Voices are
increasingly being heard that Uganda is a failing or failed state.
What is not in dispute is that Uganda is no longer a country of hope
but of despair. The economy which grew at 10 percent in the mid-1990s
has slid to an average of 6 percent below the minimum level of 7
percent required to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
Twenty percent of the population is reported to have got worse. Food
and nutrition insecurity, mental instability, violence, alcoholism
that has put Uganda in the world’s top ten, unemployment and crime,
human sacrifice, human rights violations, political instability,
massive brain drain, crumbling health and education systems,
corruption and environmental decay are all rising.
To give readers a
chance to draw their own conclusions we shall offer elements that
define a failing or failed state.
States in these
categories are marked by networks of criminality, instability,
violence and environmental decay among others. People are trapped in
poverty without a voice in matters that affect their own lives. They
see greener pastures on the other side of the fence and want them on
their side but with a dysfunctional state which cannot even provide
the basic services, they are helpless. They yearn for order,
enfranchisement and empowerment.
Instead an elite
minority applies corruption and terror tactics to stay in power. The
insecure environment it creates forces it to live in walled homes
whose leaders are surrounded by armed forces 24 hours a day. Elites
siphon national treasures to their private bank accounts abroad.
Members of their families accumulate wealth rapidly and live in a
world of their own.
By invoking the
doctrine of national sovereignty and non-interference in internal
affairs, leaders in failing or failed states plunder national coffers
with impunity and govern through the barrel of the gun.
These states depend
on international donors for finance and experts while their educated
and experienced professionals whom they fear languish in the
background earning one-tenth or one-twentieth of the salary of
foreign experts and are forced to moonlight to make ends meet. In
2005, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) issued
a report showing that $3.2 billion was paid to 100,000 ‘experts’
for technical advice to Africa. Moreover, these experts end up giving
wrong advice largely because they are unfamiliar with the environment
in which they work.
Late in 2008, the
IMF representative in Uganda admitted – and he should be commended
for boldness and honesty – that his organization and the World Bank
had given some wrong advice to the government and people of Uganda.
Failing or failed
states award contracts for the exploitation of national resources
such as oil to foreigners. Usually contracts are negotiated in
secrecy and the public or its representatives are kept in the dark.
These arrangements enable the elites to work and live a lifestyle of
conspicuous consumption sending their share of the rent to private
accounts abroad thereby starving domestic economies of badly needed
resources.
Failing or failed
sates have been divided into five types: the anarchic state, where no
centralized government exists and where armed groups act under orders
from the warlords who contest control; the phantom (or mirage state),
where a semblance of authority remains with efficacy in a very
limited area; the anemic state, whose energy is sapped by insurgency
or by a breakdown in effective control by the central government over
regional and local agents; the captured state, where the state
embraces only often-insecure ruling elite rather than the entire
population; and the aborted state, that never fully consolidated.
State failure is
associated with a destructive form of conflict rooted in traditional
ethnic, tribal and religious animosities which is generally
accompanied by widespread atrocities. Central government authority
deteriorates to such an extent that public services disappear or
decline considerably; mass population movements occur for economic or
political reasons leading to inequalities and massive unemployment.
These signs of failure are sometimes aggravated by environmental
degradation and the associated droughts or floods leading to food
insecurity and related ills. These characteristics feed on one
another leading to state failure. You –the reader – are now
ready to make your choice and offer recommendations.