.498). Recommendations address editorial firewall strengthening, transparent PReditorial protocols, and investigative journalism capacity investment.

The academic publishing landscape has long been dominated by a particular vision of research excellence: the collection of primary data through fieldwork, experiments, or surveys, followed by statistical or systematic analysis, and culminating in empirically grounded conclusions. Yet this vision, however valuable, excludes and undervalues an entire tradition of scholarly contribution-the non-empirical research article that produces knowledge through conceptual analysis, theoretical synthesis, systematic literature review, case argumentation, and philosophical inquiry. Many scholars, particularly early-career researchers in developing academic contexts, believe that research without primary data is not "real research" and is therefore unpublishable in reputable journals. This belief is empirically unfounded and intellectually limiting. This qualitative study explores how scholars understand, experience, and navigate the challenge of producing publishable non-empirical research, drawing on in-depth interviews with 36 academics from Ugandan universities, supplemented by document analysis of journal submission guidelines and editorial policies. Participants shared candid reflections on their fears about non-empirical work, the institutional pressures they face, the intellectual strategies they have developed, and the moments of breakthrough when they realised that conceptual rigour can be as publishable as statistical sophistication. The study provides a practical, experience-grounded guide to non-empirical research approaches that aims to expand the methodological confidence and publishing productivity of scholars in resource-constrained academic environments.

Exoneration-the formal legal recognition that a person was wrongfully convicted and was innocent of the crime for which they were imprisoned-should, in principle, represent the full restoration of freedom, status, and social belonging. In practice, it frequently represented something far more ambiguous: a legal declaration of innocence that coexists with persistent social stigma, absent institutional support, unaddressed psychological trauma, and in many jurisdictions the continued imposition of collateral consequences that were triggered by the original wrongful conviction and that state law has not automatically removed upon exoneration. This conceptual and qualitative study examined the post-exoneration reentry experience through the lens of three intersecting concepts-freedom, forgiveness, and access arguing that the exoneree's experience reveals with particular clarity a paradox that also, in different forms, characterizes the experience of the broader post-incarceration population: the paradox of being told one was free while systemic structures deny the practical content of freedom. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 24 exonerees recruited through innocence project organisations, the study employed critical phenomenological analysis and conceptual argumentation to illuminate the specific dimensions of postexoneration access denial. Findings reveal that exonerees navigate a social and institutional landscape that is largely unprepared for their existence: legal frameworks that restore their formal innocence without restoring their concrete life circumstances, social environments that were uncertain how to respond to a category of experience most people have never encountered, and psychological burdens including complex trauma, identity disruption, and grief for which specialised therapeutic support is rarely available or funded. The study proposed a conceptual framework the Freedom-Forgiveness-Access (FFA) triad for understanding the post-exoneration condition and identified the policy and institutional reforms necessary to give the legal act of exoneration the substance that justice requires.

This study examined the regulatory integration and dual oversight mechanisms governing private security organisations (PSOs) in Uganda, interrogating the effectiveness, coherence, and operational consequences of Uganda's bifurcated regulatory framework in which PSOs were simultaneously subject to oversight by the Uganda Police Force (UPF) under the Private Security Organisations Act (2002) and by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MoIA) under the Private Security Organisation Regulations (2009). Uganda's private security sector had grown dramatically since the late 1990s, from an estimated 12,000 private security personnel in 2000 to over 80,000 registered private security guards employed by approximately 600 licensed PSOs by 2023 — a workforce that had surpassed Uganda's formal police establishment of approximately 50,000 officers and whose regulatory governance remained characterised by institutional overlap, enforcement inconsistency, and accountability gaps. Drawing on a cross-sectional mixedmethods study of 218 respondents comprising senior PSO managers and compliance officers, UPF Private Security Regulatory Unit (PSRU) officials, MoIA licensing officers, intelligence coordination officials, security sector reform practitioners, and civil society security governance experts, the study employed descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, multiple linear regression, and Structural Equation Modelling to examine how licensing and vetting regulatory integration, operational standards enforcement coherence, and accountability and complaints resolution mechanisms influenced PSO regulatory compliance quality, personnel professionalisation outcomes, and public safety contribution ratings. Descriptive statistics revealed significant regulatory integration deficits (means 2.87–3.34). Correlation and regression analyses confirmed significant positive relationships between all three regulatory dimensions and PSO governance quality (r = 0.574–0.721, p < .001). The three dimensions collectively explained 63.4% of variance in PSO governance quality (R² = 0.634, F = 37.48, p < .001). SEM confirmed licensing and vetting integration as the strongest total effect predictor of governance quality (total β = 0.512), with operational standards enforcement partially mediating this relationship (indirect β = 0.147). The study recommended an integrated regulatory authority, mandatory digital vetting systems, standardised training certification, and strengthened interagency intelligence coordination as priority reform interventions.

This study examined the relationship between risk management practices and the financial performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) operating in Wakiso Municipality, Wakiso District-one of Uganda's most economically dynamic peri-urban zones, characterised by a dense concentration of manufacturing, retail, services, and agroprocessing enterprises operating in conditions of significant market, credit, operational, and regulatory risk. Despite the centrality of risk to SME financial outcomes in volatile developing-country environments, systematic empirical evidence on the risk management practices of Ugandan SMEs, the specific risk categories most consequential for their performance, and the structural determinants of risk management quality remained remarkably sparse. This study drew on a cross-sectional survey of 298 SME owners, managers, and financial officers supplemented by three-year financial record analysis, employing descriptive statistics, hierarchy-of-controls risk management adoption analysis, bivariate Pearson correlation and chi-square association, and multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression to examine how risk identification, assessment, mitigation, and monitoring practices related to SME financial performance indicators including profitability, liquidity, and business survival. The findings demonstrated that financial risk management quality (β = 0.541, p < .001), market risk diversification (β = 0.487, p < .001), and operational risk control score (β = 0.412, p < .001) were the strongest independent predictors of financial performance, while institutional factors including business association membership (OR = 4.21, p < .001) and formal business training completion (OR = 3.84, p < .001) were significant structural predictors of risk management adoption. The study benchmarks these findings against Asiimwe et al. (2026), whose structural equation modelling demonstrated that institutional capacity operationalised as teacher digital competence (β = 0.393) mediated the relationship between infrastructure provision and implementation outcomes, drawing the direct parallel that management capacity similarly mediated the relationship between risk exposure and financial performance in the SME context. The study recommended risk management capacity building programmes, business association strengthening, financial literacy campaigns, and insurance product development as priority interventions for improving SME risk resilience in Wakiso Municipality.

This study examined the relationship between risk mitigation strategies and liquidity management outcomes at PRIDE Microfinance Institution Uganda Limited-one of Uganda's oldest, most geographically extensive, and most operationally diversified microfinance deposit-taking institutions, serving over 160,000 active clients across 30 branches spanning all regions of the country. Liquidity management in microfinance institutions occupied a distinctive and critically important position relative to commercial banking, reflecting the particular vulnerability of MFIs to simultaneous credit risk events driven by the common exposure of client portfolios to weather events, commodity price shocks, and epidemic diseases that correlated loan delinquency across borrowers and to funding structure mismatches, in which short-term deposit liabilities and loan portfolio draw-downs collided with loan portfolio illiquidity in ways that could precipitate MFI operational crises even for institutions with sound long-run solvency. Drawing on a cross-sectional survey of 268 respondents comprising PRIDE management, loan officers, credit committee members, depositors, the Uganda Microfinance Regulatory Authority (UMRA) supervisors, and development finance partners, supplemented by four-year financial analysis (2019–2022), this study employed descriptive statistics, hierarchy-of-controls risk mitigation adoption analysis, bivariate Pearson correlation analysis, chi-square tests, and multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression to examine the determinants of liquidity ratio adequacy and the risk mitigation strategies most consequential for liquidity outcomes. The findings demonstrated that credit risk management quality (β = 0.574, p < .001), liquidity reserve adequacy (β = 0.541, p < .001), and loan portfolio diversification (β = 0.487, p < .001) were the strongest independent predictors of liquidity ratio adequacy, while institutional factors including UMRA regulatory compliance quality (OR = 5.84, p < .001), management financial literacy (OR = 5.12, p < .001), and digital financial management system adoption (OR = 4.41, p < .001) were significant structural predictors. The study benchmarks these findings against Asiimwe et al. (2026), establishing that digital financial management systems mediated risk mitigation strategy effectiveness in the same complementary relationship that digital infrastructure mediated teacher competence effects on CBE readiness, and called for strengthened portfolio diversification, mandatory liquidity buffer requirements, digital system investment, and client financial literacy as the priority interventions for improving MFI liquidity resilience in Uganda.