Abstract
Uganda has long been renowned as a ‘poster child’ for the donor-sponsored policy reform agendas that took off in the 1980s and 1990s, from privatisation and economic liberalisation to decentralisation and deregulation. Despite this, and despite a wealth of literature on specific aspects of this reform agenda, there was until recently no book-length text that brought together critical scholarship on the diverse manifestations and ramifications of the ‘neoliberal turn’ as it played out across Uganda's economy and society. This book fills that gap, and in so doing makes an important contribution to the broader literature on the scope of neoliberal policies, their role in international aid, and the ways in which they can realign societies with long-term implications.
As the editors of the volume themselves note, the earlier landmark collections on Uganda edited by Hansen and Twaddle (including 1988’s Uganda Now, 1991's Changing Uganda and 1998's Developing Uganda) have not been followed by similarly focused edited works, despite a plethora of articles and monographs on Uganda's development in the two and half decades since. Moreover, these earlier collections in some respects described the remarkable changes and policy reforms that began to transform Uganda in the late 1980s and 1990s without the temporal distance to be able to critically reflect on them and their societal consequences. Remarkably, decades on Yoweri Museveni remains in power, and while there have been some important policy shifts (not to mention global political economic upheavals) since the early neoliberal period, there is a significant degree of continuity and deepening of neoliberal institutions. In this respect, this book is sorely needed, and its critical and interdisciplinary perspective is very welcome.
In offering an analysis of the manifold ways in which the neoliberal orientation has permeated policy, economy and society in Uganda, this book goes beyond standard analyses of neoliberal reforms – and does so by drawing in an impressive range of scholars. It is divided into four sections: the state, donors and development aid; economic restructuring and social services; extractivism and enclosures; and race, cultures and commoditisation. While all four of these offer an excellent selection of academic analyses, it is in some ways the third and fourth sections that push most beyond the existing literature in terms of their subject matter. By exploring issues such as plantation forestry and carbon violence, ‘water grabbing’, the neoliberal moral order of Pentecostal churches, the role of youth as ‘identity entrepreneurs’, and the relationship between neoliberalism and leisure, many of the contributions delve into the deeper impacts of decades of neoliberal policy as it has shaped social norms, moral codes and everyday practices over time.
Thinking about the collection as a whole, a few aspects are particularly worthy of comment. One is that it is much more thorough than many edited collections in ensuring that the theme of neoliberal transformation is fully embedded and used as an optic for the analysis in all chapters. While different authors inevitably approach this in different ways, there can be no doubt that each chapter was written with a keen focus on how neoliberalisation has affected that particular topic. Second, there is (unlike some edited collections on specific countries) a good amount of geographical coverage, with attention to various aspects of Northern Uganda's trajectory as well as chapters primarily focused on Eastern, Western and central Uganda. It is particularly strong on the various aspects of rural transformation from the economic and environmental to the socio-cultural.
As with any such collection, it is not exhaustive; and nor do the authors claim it to be. There are arguably aspects of Uganda's trajectory that are downgraded in importance in the book due to the focus on neoliberalism as an all-encompassing process. In viewing everything through this lens, topics that have shaped Uganda and intersect with neoliberal reforms but do not sit so easily within a neoliberalism analytic are not given as much attention as they could be: for example, the changing role of Uganda's Kingdoms, and of ‘new’ donors such as China (though this does get a mention in one or two chapters) receive less attention than do more obviously neoliberal phenomena such as relations with the World Bank and the restructuring of services and work. There could also be more attention to questions of gender. The balance of topics is however unsurprising given the book's central mission to shine a critical light on the forces driving neoliberalisation and the consequences of these.
The editors’ final analysis usefully draws together the threads of the various contributions to make several analytical points about the neoliberalisation process, and how it has been promoted by what they call the ‘state-donors-capital bloc’. These points resonate not only with Uganda's experience but with a much broader range of countries, and attend to the continuities of colonial authoritarianism and extractivism. It would have been nice to also see more discussion of the differences between neoliberal, post-1986 Uganda and earlier periods of history – for example, it is striking to consider how in the immediate post-colonial period the Uganda Development Corporation was considered to be one of the most activist, interventionist state agencies in Africa. But the fact that neoliberal Uganda is rooted in colonial institutions to a significant extent rings true.
In conclusion, I found it particularly insightful the way the authors noted that Uganda is indeed undergoing a structural economic transformation: not (as is usually associated with that term) to an industrialised middle-income country, but rather to an authoritarian enclave economy dominated by foreign interests and resource extraction. In some aspects, this does indeed sound like a bringing to fruition of the unfinished colonial project, albeit overseen by Museveni himself and overlain with new ideologies and technologies of rule.