Determinants of Economic Growth in Uganda 1980 -2024

Foreign investment and employment are important to Uganda's development strategy, but their contribution to annual output growth requires careful measurement. This article examines their relationship with real gross domestic product growth within the historical scope of 1980–2024. It combines a focused literature review with a new analysis of World Development Indicators retrieved on 2 November 2026. Data availability yields a common descriptive sample of 1991–2024 and 33 regression observations for 1992–2024. A parsimonious dynamic model relates real GDP growth to its previous value and annual changes in foreign direct investment as a share of GDP, the employment-to-population ratio and gross capital formation as a share of GDP. Inference uses heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation consistent standard errors. Mean growth over the common sample is 6.165%. The main FDI-change coefficient is 0.314 growth percentage points (p = .495; 95% confidence interval [−0.615, 1.243]), while the employment-change coefficient is 0.092 (p = .558; interval [−0.226, 0.410]). Neither association is precisely estimated. Sensitivity analysis does not establish a robust FDI association, while employment inference changes when an influential observation is omitted. The results do not demonstrate that investment or employment is economically unimportant; they show the limits of identifying their effects from a short aggregate annual series. Policy should prioritise productive linkages, workforce capabilities and investment quality rather than interpret inflow totals or employment ratios as sufficient evidence of growth impact. The article provides transparent statistical evidence and a measured basis for further research rather than causal policy multipliers.