Years ago, I concluded that the NRM government under the leadership of President Museveni has failed to deliver on human security – Ugandans still live in fear, in want and in indignity.
At the United Nations Millennium Summit (New York, September 6-8, 2000) world leaders adopted a Millennium Declaration on peace and security; development and poverty eradication; and human rights, democracy, and good governance. They declared that (1) they would spare no effort to free people from the scourges of war within or between states; (2) they would spare no effort to free fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty and (3) they would spare no effort to promote democracy and strengthen the rule of law, as well as respect for all internationally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the right to development.
These declarations are similar to what is contained in Uganda’s ten-point program launched by the NRM government when it came to power in 1986. As noted above despite these declarations at the national and international levels, massive international assistance and excellent national policy documents Ugandans still leave in fear, want and indignity and the situation is getting worse. Because of space constraints, this article will focus on development and poverty eradication – freedom from want.
In spite of international praise for Uganda’s consistently high economic growth which has defined the NRM government record, this growth rate has by and large remained below the 7 or 8 percent required as a minimum to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to free Ugandans from abject poverty and all ills associated with it by 2015.
To understand this failure, I have revisited statements made and policies formulated by the NRM even before it came to power in 1986. I have particularly focused on statements by President Museveni made at home and abroad. I have been privileged to participate in summits and conferences where the president has argued his case for a better Uganda than offered by past regimes. Recently, I posted an article on my blog in which I wrote that President Museveni has good ideas but he has failed to have them implemented. The failure has hurt his popularity at home and increasingly abroad.
It appears from my research that originally Museveni and his team were driven by the desire to serve the needs of the people of Uganda. Museveni started guerilla warfare after his party performed very poorly at the parliamentary elections of December 1980.
In designing the ten-point program, there were extensive consultations and a comprehensive outcome that captured the mood of the country, making NRM popular. The first government was truly broad-based including ministers from previous governments. The ten-point program and broad-based government were designed first and foremost to win NRM political support by incorporating UPC and DP strong supporters into the movement. The ten-point program was a blue-print designed to meet human security needs and in the process consolidate Museveni’s national political base.
But NRM did not have resources to convert promises into reality. The government needed external support to survive. Museveni initially avoided the World Bank and IMF because he was aware of the difficulties created by structural adjustment which Uganda had adopted in 1981. He was also aware that Ghana which had been presented by the development partners as a success story in economic recovery had finally confessed that structural adjustment had failed to deliver.
In an article titled “IMF fails to redeem”, it was reported by an insider in Rawlings government that “Ghana has admitted that the IMF magic has failed to work” (African Concord September 18, 1986). In explaining the reasons for failure, it was noted that “It [Ghana] is the first government in Africa’s history to have surrendered ‘hands down’ to the IMF, implemented the nitty-gritty of its demands and survived at great human and material cost. It also indicates that there is something inherently wrong with Western financial institutions’ diagnosis of Africa’s crisis.
“What is surprising is the extent to which some governments have accepted their bitter medicine. Ghana today is a clear picture of the sort of problems which international agencies export as solutions: overflowing shelves with luxury goods, huge debts, and a high cost of living. Rawlings sowed in the wind when he ignored the advice of many of his advisers. Now he is about to reap the whirlwind. Nevertheless, the IMF is duty-bound to save his government from disaster – if only to prove that it still has a success story”. The report added that “And the regime’s use of force has not been sufficient to stem the rising tide of dissent among the workers” (African Concord September 18, 1986).
Finally when President Rawlings declared “he had enough of them [IFI {International Financial Institutions} policies) and that he was quite unimpressed by the results, the aid establishment was shaken…The country had sunk as low as one could when the IFI came in to rescue it” (P. Anyang’ Nyong’o 1992). The World Bank and IMF quietly exited Ghana and entered Uganda.
Museveni realized that the ten-point program conflicted with the structural adjustment program (SAP). The two programs were virtually mutually exclusive. So a choice had to be made. In order to get hard currency with which to stay in power, Museveni had to drop the popular and people-centered ten-point program and adopt the unpopular SAP program. “President Museveni radically modified his thinking regarding economic policy…Changing from an anti-IMF stance in 1986, Museveni agreed in 1987 that Uganda would follow IMF-recommended economic policies” (The Journal of Modern African Studies 1999). The president was also aware that IMF withdrew support over disagreements with Obote government about conditionality.
From 1987 when Uganda signed an agreement with the IMF, relevant institutions were restructured (finance and planning), major staff changes in the ministry of finance and central bank (finance minister and central bank governor) were made, development priorities were reorganized and the air was filled with inflation control, balanced budget, comparative advantage, liberalization and privatization, market forces and individual entrepreneurship. Prior to the 1987 agreement the focus was on food security, adequate and quality education and health care and poverty eradication. These benchmarks for assessing NRM performance by Ugandans were replaced by those for assessing NRM government performance by the donor community. In other words as long as donors were satisfied, Museveni and his team would be satisfied too no matter what Ugandans said.
During an interview with Augustine Oyowe, President Museveni declared he was happy with his government’s performance because “The donors were satisfied with our economic record” (The Courier September-October 1993). What did Museveni do to get donor endorsement? NRM government shifted priorities and relied heavily on foreign experts, advisers and consultants even when the country had plenty of qualified and experienced Ugandans. Museveni knew that if foreign experts and donors led the design of Uganda’s policies and strategies and implemented them, they would report success stories. Reporting otherwise would implicate them.
The World Bank and IMF were in favor of comparative advantage which NRM did not favor before 1987 because it forces Uganda to export low-value commodities in exchange for expensive manufactured imports. In the ten-point program industrialization and technology development had been accorded high priority. After 1987, comparative advantage based on agriculture and export of raw commodities was given priority.
In an interview with Oyowe, Museveni stated “Europe is a natural trading partner of Africa. This is because we belong to two different climatic zones. Africa produces a lot of items [agricultural commodities] that Europe cannot produce and Europe also produces a lot of items [manufactured products] Africa cannot produce. So the result is regional specialization [Uganda on raw commodities and Europe on manufactured products] that provide a good basis for trade. I think that is where the future still lies” (The Courier September-October 1993).
A senior Uganda government official confirmed that Uganda’s comparative advantage is in agriculture when he addressed the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). I was in the conference hall when this statement was made. European participants and World Bank and IMF representatives in particular were very happy with the statement. This explains in part why the government has been more interested in the expansion of traditional exports of cotton, coffee, tea and tobacco and non-traditional exports of fish, maize, beans and cut flowers than agro-processing and industrialization in general.
The invitation back home of qualified and experienced Ugandans to assist in the reconstruction of the country also came up during the president’s interview with Oyowe. Oyowe asked “Uganda has a shortage of skilled labor despite the fact that it has many very able professionals living abroad. What measures have you put in place to entice them back?” President Museveni responded that “We do not mind very much if they stay abroad. They earn and send money to their families. It is one form of advantage to the country. We are training new people all the time in the university and technical schools. So we do not feel their absence”.
Without perhaps being aware of what the president had said, a deputy minister of finance reported to the same journalist (Oyowe) who had previously interviewed Museveni that “Unlike most African countries in the years immediately after independence, Uganda had a reasonable number of able professionals…A large number of these fled during the Amin regime and in the years of political instability that followed, leaving the country cruelly short of skills. Although that gap is being easily filled with foreigners, the shortage of indigenous skills constitutes a serious handicap…A lot of foreign exchange could be saved if there were enough local consultancy firms. Qualified Ugandans abroad have to be encouraged to come back home to help ‘build up that local capacity’” (The Courier September-October 1993).
What sort of foreign experts has Uganda hired? Sebastian Mallaby provided an answer when he reported that a team of young British economists had been hired in part because foreigners are hard working. And their salaries are paid for by the World Bank and other donors (Mallaby 2004). In the late 1980s, I had a private and informal conversation with an IMF staff member who was familiar with Uganda. I asked him why IMF does not hire Ugandans who are well qualified and experienced to participate in the stabilization and structural adjustment program. Speaking on condition that I won’t quote him, he said that the Uganda government preferred foreign experts to Ugandans.
These foreign experts and organs have helped to cover up some of the lapses in the implementation of SAP. For example Ellen Hauser reported that “One British economist working in the Ugandan Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning claimed that in reality Uganda did not exactly follow IMF recommendations, but because the government could bring about good results, donors overlooked this point” (The Journal of Modern African Studies 1999). What else has been covered up?
By the beginning of the 1990s structural adjustment had already become unpopular. “Most Ugandans are unhappy about the unfolding events. Unfortunately public opinion hardly counts and the government will have its way over the sales [privatization] program”. One diplomat remarked that “If Museveni had come to power by ballot, he would not succeed in his policies”(New African September 1992).
Like Rawlings, Museveni has depended on foreign advisers whose advice was not appropriate. Sooner rather than later shortcomings of structural adjustment began to show their ugly head through the diseases of poverty and environmental degradation. They could not be hidden any longer. Whether by design or accident, IMF and the World Bank came forward first and announced that they had made mistakes in their advice and things had not gone as expected. The government followed suit.
In September 2009 structural adjustment was officially declared dead and replaced with a five year development plan. Like Ghana before it, Uganda is quietly dropping off the World/IMF list of high performers, and is being replaced by other countries like Mozambique. Hopefully this time qualified and experienced Ugandans will be part of the team to design and implement future programs. Furthermore, whether foreign or national, competence rather than loyalty should be the yardstick for hiring and promoting staff.
This article represents an attempt to understand and explain why the president’s good ideas for example industrialization and technology development never got off the ground. They did not because they do not belong to the Washington Consensus package that has kept Uganda’s economy an exporter of raw materials as in colonial days. Thus, Museveni was prepared to go along provided the donors were happy with Uganda’s economic record which has boomeranged. It is high time Uganda revived the ten-point program later expanded to fifteen as an integral part of the five year development plan.