The Kampala government has been told to provide schools for children who live in the troubled north of the country or risk losing its education aid.

The threat has come from the European Union, a major player in Uganda’s drive to get all its children into primary school. The programme is held up as a model of how to achieve the international target of free primary education for all by 2015.

Sigurd Illing, the EU representative in Uganda, gave the government until October this year to help orphaned and disadvantaged children in the region which is the base for the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army. Speaking in Kampala earlier this week, Illing said such children made up 13 per cent of the estimated two million youngsters not yet in school in Uganda.

The donors - including G8 countries and the World Bank - have pledged 80 per cent of the US$710m (pound;490m) needed to fund the country’s education investment plan.

Last year donor governments threatened to withdraw from the project when the Ugandan government failed to meet specific conditions. A study commissioned by donors had shown that children were learning under trees, when money had been released to build classrooms.

In April last year, the donors gave the government until July this year to build schools and repair classrooms in the northern districts. Instead of concentrating on raising enrolment, the ministry of education embarked on an ambitious plan to introduce a new primary curriculum.

However, the nomadic nature of the Karamonjong tribesmen and disruption caused by the Lord’s Resistance Army of Joseph Kony - who wants to replace the government with a theocratic regime based on the Ten Commandments - have largely derailed plans in northern Uganda.

Nationally, the government is also under pressure to sort out schools’

water and sanitation. Currently, 60 per cent have no permanent water supply.