Rehabilitation and reconstruction in Uganda: The political economy of structural adjustment programmes from 1980 to 1994.
Date
1995
Authors
Mugyenyi, Joshua Baitwa.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Dalhousie University
Abstract
Description
In the two decades of the mid-1960s to mid-1980s cumulative political and economic atrophy, precipitated by domestic and external factors, reduced Uganda from a once promising and potentially prosperous and resilient political economy to a worst-case scenario in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
However, since 1986 the National Resistance Movement (NRM) has adopted comprehensive IFI-sponsored structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) which are animated by a neo-liberal, market-oriented, agriculture-based, primary commodity export-driven and private sector-led strategy. It has also put in place political initiatives to establish and sustain peace, security and democracy.
This thesis argues that whilst the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) -inspired SAPs have halted the free-fall of the 1980s, contributed towards macroeconomic stability, recaptured part of the informal sector and enhanced national and external confidence in the economy, they have failed to go beyond stabilisation to structural adjustment and change. Uganda's dependent "development" trajectory remains tenuous, unsustainable and even reversible. In the meantime, SAPs have impacted adversely on many social and economic groups.
Yet, Uganda, given domestic, regional and global imperatives, has no choice but to adjust its economy with borrowed funds. Within very limited room for manoeuvre, Uganda is likely to enhance its future prospects by pursuing the establishment of a strong and proactive state and adopting a small-scale, agro-based, value-added industrialisation strategy aimed at regional and international markets. These domestic measures will need reinforcement from continued democratisation of the polity, enhanced regional cooperation and a more responsive and supportive global economic system. For now, however, it is premature to elevate Uganda's emerging, if fragile, economic and political renaissance to an unrealistic and unsustainable teleological status.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dalhousie University (Canada), 1995.
However, since 1986 the National Resistance Movement (NRM) has adopted comprehensive IFI-sponsored structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) which are animated by a neo-liberal, market-oriented, agriculture-based, primary commodity export-driven and private sector-led strategy. It has also put in place political initiatives to establish and sustain peace, security and democracy.
This thesis argues that whilst the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) -inspired SAPs have halted the free-fall of the 1980s, contributed towards macroeconomic stability, recaptured part of the informal sector and enhanced national and external confidence in the economy, they have failed to go beyond stabilisation to structural adjustment and change. Uganda's dependent "development" trajectory remains tenuous, unsustainable and even reversible. In the meantime, SAPs have impacted adversely on many social and economic groups.
Yet, Uganda, given domestic, regional and global imperatives, has no choice but to adjust its economy with borrowed funds. Within very limited room for manoeuvre, Uganda is likely to enhance its future prospects by pursuing the establishment of a strong and proactive state and adopting a small-scale, agro-based, value-added industrialisation strategy aimed at regional and international markets. These domestic measures will need reinforcement from continued democratisation of the polity, enhanced regional cooperation and a more responsive and supportive global economic system. For now, however, it is premature to elevate Uganda's emerging, if fragile, economic and political renaissance to an unrealistic and unsustainable teleological status.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dalhousie University (Canada), 1995.
Keywords
History, African., Political Science, General.