Uganda’s Ministry of Education and Sports has warned thousands of former student loan beneficiaries that their names could be published in the media if they continue to default on repayments.
In a legal notice published on Monday, the ministry said beneficiaries of the Government Student Loan Scheme who have completed their studies and exhausted their grace period must “immediately regularise” their loan status.
The notice, signed by the Permanent Secretary, says the warning is a “final” one and “a last opportunity” for defaulters to comply voluntarily. Those who fail to act within six months face having their names published in print and digital media, along with “other lawful recovery measures”.
A revolving fund under pressure
The scheme was created in 2014 to help Ugandans from low-income backgrounds access university education, with loans repayable once graduates find work. By the end of 2024 it had supported more than 16,000 students across over 150 academic programmes, before being folded into the Ministry of Education as part of a wider government restructuring drive.
But demand has always outstripped supply. The scheme typically received more than 6,000 applications a year, yet could only fund around 1,500 students — putting pressure on officials to recover money from past beneficiaries in order to fund new applicants.
Researchers who have studied the scheme say recovery has been hampered by weak systems for tracking graduates after they leave university. One recent academic study recommended stronger enforcement through audits and employer agreements, alongside digital systems for tracking beneficiaries after graduation, to improve repayment rates.
The jobs problem
The ministry’s crackdown comes at a time when many Ugandan graduates are struggling to find work at all.
Official figures from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics put graduate unemployment at 15.2%, though some experts believe the real figure could be as high as 80%. Around 700,000 people enter Uganda’s labour market each year, competing for jobs in an economy that analysts say is growing without generating enough formal employment to absorb them.
Most young workers end up in services or agriculture rather than the industrial and production sectors the government says it wants to grow, reflecting what officials describe as a mismatch between graduates’ skills and what employers actually need.
That gap raises questions about how realistic it is for the government to expect timely repayment from graduates who cannot find stable income. The ministry has not addressed this directly, instead urging beneficiaries to come forward and update their repayment information through the Higher Education Students’ Financing Secretariat.
It is unclear how many beneficiaries are currently in default, or how the ministry intends to verify employment status before naming anyone publicly.
