Uganda’s first MICS to provide insights on the situation of children

By 9:19 a.m. on Monday, February 23, the conference room at Kampala’s Golden Tulip Hotel was no longer the quiet, air-conditioned shell it had been earlier. The low conversations of participants waiting patiently for the official start dissolved into attentive silence as the opening presentation began. Heads turned toward the projector's glow.

Around the room sat statisticians from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), other Ministries, Departments and Agencies, UNICEF officials, and representatives from across the United Nations system. They had gathered to learn, refine, and ultimately design the Country Survey Plan for Uganda’s first full Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), a nationwide effort to collect detailed data on children and women.

On the projection screen, the title was plain: Uganda MICS 2026–27 Survey Design Workshop, 23–26 February 2026. The agenda appeared procedural: an overview of MICS, survey design, questionnaire architecture, sampling tools, and Geographic Information System (GIS) integration.

But beneath the technical language lay a more consequential question: how should Uganda measure the lives of its children?

For four days, the experts wrestled with how to define comprehensive indicators on children in a country where nearly half the population is under 18. How do you capture the quiet hunger in households, the contaminated water, the child who dropped out of school and never appears in official records? How do you count children who have never truly been counted?

Just weeks earlier in December 2025, when UNICEF and UBOS signed an agreement to launch the country’s first full MICS, UNICEF Country Representative Dr. Robin Nandy had offered a reminder that cut through the technical language.

“Let us remember that behind each statistic is a human story,” he said at the December 1, 2025, signing ceremony. “A child who deserves to grow up healthy and educated, a mother seeking safe water and nutrition for her family, a community aspiring for a brighter future.”

Now, in February, that promise has been translated into action.

Counting what matters

The Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey was launched by UNICEF in the 1990s and has since been implemented in more than 120 countries, collecting “statistically sound and comparable data on children and women.” Uganda, however, has never conducted a full MICS.

Instead, the country has largely relied on the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), a respected instrument with a strong focus on reproductive health and population indicators. MICS, officials argue, brings a different lens.

“…MICS is a child-centric survey, vis-à-vis the Demographic and Health Survey, which is reproductive health-centric, focusing on the woman. MICS focuses on the child, but the two are very close to each other,” explains Dr. Moses Muse Sichei, UNICEF’s Chief of Social Policy and Social Protection and the MICS focal point in Uganda.

The distinction matters in a country of more than 45 million people, nearly half of them children, according to the 2024 National Population and Housing Census. In such a young nation, what is measured about children influences classroom construction, immunisation campaigns, and social protection budgets.

Designing the blueprint

The February workshop’s task was specific: draft the MICS 2026/27 Country Survey Plan, the document that will determine how the survey unfolds.

“That country survey plan details all the things about the survey, including the background, the objectives, the samples, and eventually the budget,” Dr Sichei explains. “So that’s the end state in terms of having a country survey plan.”

The deadline was firm.

“If we don’t have that one, we will not have really achieved our goals,” he said.

Over four days, conversations oscillated between technical precision and practical constraint, what Uganda needs, what MICS permits, and what available resources can support. By the closing session on Thursday afternoon (February 26), a draft had taken shape. Its cover bore a declarative title: Uganda 2026/27 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey Plan.

It was not final. Revisions would follow. But it existed, a framework for how Uganda will measure the lives of its children over the next two years.

Stephen Baryahirwa, MICS team leader and head of the Department of Social Surveys and Censuses at UBOS, described what was at stake.

“This workshop is essentially preparing us to develop a clear and comprehensive survey plan,” he said. “Every country implementing MICS must have its own survey plan.”

Uganda’s realities, he added, cannot simply be imported from elsewhere.

“Uganda is different from Kenya, Bangladesh, or any other country. There are standard tools designed for MICS, but we must adapt them to Uganda’s context. We need to determine what is relevant for our country and what is not. That process will guide our design decisions.”

Later, his tone softened as he spoke about partnership.

“We are grateful to UNICEF for having come in handy to help us do this survey,” he said. “We have been doing many surveys in the past, but we have not been able to do the MICS.”

The limits of flexibility

Uganda already runs several national surveys, including the Uganda National Household Survey and the Labour Force Survey.  There is therefore a risk of duplication.

“So, what we are then doing is to see that we don’t duplicate our efforts,” Sichei says. “Where something will be done in another survey, we then try not to do the same thing in the MICS.”

MICS includes base questionnaires on household characteristics, water and sanitation, education, and child wellbeing, as well as complementary modules that “can be added or can be left out.” Countries may also introduce non-MICS modules reflecting national priorities.

Yet flexibility has limits.

Water quality testing, however, is included and revealing.

In a previous survey cycle, such testing exposed contamination not only at water sources but within homes and institutions.

“Unfortunately, we found a lot of water in institutions and houses, which was contaminated,” Dr. Sichei says. In some cases, water was clean at collection but unsafe for consumption within homes and institutions. “So that means social and behaviour change has to come in again to the communities, how to manage water and all those kinds of things.”

The mathematics of representation

As one of the most important parameters of the survey that has direct impact on cost and time, a dedicated team worked on simulating various potential sample sizes and its implications on costs, including potential sampling and non-sampling errors that could come up given also the questionnaire size and deviation from MICS standard modules.

But surveys rely on representative samples, and their strength lies in providing disaggregation for intersectional analysis and understanding holistically the situation of children and leaving no child behind.

From design to dissemination, the process can take 18 months. Most results are expected in 2027.

“That is why MICS takes around 18 months,” Dr. Sichei says.

Ownership and sovereignty

Uganda is implementing National Development Plan IV (2025/26–2029/30), aligned with Vision 2040, Africa Agenda 2063, and the Sustainable Development Goals. MICS will generate indicators to track those commitments.

“The data generated will be critical for tracking Uganda’s progress,” Sichei said during the workshop.

But the survey also represents a shift in data ownership.

“MICS gives the decisions to the government of Uganda. The data will be housed in UBOS. So, it gives flexibility to the national office. They are the ones that run the MICS with support from UNICEF.”

Data, here, is not only technical; it is sovereign.

Foundations laid

For Hrayr Wannis, UNICEF’s regional data and research manager and MICS coordinator for Eastern and Southern Africa, the February gathering was foundational.

“This has been a foundational workshop for Uganda to develop their first national MICS survey plan,” he said. For many at UBOS, it was their first in-depth exposure to the programme. “This is not the end; this is actually the beginning of a long collaboration we are foreseeing with UBOS and the UNICEF MICS team.”

“There are definitely a lot of new components specific to a child-centric survey programme," he added. “And it has been a pleasure to interact and unpack many of these with the participants over the last four days.”