Article Who and Why? Understanding Rural Out-Migration in Uganda Samuel Tumwesigye 1,2, * , Lisa-Marie Hemerijckx 1 , Alfonse Opio 3 , Jean Poesen 1,4 , Matthias Vanmaercke 1,5 , Ronald Twongyirwe 2 and Anton Van Rompaey 1   Citation: Tumwesigye, S.; Hemerijckx, L.-M.; Opio, A.; Poesen, J.; Vanmaercke, M.; Twongyirwe, R.; Van Rompaey, A. Who and Why? Understanding Rural Out-Migration in Uganda. Geographies 2021, 1, 104–123. https://doi.org/10.3390/ geographies1020007 Academic Editor: Przemyslaw ´ Sleszy ´ nski Received: 23 June 2021 Accepted: 23 August 2021 Published: 25 August 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Division of Geography and Tourism, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200E, 3001 Heverlee, Belgium; lisamarie.hemerijckx@kuleuven.be (L.-M.H.); jean.poesen@kuleuven.be(J.P.); Matthias.vanmaercke@kuleuven.be (M.V.); anton.vanrompaey@kuleuven.be (A.V.R.) 2 Department of Environment and Livelihoods Support Systems, Faculty of Interdisciplinary Studies, Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Mbarara P.O. Box 1410, Uganda; rtwongyirwe@must.ac.ug 3 Departmentof Biology, Faculty of Science, Gulu University, Gulu P.O. Box 166, Uganda; alfonseopio@gmail.com 4 Faculty of Earth Sciences and Spatial Management, Maria-Curie Sklodowska University, Krasnicka 2D, 20-718 Lublin, Poland 5 Department of Geography, UR SPHERES, University of Liège, 4000 Liege, Belgium * Correspondence: samuel.tumwesigye@kuleuven.be Abstract: Rural–urban migration in developing countries is considered to be a key process for sustainable development in the coming decades. On the one hand, rural–urban migration can contribute to the socioeconomic development of a country. On the other hand, it also leads to labor transfer, brain-drain in rural areas, and overcrowded cities where planning is lagging behind. In order to get a better insight into the mechanisms of rural–urban migration in developing countries, this paper analyzes motivations for rural–urban migration from the perspective of rural households in Uganda. A total of 1015 rural households located in southwestern Uganda were surveyed in 2019. A total of 48 percent of these households reported having at least one out-migrant. By means of logistic regression modeling, the likelihood for rural out-migration was assessed using household- and community-level socioeconomic characteristics as predictors. The results show that most out-migrants are from relatively wealthy households with a higher-than-average education level. Typically, these households are located in villages that are well connected with urban centers. Poor households in remote locations send significantly fewer migrants because of their limited access to migration information and poor transport networks. From these findings, the following policy recommendations are made: Firstly, efforts should be made to extend basic social services, including quality education, towards rural areas. Secondly, in order to reduce socially disruptive long-distance migration and the eventual overcrowding and sprawls of major cities, government investments should be oriented towards the upgrading of secondary towns, which can offer rural out-migrants rewarding employment and business opportunities. Keywords: rural out-migration; Uganda; spatial analysis; logistic regression 1. Introduction The ‘2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ identifies migration as an important pillar and catalyst for sustainable development, especially in the global south [1]. In Sub- Saharan Africa (SSA), there has been a long history of international and internal migration, with increasing migration rates from and within most of the countries [1,2]. In 2019, 10.4% of the international migrants (272 million) around the globe originated from the region of SSA [3]. However, a migrant stock of about 763 million people globally (of which 36% were in SSA) moved within their own countries (internal migration), mainly to urban areas [3]. This indicates that internal rural out-migration is dominant, and this trend in migration is Geographies 2021, 1, 104–123. https://doi.org/10.3390/geographies1020007 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/geographies