A 27 percent increase was observed in the number of Ugandans pursuing higher education studies in the United States over the past years, official statistics have revealed.
This increase has been noted between academic years 2005/06 and 2019/20, from 685 to 870 students, Erudera.com reports. A little increase compared to prior years was also marked during the 2009/10 academic year. That year, the United States hosted 852 Ugandan students in total.
Statistics have shown that in the mid-50s, there were only four students from Uganda enrolled at the US universities. This number has continued to increase over several academic years, marking only a slight decrease from time to time.
However, according to statistics, the largest increase since 1954/55 was marked last academic year with 870 students, which shows that the interest among Ugandans to study in the US has been greater than ever before.
In 2014, Uganda had a university-age population of over 3.4 million, yet data shows that just a small number of Ugandan students choose to study abroad annually. According to UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) data, during 2017, fewer than 6,000 Ugandan students have pursued a university degree internationally.
In addition to the United States, another top study destination for Ugandan students is the United Kingdom. There were 700 Ugandan students in the UK during the 2019/20 academic year, marking a 382 increase within five years.
On the other hand, Uganda’s neighbor country, Kenya, has sent more students to the United States than Uganda. There were a total of 3,710 Kenyan students enrolled at US universities in 2019/20.
Nonetheless, the number of Kenyan students in the US dropped by 50 percent from 2002/03 to 2019/20 academic year. According to other data, many of the Ugandan students also head to Muslim majority nations every year, including Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.
The number of students from Uganda in Saudi Arabia has drastically increased since Saudi government started to provide full scholarships for Ugandan students
