What influences the reduction or the reproduction of poverty in Uganda? How do political actors, processes and institutions effect poverty? This paper from the Chronic Poverty Research Centre at Manchester University uses political analysis to contribute to the understanding of how and why poverty reduction strategies work. Uganda has had recent success in poverty reduction attributed to “getting the politics right”, so it is considered a useful case study.
The Poverty Eradication Action Plan, PEAP (Uganda’s own Poverty Reduction Strategy Process) highlights social protection as a key theme. However, attempts to target the poorest groups and regions currently lack political persuasiveness. Little effort has been made amongst development actors to articulate the type of pro-poor polices required. This reflects the national politics of staying poor under the neo-liberal policy hegemony in Uganda.
Politics in contemporary Uganda holds as many threats as opportunities for reducing long-term poverty. The politics of poverty reduction are characterised by contestation and ambiguity. Little opportunity exists with which to frame debates about long-term poverty within a discussion of inequality. The ongoing political conflict in Northern Uganda and the constant risk of regional instability is the greatest threat to the poverty reduction agenda, others include the fact that:
- Targeted policy interventions are closely associated with patronage politics. Programmes tend to become highly politicised and vulnerable to both national clientelism and capture by local elites, undermining the poverty agenda.
- The poverty reduction agenda is driven by the politics of succession. The potential move toward multi-partyism appears to have triggered an intensification of neo-patrimonial practice, a serious threat to the poverty reduction agenda.
- Institutional representatives of Uganda’s poor have only marginal command over resources and policy influence.
- The politics of inclusion in Uganda stretches to most poor groups. Yet this has still to be transformed into a politics of justice as institutional representatives for Uganda’s poor have limited command over resources and policy.
A shift is required in the understanding of politics within poverty analysis. Overall, a global contract aimed at addressing the politics of global inequalities that underpin long-term structural poverty is needed. In Uganda this includes:
- The need to reconceptualise the commitment to poverty reduction as a contract rather than ownership.
- The need to challenge neo-patrimonial forms of political rule that increasingly characterise Ugandan politics. Such rule poses a threat to the sustainability of the poverty agenda.
- The broadening and deepening of national ownership of the poverty agenda. This needs to extend beyond the current few individuals so that the poverty agenda is not viewed as something imposed from the outside.
- The need to align the policies and programmes that challenge poverty to the progressive side of politics. For example, through partnerships with civil society, local government development programmes and social sector ministries.
- Supporting pro-poor policy actors who transcend the hierarchical levels in the PEAP process. These include the Ministries of Health, Gender and Labour and Social Development, through whom change is likely to be more sustained.
