1in8B › Odds by country › Uganda

If you were born in Uganda

1 in 77 babies on Earth is born in Uganda, about 1.72 million a year. If your birthplace were drawn by lot, you would be born here with a chance of 1 in 77. Below is what awaits a child born here, according to the statistics, and three lives lived here in the game.

What stands out here

People here live 5 years less than the world average: 68.5 years against 73.5 years.
4.9 in 100 children here die before age five, 1.3 times the world average.
The World Bank classes it as a low-income country. There are 25 such countries, and 19 in 100 of the world’s babies are born in them.
Women here have 4.2 children on average; the world average is 2.2.
It is one of the ten countries where the most people work in farming: 65 in 100 workers.

The odds in numbers

Indicator	Uganda	World
Births a year	1,722,320	132,315,943
Chance of being born here	1 in 77	—
Life expectancy, men	65.5 years	71 years
Life expectancy, women	71.4 years	75.9 years
Die before age 1, per 100 children	3.6	2.8
Die before age 5, per 100 children	4.9	3.7
Die between ages 15 and 60, per 100 men	27	17
Die between ages 15 and 60, per 100 women	19	11
Maternal deaths per 100,000 births	170	187
Children per woman	4.2	2.2
GDP per person a year, at purchasing power parity	$3,490	$25,400
Income inequality, Gini index (0–100)	38.2	—
Can read and write, per 100 adults	77	86
Average years of schooling, adults	6.3 years	8.4 years
University enrolment, gross ratio (can exceed 100)	5	48
Married before 18, per 100 young women	34	16
Live in cities, per 100	32	58
Work in farming, per 100 workers	65	27
Working or looking for work, per 100 women	76	48
Living with HIV, per 100 adults aged 15–49	4.9	0.7
Homicides per 100,000 people a year	9	4.8
Road deaths per 100,000 people a year	16	15
Suicides per 100,000 people a year	5.5	9.1
Use tobacco, per 100 adults	7.5	20
Born in another country, per 100 residents	4.1	3.7
Life evaluation, 0 to 10	4.5	5.4

“World” is the average weighted by population, and by births for child and maternal mortality. ≈ marks an estimate: there is no published figure for this country.

Three lives lived here in the game

This is how the life of a child born in Uganda could turn out. The game lived 20 lives on its own, with no player, by this country’s numbers. Here are three of them: one of the shortest, the middle one and one of the longest.

Simon Muwanga
Born in 2026 in a small town, Uganda, into a middle-income family. Education: primary school. 42 years of work, last as security guard. Married. Age at death: 58 years. Cause: a road accident.
Brian Ochieng
Born in 2026 in Kampala, Uganda, into a middle-income family. Education: never went to school. 57 years of work. Widowed. 7 children. 33 grandchildren. Age at death: 75 years. Cause: pneumonia.
Joan Sserunjogi
Born in 2026 in a small town, Uganda, into a family of modest means. Education: primary school. 56 years of work. Widowed. 4 children. 18 grandchildren. Age at death: 85 years. Cause: a stroke.

These people are made up, and three lives are not statistics. The real numbers are in the table above.

You cannot pick a country in 1in8B: the draw decides. This one comes up with a chance of 1 in 77.

Be born

Other countries

Data: the UN, the World Bank (release of October 8, 2026), WHO, UNICEF, UNESCO, the ILO and the World Happiness Report. Where the numbers come from and what in the game is real