Uganda presented one of the most consequential demographic transitions in contemporary world history. With a population that was expected to quadruple from its current 48 million to nearly 200 million by the end of the twentyfirst century, driven by a total fertility rate that had declined more slowly than in comparable African economies, Uganda faced both an extraordinary opportunity and a formidable challenge. This article undertook a longitudinal analysis of Uganda's demographic trajectory since independence in 1962, examining the evolution of fertility, mortality, dependency ratios, urbanization, and educational attainment over six decades, and interrogating the policy conditions under which Uganda's young and rapidly growing population might become the economic asset that demographic dividend theory predicted. Drawing on data from successive Uganda Demographic and Health Surveys, National Population and Housing Census records, World Bank development indicators, and original analysis of sectoral employment and productivity data, the study found that Uganda had not yet reached the conditions necessary for the realization of a demographic dividend and that without significant policy interventions in education quality, labour market development, family planning access, and economic structural transformation, the demographic transition was more likely to produce a demographic burden than a dividend. The article concluded with acomprehensive set of policy imperatives for realisation that engaged both with the specific constraints of the Ugandan context and with the lessons of the East Asian demographic dividend experience.