30 June 2016

What does ‘almost took Uganda to middle income status’ mean?



President Museveni says his previous Cabinet “almost took Uganda to middle income status.” What do the words “almost took Uganda to a middle income status” mean in the context of our backward economy? They mean almost nothing.






Our President’s sanguine pronouncements on the economy, in the face of scanty or no concrete evidence to back up his claims, clearly illustrate the gap between what we wish to become and where we actually are in terms of measurable economic indicators.






Yet the adjectives that describe us tell it all. We are a Least Developed Country; a Highly Indebted Poor Country; and, to top it all off, we depend on subsistence agriculture. Just the other day, Mr Matia Kasaija had the courage to remind us in his Budget speech that the Population and Housing Census shows that household reliance on subsistence farming has risen to 69 per cent from 68 per cent between 2002 and 2014.






The contribution of this sector we still regard as the mainstay of our economy – agriculture – to national output is a paltry 26 per cent. The ancient hoe remains the “appropriate” technological tool for the vast majority of our people who desperately try to scratch a living out of soil whose nutrient content is declining.






Is this an economy that an unwieldy Cabinet “almost took to middle income status?” The President should tone it down a notch. Most of the peasants involved in subsistence farming don’t even know the meaning of this “middle income” claptrap because they are excluded from the development process.
In July last year, Cabinet finally came up with a comprehensive national community development policy spelling out measures the government should take to get rid of its top-down social planning and improve citizen participation in the development process.






They stated in general terms that: “We would like communities to realise that they are central players in the development process. Uganda’s communities should NOT (emphasis theirs) be passive watchers or recipients of development ideas, projects and charity…Communities in Uganda shall be playing a greater role in designing programmes for their infrastructure, health, education and agri-business needs.”






The new policy was supposed to be un-packed into measurable activities and integrated in work-plans of relevant ministries, departments, agencies and local governments for implementation, starting in the 2015/16 Financial Year. Is there any iota of evidence that this was done? No! Yet the President was happily claiming that Uganda was at the “take-off stage” of development! This shows how our leaders are misinterpreting the theory of modernisation.






In this theory, development is linear in the sense that it follows certain stages, beginning with the primitive stage based on hunting/gathering, barter exchange, peasant farming and no organised labour. In the pre-condition for take-off stage, the communal way of doing things is destroyed and land comes under large ownership, fit for commercial farming. At the take-off stage, labour relations are highly institutionalised and industries are established everywhere. Maturity stage means moving beyond simple industrial production to sophistication.






Hearing Kasaija’s Budget speech, you get a feeling we are still in the primitive stage, economic growth is for the country (not Ugandans) and middle income status sounds like a remote reality.
Instead of promising us the moon, Cabinet should do what was correctly stated in the National Community Development Policy, 2015: “Focus on improving social services, household incomes and overall standards of living in our communities.”






Dr Okodan is a lecturer at Kampala International University.






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