Causes of slow and low disbursement in donor funded projects in Sub–Saharan Africa: Evidence from Uganda

In this paper, we document the experience with donor funded projects in Uganda, identifying both factors that contributed to its success and that hindered its effectiveness. We find problem of low/slow disbursement to be associated with funds procedures and conditions attached to specific projects, including the counter-part funding requirement; conditions for aid effectiveness; deficiencies in procurement planning and failure to follow the conditionality and funding guidelines on procurement procedures. The ranking of these problems do vary from project to project. The weak project implementation capacity (capacity constraints) implies that attention needs to be focused on building capacity of technical staff especially in those projects with elaborate procedures such as the World Bank IDA/IBRD projects.