Insights into relations in community-led urban interventions in the global South: civil society and co-production in Kampala

Abstract

For many decades, civil society organisations have been instrumental in driving the development agenda in many parts of the world. In the urban global South, these organisations have championed alternative, transformational and transnational grassroots-led urban development practice. An important dimension of their efforts has involved working with the state to jointly produce urban services and the urban space, an approach termed co-production. While the rapidly growing literature on co-production has applauded the efficacy of the approach, there has been no explicit interrogation of how it is affected by clearly visible divisions within communities and civil society. This paper argues that co-production is implemented within the context of a divided civil society and that success depends to a large extent on how these civil society actors address their internal conflicts to engage with the state as a consolidated community force, able to negotiate while resisting capture by a manipulative state.

I. Introduction

For several decades, civil society organisations have played a role in driving an inclusive development agenda in many parts of the world. In the rapidly changing cities of the global South, numerous grassroots-driven organisations have emerged to champion new ways of intervening in low-income communities, undertaking participatory forms of urban development practice and filling gaps left by the failure of the state.⁽¹⁾ The innovative role of membership-based, networked civil society organisations, such as SDI⁽²⁾ and the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR), among others, has been recognised and praised by scholars and international development organisations.⁽³⁾ Much of the work of civil society organisations has involved building partnerships between mobilised residents of informal settlements and the state to collaboratively improve living conditions. Communities have been mobilised to raise resources, generate data, and build productive partnerships with the state as a way to reset relationships, negotiate terms, and produce urban services and spaces. This joint process has been termed co-production.⁽⁴⁾

For co-production to occur, both civil society and the state have to perform their roles and contribute to joint community-development activities, harnessing capacities and resources on both sides to improve living conditions through improved governance and shared decision-making. The process involves not only those activities occurring in the interface of society–state engagements, but also the continuum of community intervention activities occurring simultaneously within and between civil society groupings and within the state.

The literature on co-production has acknowledged the frequently messy and conflicted nature of the approach.⁽⁵⁾ However, there is a need for a more granular and explicit interrogation of how the approach is impacted by the clearly visible divisions within civil society. Furthermore, there is a need to critically consider the way contention and complexity in co-production processes go hand in hand with transformative outcomes in low-income urban communities of the global South.

This paper builds on Deuskar’s arguments about the difficulties and opportunities involved in building inclusive and cohesive urban communities in the seemingly chaotic urban poor settlements of the global South.⁽⁶⁾ A better understanding of co-production requires a granular analysis of the intra- and inter-civil society relationships in urban settings that are often characterised by low-level conflict, exclusion, patronage and clientelism. While recognising that different kinds of conflicts can ensue in the course of a co-production process, this paper focuses on just the divisions and conflicts within and between civil society organisations within the broader context of Ugandan politics.

Drawing on a Kampala case study, this paper challenges the adequacy of the more common focus on divisions and conflicts between civil society and the state, and argues that improvements in living conditions through co-production also depend to a large extent on how successfully co-production actors address their often deeply entrenched internal conflicts and divisions. It adds to the literature by analysing the multiple tactics applied by civil society organisations to manage internal contentions, deep differences, and complexity in the course of working to co-produce improved living conditions with a state that can often be manipulative and interventionist. The paper argues that co-production by its very nature is a dynamic and contested process that uses both cooperation and resistance to challenge the urban status quo and to renegotiate the relationship between the state and mobilised residents of informal settlements.⁽⁷⁾

The paper has seven sections. After this introduction, Section II reviews debates on co-production and the nature of urban dynamics in highly resource-constrained but rapidly changing cities where co-production is occurring. Section III presents the background to co-production engagement in Kampala. Section IV discusses the methodology employed in this case study, and Section V looks more closely at the roles performed by civil society and the state before and during co-production, and presents findings on the nature of the divisions within and between civil society actors working on co-production activities in Kampala. Section VI considers how the case study adds to wider debates on co-production and community cohesion, and Section VII provides summary arguments and recommendations for further research.

II. Literature Review of Divisions and Conflicts in Co-Production

Co-production seeks both to improve relationships between the state and residents of urban informal settlements and to deliver urban services to these settlements. As an alternative approach to society–state engagements, it has been recognised as transformational. An overarching notion in Diana Mitlin’s long-standing work on co-production is that communities can achieve sustained progress if state and society work together, contributing resources for community-level infrastructure development, and improving urban planning and governance.⁽⁸⁾ While increased collaboration with the state is frequently represented as positive for the urban poor, the reality is less straightforward. Lines and Makau argue that a 20-year-old co-production engagement trajectory in Kenya embodies “complexity, conflict, contestation, partnership and collaboration, and [is] characterised by parallel efforts to address common issues”.⁽⁹⁾ While the literature recognises the contentiousness of the co-production process, there has been limited analysis of how divisions within civil society impact the outcomes within a context of a manipulative state. While the co-production approach is framed within the intersection of conflict, partnership and collaboration, social contestation and gender relations, as asserted here and elsewhere,⁽¹⁰⁾ the capacity of citizen groups to manage these urban dynamics and divisions can seem limited.⁽¹¹⁾ Negotiating the terms of co-production can be described as a site for contestation with various potential outcomes.

The pathway to urban change through co-production is never straightforward. A number of case studies⁽¹²⁾ show a reasonable degree of awareness about divisions in co-production engagements, but do not provide a nuanced analysis of civil society divisions and conflicts in the context of co-production. The question, first, is whether such divisions exist, and if so, how they can better be understood and addressed. Analyses of co-production ought presumably to consider the internal relations within these groups as they exercise the decision-making, governance and development action inherent in the co-production process.⁽¹³⁾ In previous work, it is demonstrated that community development in cities is affected by problems of exclusion, diverse interests and contention.⁽¹⁴⁾ There are also limited community structures that allow for a broad, effective representation of multiple community voices in urban interventions.

a. Gender divides in poor urban communities

Urban societies are highly unequal socially and one dimension of this inequality is gender, which plays a key role in structuring urban everyday activities. Women have been recognised as playing a major role in driving the co-production approach to ameliorate their living conditions through housing improvements.⁽¹⁵⁾ Moser insists “there is need to aim for transformative gendered pathways to just and equitable cities”,⁽¹⁶⁾ with women playing transformative roles in changing the urban space in the South. Mitlin, and Satterthwaite and Mitlin,⁽¹⁷⁾ reflecting on co-production in Karachi, and on an Indian women’s saving network called Mahila Milan, demonstrate that co-production in low-income communities in cities in the global South has disproportionately involved women, and has built on their activities of savings, enumerations and exchange visits, all designed to support community-level infrastructure development, better livelihood systems and improved urban governance.

While broader societal governance arrangements and control of urban resources continue to be dominated by men,⁽¹⁸⁾ women tend to play the central role in all co-production activities, underpinned by their savings schemes. Mitlin, and Patel and Mitlin,⁽¹⁹⁾ argue that in the cities of the South, where gender relations are asymmetrical, women’s fair participation in development discourses is not always easy. In empirical work on co-production, intersectionality is emerging as an important lens through which to better understand the nature and functioning of co-production partnerships.⁽²⁰⁾ This case study employs that intersectional lens to consider how the women involved in this Kampala case study embody the capacity to deal with internal threats in order to ensure that low-level conflicts and collaboration can take place in parallel. It analyses the gendered dimension of interactions within civil groupings and considers how these relationships affect co-production outcomes.

b. Patrimonial relationships and clientelism in cities

Co-production takes place within the context of unequal social relationships and an extreme lack of economic opportunity. Several scholars analyse clientelist relationships in terms of the negotiation of and access to opportunities in urban contexts with high levels of material scarcity.⁽²¹⁾ Patrons and well-connected brokers within communities may benefit politically or otherwise from their local power, but in exchange are often highly receptive to community needs, building trust over time through personal relationships.⁽²²⁾ Bjorkman describes how everyday activities were brokered by local interests in informal settlements in Mumbai, and how these improved municipal services.⁽²³⁾

While negotiation and community-centred urban development regulations can lead to the improvement of informal settlements, Deuskar⁽²⁴⁾ points to ways in which some powerful interests within communities exploit informal residents for their own ends, gaining control of vital community resources such as community land, accessing state resources, and connecting with powerful state actors. This dynamic can undermine community cohesion, resulting in abuse of poorer groups by a few civil society leaders who gain access to spaces of opportunity and influence. This flourishing industry of clientelism, abuse and corruption can challenge co-production engagements. However, Mitlin⁽²⁵⁾ suggests that savings, enumerations and exchange visits can limit the extent of clientelism, making information more readily available to the communities and to the state. These activities take place even in the absence of engagement with the state, but their value and relevance in setting the stage for co-production is evident.

c. Co-production as a product of rule negotiation

Co-production is based on negotiating and renegotiating urban development rules, often those imposed by the state on citizens. In the course of co-production, the rules of urban development are adjusted to accommodate community ways of doing things. Often this implies a recognition of informality and its processes. Waibel and McFarlane discuss informality as a negotiability of value, shaped by shifting social relations, building new alliances, and establishing legitimacy through networking and collaboration.⁽²⁶⁾ The contested and fractured nature of inter- and intra-community relationships has considerable influence on this negotiation, and on the design, structure and execution of community development planning. Cirolia and Berrisford analyse spatial planning in three African cities and argue that much of the planning process happens outside the formal designated planning institutions, and is rather a negotiated undertaking – the essence of co-production.⁽²⁷⁾ It is essential to analyse these co-produced interventions from the perspective of deal making and complex negotiation, brokered by powerful interests and multi-layered alliances within communities that intersect, contradict, and are highly fluid.

d. Urban agency and corruption

The mediation of society–state relationships through co-production in informal urban spaces involves people with different vested interests. Everyday activities by the urban poor are based on the need to safeguard livelihood systems, achieve empowerment, and renegotiate urban governance systems. In the context of Dhaka’s informal settlements, Banks highlights the difference between residents with accumulation networks and those with survival networks in terms of their opportunities for “getting ahead” in life.⁽²⁸⁾ Those benefiting from accumulation strategies do so by acting as brokers, managing relations between state and society, and between formal and informal activities.⁽²⁹⁾ Through intermediations between informal settlement residents and powerful external individuals or institutions, some civil society actors in cities and communities are able to secure, consolidate and manipulate others to protect their personal financial, social and political interests.

III. Background on Kampala and SDI

Kampala has a history of over 100 years of urban planning since its establishment as a capital city by the British colonial government in 1902. Yet the failures of planning are visible everywhere. The post-colonial era after 1962 saw remarkable urban growth in Uganda, with Kampala emerging as the largest urban centre. The rise of post-1986 urban squalor in Kampala can arguably be attributed to the sustained history of antagonistic politics and subsequent neglect by the National Resistance Movement (NRM), Uganda’s ruling party,⁽³⁰⁾ although Muwanga et al. argue that Kampala has refused to fully submit to the NRM’s grip.⁽³¹⁾ Goodfellow analyses NRM manoeuvres and tactics to “hijack” the operations and activities of the informal sector in Kampala through service delivery, coercion, patronage and clientelism.⁽³²⁾ At the same time, informal sector actors, including various associations such as the Uganda Taxi Operators and Drivers Association (UTODA), see it as prudent to position themselves as staunch NRM supporters to benefit from material support and protection from an increasingly politically exploitative ruling elite.⁽³³⁾ The NRM and the Ugandan national government rely on a careful mix of legal and policy reforms and manipulation to achieve their political and developmental control of Kampala.⁽³⁴⁾

In the early 2000s, during a sustained rise in hostility between informal residents and the national government, the latter devised a means to improve this relationship. After attending the World Urban Forum in Nairobi, the Ugandan minister in charge of urban development reached out to the then-president of SDI for help in mobilising slum dwellers and creating a platform for the state to engage with them. In 2003, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between Uganda’s emerging SDI-affiliated National Slum Dwellers Federation of Uganda (NSDFU) and the then Kampala City Council (KCC)⁽³⁵⁾ to facilitate water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions in the Kisenyi community. Between 2002 and 2006, federation activities in Kampala grew rapidly, relying heavily on established federations in Kenya, India and South Africa to support the activities of settlement enumerations and savings groups. In 2006, the support NGO, ACTogether, was established by the SDI Cape Town international office with support from the NSDFU (standard practice among SDI federations), and from 2007 onwards, ACTogether supported co-production initiatives and relations between the local federation and the government.

Women have always been central to federation activities. They have been estimated to constitute more than 70 per cent of federation membership and over 60 per cent of the leadership of NSDFU’s national executive council.⁽³⁶⁾ Both federation members and leaders argue that women are more united in lobbying for community services and representing the community, and take more significant roles in the course of community mobilisation, fundraising and negotiation with the state for better services. Community men tend to be less committed, and those who remain active for a long time are those in leadership positions or with wives who are members.

By 2010, NSDFU had become a critical player in city development processes. From 2013 onwards, large-scale projects involved communities, government, Cities Alliance, the World Bank and the European Union. Between early 2012 and late 2013, the Transforming the Settlements of the Urban Poor (TSUPU) programme pioneered large-scale settlement upgrading in Uganda’s informal settlements. Other major programmes deploying co-production methods include Kampala’s city-wide slum-upgrading programme, the World Bank-supported Uganda Support to Municipal Infrastructure Development (USMID) programme and the ongoing (2021) European Union-supported Kampala–Jinja Express Way (KJE) project. The co-production engagements that are part of these programmes have mobilised thousands of dwellers and hundreds of savings groups.⁽³⁷⁾

In the context of Kampala, the messiness of the unequal relationship between residents of informal settlements and city politicians is manifested in an ongoing political battle to control Kampala. The NRM has tried for decades to win the support of voters who live in low-income settlements. The battle for the political control of Kampala has led to several socio political outcomes. First, the national government embarked on widespread tactics of subversion to undermine Kampala’s local government, resulting in poor service delivery and widespread failure in the governance of the city⁽³⁸⁾ as well as a vertically divided state system⁽³⁹⁾ and co-option of community-level governance structures. The co-option of local communities into central government community functions has created grounds for widespread patronage politics, corruption and intra-community conflicts. The poor service delivery in Kampala has been attributed by several authors to the “incompetence and corruption of politicians in Kampala”.⁽⁴⁰⁾ The Kampala politics of control is a fertile ground for widespread tensions, corruption and the rampant land grabbing experienced in the city.⁽⁴¹⁾ In such contexts, Cawood argues that efforts to effectively scale up community participation through city networks may “struggle to evade or transform deep structures of dependency, patronage intermediation” and corruption.⁽⁴²⁾ Different studies show women, the poor, youth and other marginalised urban populations are facing major effects of urban corruption and abuse.⁽⁴³⁾ Several scholars call for in-depth analysis of the complexity and social relatedness of corruption in urban interventions.⁽⁴⁴⁾ It is within this context that the Kampala case study on civil society divisions in the course of co-production was undertaken.

IV. Research Methodology

The research methodology for the case study involved the collection of qualitative data through interviews, document reviews, observation and a review of online information. The focus was the entire process of co-production within SDI-affiliated civil society groupings in Kampala. While we also explored moments of collaboration and partnership, particular attention was given to division, conflict and instances of abuse within the civil society groups.

The case study was designed with an emphasis on the need to focus on exemplars when seeking to understand urban interventions.⁽⁴⁵⁾ The Kampala case is unique, as this co-production engagement has experienced documented levels of abuse within civil society movements but also remarkable success in terms of large-scale implementation compared to efforts in other African cities.

The data were collected from the Kampala Central, Nakawa and Kawempe divisions (sub-municipalities of KCCA) and the researchers engaged with key informant participants in various institutions. A total of 113 participants were selected from community groups, NSDFU, ACTogether, the SDI international headquarters in Cape Town, the housing NGO Settlement and Shelter Alternatives (SSA), KCCA and the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development (MLHUD). Other participants included representatives from Kampala’s municipal divisions and from Local Council 1 (local councils are the lowest government structure at community level and are directly linked to KCCA).

After interviews with these participants, the data were analysed and interpreted qualitatively to drill down to the core issues of collaboration, divisions, abuse, corruption and mismanagement within civil society groups working on co-production in Kampala.

V. Co-Production in Kampala

Co-production involves state and mobilised members of society working together to produce urban services and the urban space. For this to happen in Kampala, federation actors at national, regional and community levels first needed to perform various internal activities. The federation mobilised communities into a bargaining force using standard SDI tools and activities, including inter-community learning and exchange visits, the use of savings groups to build group capacity for cooperation, and community enumerations and mapping to document settlement facts and unite residents around such verifiable information as the number of public water and sanitation facilities. These tools and processes, useful in their own right, also helped build community capacity to engage with the state to co-produce basic services.

The state also had to prepare to engage with low-income informal settlement residents. As mentioned above, this involved first inviting SDI to provide support on community mobilisation and settlement upgrading.⁽⁴⁶⁾ After signing the 2003 MoU, the MLHUD and the federation jointly chose to prioritise Kisenyi III settlement in Kampala, where 4,000 residents lacked access to adequate sanitation facilities. The state opened up funding and in 2013 signed another MoU⁽⁴⁷⁾ to upscale their partnership under the donor-funded TSUPU programme in secondary cities. Both the state and communities prepared themselves to share investments and co-manage projects, anchored in both the 2003 and 2013 formal agreements.

a. Decision-making within civil society

Divisions within civil society can be fuelled and sustained by various factors and dynamics. Prior to the creation of ACTogether, federation leaders, with help from other mature federations, had made all decisions related to their work. When ACTogether became operational in 2007, it took over some major activities, including building systems for accountability, sustaining growth and building capacity for the federation. This shift shrunk the federation’s operational space, and created competition for control of co-production-related activities. Divisions ensued and have continued, fuelled also by issues such as age, experience and recognition.⁽⁴⁸⁾ As a result of constant hostilities between the federation and ACTogether in the context of Kisenyi III, co-production systems remain weak.

The balance between roles of technical staff in the NGO and those of federation members at various levels is always contested, fluid and dynamic. The formal mandate of the support professionals (including architects, engineers and planners) is to provide guidance in the design and execution of co-production projects, but not to make decisions. Yet the federation has frequently protested what it sees as unilateral decisions by the NGO. Local leadership has also rejected ACTogether recommendations regarding the management of community-level disputes.

Interviews with technical staff in ACTogether revealed their concerns. According to Waiswa Kakaile, an ACTogether engineer, “When you over entrust the federation members, connect them too much to the KCCA, then they start feeling that they are also engineers or they start feeling like KCCA staff.” ACTogether officials also argued that when community members are empowered to independently articulate, undertake and lead on community development projects, they have a tendency to advance special interests and to take over projects for their own gain. Empowered community members, they claim, can take over projects in a way that almost kills the federation’s volunteer spirit.

Many federation members, on the other hand, feel that they have the knowledge, skills and abilities to take charge of all activities, and imply that the NGO role is superfluous. According to Hassan Kiberu, the national chairman of NSDFU, “We have more experience than the NGO. We existed first and we were able to implement projects without them.” This has created conflict and resulted in the formation of multiple sub-groupings within communities and the NGO. These have included, for instance:

• ACTogether officials without NRM influence (typically involving middle management).

• ACTogether officials with NRM influence (mostly top ACTogether leadership).

• Federation groupings that ignored democratic values (largely involving Local Council 1 leaders who also doubled as federation leaders).

• Federation leaders who insisted on respect for democratic values within the federation and ACTogether.

These different groups interpret co-production activities very differently. Skye Dobson, a former interim executive director of ACTogether, argued for instance that the federation should make independent decisions on their governance, and be empowered to halt wrongdoing by technocrats from all institutions.

Relations between the federation and the NGO became especially turbulent when a recent retiree from the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development became ACTogether’s executive director in 2012. She seemed more concerned with the interests of the Ugandan government than those of federation members, who alleged that she was undemocratic and lacked direct accountability to the grassroots. Members expressed their displeasure through protests at ACTogether offices. Though the government of Uganda supported the director, she was eventually forced to resign by mid-2013. Meanwhile, the government allegedly infiltrated the operations of the federation’s support NGO through some top leaders of ACTogether who acted in the interests of NRM. The local councils could also be sites of contestation. In Kisenyi I, Local Council 1 members were also very strong federation members, serving in senior NSDFU positions. These leaders brokered consequential relationships and transactions between communities and multiple agencies of the state.

b. Divisions and divides within and between groupings of the poor

Key in all federation principles at all levels is that savings activities should seek to bring and keep people together and promote urban innovation and transformation through dialogue, citizenship, enlightenment and financial empowerment. There is an inherent understanding that the federation can guard against the abuse of savings and group resources. However, numerous cases of the misuse of funds have been revealed (for instance at Mbuya, Ram Computers and the defunct Zibula Tude saving groups). Some saving groups have also been captured by local elites within the group. In most cases, savings group chair persons, secretaries and treasurers do register their groups, but in some cases, leaders have captured ownership and the other members have become demotivated.

This study established that the majority of the captured savings groups were dominated by a clique of a few men who, despite being fewer than the women in various saving groups, were duplicitous enough to manipulate ordinary savers. This led to a decline in overall federation growth between 2008 and 2010. In Kawempe division especially, frequent abuse of savings by local federation leaders weakened the ability of the community to engage in co-production with the state; d’Cruz et al. reported that “the lack of loan systems also opened the group savings to abuse”.⁽⁴⁹⁾ Another divisive feature involved the planning and execution of exchange visits. The federation’s impressive growth in Uganda led to it becoming a global learning centre for SDI affiliates, with frequent international visits, which generally and allegedly only senior federation leaders were invited to engage with. This caused a deep sense of frustration among some members of the federation in Kisenyi I, II and III of Kampala Central division.

These challenges in co-production provided opportunities for rethinking the operations of civil society. After the collapse of various savings groups during the decline years, women played a crucial role in rekindling the savings culture and promoting a commitment to the notion of “servant leadership” among savings groups in Kampala. Most women, especially in Kawempe and Nakawa regions, avoided overt conflicts and resignations, but rather sought to rebuild savings groups, assume leadership roles, and promote local and inter-regional exchange visits to motivate residents to re-join federation groupings. In addition, as Ugandan co-production engagements matured with time and as a way of addressing the frustrations of thousands of ordinary federation members who could not participate in international exchange visits, ACTogether and NSDFU shifted focus from international exchange visits to emphasise the importance of local exchange visits (within communities and regions, between communities, and between regions) to promote learning and innovation within the Ugandan national SDI alliance. These in-country exchange visits were principally organised by regional and network-level federation leaders, with little interference from the national leadership of NSDFU and ACTogether leadership. As noted earlier, women played a key role in rebuilding co-production.

c. Disputes over the management of savings and proceeds from projects

The growth and development of co-production activities in Kampala have been shaped both by state support and by clearly evident disputes over the control of savings and community assets. The National Executive Council of NSDFU (NEC) formulates federation rules, then sends them to the regions, which send them on to the local levels. Federation members in lower-level structures in all the study areas have resisted NEC rules requiring them to repay loans from the national federation investment fund, the Suubi Fund. The NEC also requires that they routinely send part of the proceeds from any co-produced infrastructure (fee-paying toilets and water infrastructure among other assets) to the Suubi Fund to help it grow. But many community residents and ordinary federation members feel that these proceeds belong to them, and local federation leaders have insisted on keeping funds in local bank accounts.

These conflicts are driven by various forces and interests. First, loan funds are not evenly distributed to all regions, and only paid-up members of the fund qualify to access loans for community projects. Second, the active involvement of Local Council 1 leaders and NRM functions in community projects and saving groups seems to complicate the repayment of loan funds, as was the case, for example, in the Kinawataka Market project in Mbuya in the Nakawa division of Kampala.

Another challenge that fuels divisions is the tendency of civil society leaders in community groups to divide and conquer by working with a few members while sidelining others. Some savings group leaders manipulated the other savers, and took control to accumulate personal financial and political benefits. In the Kampala Central region, a few selected leaders were in charge of most activities and assets including savings, negotiations with the state and with ACTogether, and the planning of international exchange activities. With support from NRM functionaries and socio political networks, these leaders were in a position to manipulate others, unlike the ordinary community savers who lacked these connections. Hence, decision-making power and influence within the federation was never shared equally. In Kawempe, the ordinary savers refused to follow the established procedure for resolving challenges through mediation, but instead implemented radical measures to recover the funds stolen by local leaders, for instance, taking the suspects (including chairpersons and treasurers) to court in 2011 and 2013 to recover stolen funds. According to a Kawempe region federation representative in 2016, “We had to use courts because there was no way we could recover our funds using our internal federation and NGO rules.”

The recovery of stolen funds through a court process coupled with implementation of the TSUPU programme and numerous livelihood projects led to greater confidence by partners in federation operations and to a surge in federation growth in Kampala in general and Kawempe region in particular. During this period of rebirth and rapid growth in Kawempe, local and international partners⁽⁵⁰⁾ included among others Makerere University, The New School in the USA and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). This growth and international support led to major investments between 2012 and 2014, including the purchase of land to build communal water and sanitation facilities in the region. The federation is now more cautious and does not entirely depend on trust and commitment to the federation practices as the basis for managing savings group assets.

d. Co-production and material positions

The divisions in civil society groups in Kampala are further fuelled by fights over land ownership. After the federation enumerated communities in the Nakawa and Kinawataka areas between 2010 and 2011, it was established that Mbuya settlement was gravely affected by the lack of water and sanitation facilities and services and by a run-down market. A visit by the SDI global president to Mbuya in 2012 mobilised the stakeholders to improve community services in Kinawataka area. The planned market has not been fully built, however, because of never-ending feuds and tensions within federation groups and ACTogether, as well as constant interventions by the government of Uganda and NRM. Various civil society groups in the area demanded compensation for giving their land to the project, while NSDFU insisted on zero compensation, arguing the project was for the community. As noted earlier, by teaming up with Local Council 1 and NRM community functionaries, community groupings can easily halt implementation of community development projects. Local Council 1 is strongly aligned with NRM and the Ugandan government, which thus exert a strong local influence. Even at the grassroots level, local communities and civil society groupings cannot escape the extended arm of the Ugandan state.

VI. Discussion: Co-Production In A Divided Civil Society

This section analyses how this case study adds to conceptual debates on co-production and community cohesion. The case study demonstrates that co-production in Kampala has been implemented in a civil society where deep divisions have existed at local, regional and national levels, in parallel with measures to address these internal divisions. The federation and ACTogether have faced numerous challenges, including contested decision-making space, constant intervention and manipulation by the government of Uganda, and the mismanagement of savings. However, co-production activities have managed to survive various inter- and intra-civil society divisions as well as the interference of the state through its various functionaries.

This paper asserts that co-production is by its nature a conflict-laden community development approach, as various points and lines of difference and negotiation structure all co-production activities. This section adds new perspectives to the debates on co-production by arguing that the approach can yield more gains if actors are explicitly aware of the deep divisions within civil society and proactively anticipate and plan for manipulation, conflict and corruption. Further, we contend that SDI’s strategy to support the autonomy of grassroots organisations and enable them to negotiate independently with a predatory state has been crucial in realising the gains from a state-initiated co-production process.

a. Unity as utopia in civil society movements in co-production

The Kampala co-production process exemplifies the depth of potential tensions and conflicts. It supports the arguments in the literature that communities struggle to establish and maintain cohesion particularly where material or positional benefits are at stake. As Deuskar⁽⁵¹⁾ suggests, the urban poor experience intense conflicts in their attempts to control community resources, broker power relations and address special interests, leading to the emergence of what might be termed contested decision-scapes and limited operational space for civil society groupings at various levels. In Kampala, the multiple NGO and federation groupings constantly disturbed each other’s operations and mandates, often influenced by Kampala’s broader politics, with the NRM deploying both overt and indirect tactics to control the political and developmental outcomes.

When the NGO was established, its relationship with the federation became contested terrain. Decision-making occurred within the context of their competing development visions. As ACTogether pushed boundaries to build capacity within the federation in project design, financial management, project implementation and reporting, the federation was driven by its desire to expand its operational territory and take full charge of settlement-upgrading projects. In part, these collisions were fuelled by the NRM’s constant interference in community operations through the Local Council 1 and through such politically charged actions as its support for the NGO’s executive director in 2013, when federation leadership was demanding her departure. This political culture of conquer and control is more pronounced in Kampala than in smaller cities such as Jinja. The basis for this collision of minds and actions was driven by poorly conceived and unaligned spaces of action between the numerous civil society groupings and the centralised group of experts within the support NGO. The juxtaposition of the NGO mandate with existing federation practices was a source of constant feuds. This case study also shows that the concept of empowerment was a moving target – it remained unclear what an empowered group of federating savers can do independently of support NGOs. Because the federation’s top leadership was in office from the early days of NSDFU’s existence in Uganda, there were often issues around seniority, experience and age between the leadership and the technical staff.

b. Divisions over control of accumulation networks

This section considers how accumulation networks⁽⁵²⁾ in the informal settlements of Kampala have undermined the intended processes of collaboration and co-production.

Co-production is a mediated urban development process that can result in “winners and losers” by creating different vested interests within the context of asymmetrical social and gender relationships. Mediation is anchored by formal processes, such as the MoU between the federation/ACTogether and the state. But these formal processes are underpinned by “informalised networks” of persuasion, lobbying, blockades and brokerage, and in some instances, resistance and conflicts. This combination of tactics creates what may be called a co-production ecosystem. This system allows a few federation leaders to assume key leadership positions and to participate in numerous international exchange visits, while others remain ordinary savers without much opportunity to become networked in the web of federation translocal relationships.

The Kampala case suggests that it is crucial to open these experiences to numerous federation members by means of leadership term limits and rotation of leadership roles among the savers. This approach might minimise risk of federation capture by a predatory state, increase transparency, and reduce the risk of conspiracy between the support NGO and a few well-networked and trained federation leaders. Banks et al. (as noted above) highlight the difference between residents with accumulation networks and those with survival networks in terms of opportunities for social advancement.⁽⁵³⁾ The Kampala case study shows that the creation of winners and losers depends on how actors participate and benefit from a cocktail of undertakings that structure the engagement between the state and civil society and within civil society spaces.

Co-production is also driven by the ability of stakeholders to renegotiate the rules and activities for improvement in informal settlements in particular, and urban planning in general. In co-production, a few powerful civil society-affiliated service brokers create what might be described as co-production empowerment and disempowerment systems, where those in “visible” positions tend to influence accumulation networks while others are systematically blocked from accessing exposure, power, benefits and influence. The networks of accumulation can flourish because much of the planning and service delivery in global South cities is captured by sectoral informal-actor interests and often negotiated outside of formal spaces.⁽⁵⁴⁾ The concentration of power and influence occurs through various means, but chiefly through abuse, theft, manipulation, corruption and clientelism as well as alertness to the interventionist state and disempowering tactics of civil society. In the Kampala case, the brokers, who included a few powerful local elites, have tended to have access to all manner of benefits, including leadership positions without term limits (often based on public-speaking skills and purported belief in federation rituals), interfacing with government officials, and leading negotiations on behalf of thousands of federated savers. These powerful local leaders have concentrated power in themselves and have used it to achieve control over networks of accumulation (of power, influence and exposure), especially during international exchange visits and in negotiating society–state relationships.

c. Patriarchy in co-production

The fundamentally decent and constructive role played by most women is primarily what explains the fact that the co-production process was so productive in Uganda, despite being plagued by internal problems. Women, as the majority of savers, were more prepared to remobilise and expand after savings groups faced the internal challenges of abuse and savings mismanagement. The social and gender relations in co-production structure fundamental processes and determine the success levels of co-production, although as Castán Broto and Neves Alves argue, gender needs to be viewed through an intersectional lens.⁽⁵⁵⁾ In the Kampala case, women have often led the processes while men took a back seat, yet benefited when their wives were in leadership roles. In cities where men generally take a dominant role in society,⁽⁵⁶⁾ the centrality of women in co-production demonstrates the capacity of the approach to unsettle long-term asymmetric gender relations, but not always in every respect. Lindell argues that women tend to organise around social issues in communities,⁽⁵⁷⁾ and women’s collective priorities tend to be around health, education, poverty reduction, youth development, housing, water and livelihoods.⁽⁵⁸⁾

The Kampala case demonstrates that women in co-production as individuals and collectives advocated for collective urban betterment. In Kampala, women seemed to closely follow and believe in the SDI strategy of anti-violence⁽⁵⁹⁾ and they embodied the virtues of cooperation, caring and partnership in the settlement of divisions in society. Hence, the case embodies a gendered-urban action in Southern cities, where women’s virtues have sustained the urban change processes and where men have used the power of association to intersect with the power of anti-poverty class action by women. The case shows that the women have built a sense of collective vision and the men who fully bought into the federating logic (through either personal commitment or motivation by a spouse) have tended to be good at shepherding and mentoring others. While noting that not all women federators played consequential roles during co-production, the fact that women have far outnumbered the men in the rebirthed Kawempe networks and savings groups was game changing. Co-production depends on the capacity to mobilise and jointly save finances to match with the state’s contribution to co-production. Thus, the role of women in reviving and sustaining the culture of federating played a unique role in the co-production process in Kampala.

d. Co-production as a cycle

The co-production process in Kampala has gone through waves of decline and growth influenced by the abuse of savings, theft of funds, contestations on who participates in exchange visits, and disputes over the control of savings, as well as by efforts to deal with these problems. The trajectory of Kampala’s co-production was marked by moments of learning and reform. The decline phase in 2008–2010 created opportunities for what might be termed a culture of learning within civil society: established norms for resolving intra-organisational conflicts through mediation had to be abandoned to pursue the legal route to recover the lost funds, rebuild confidence in the movement, and return to the years of growth.

Furthermore, shifts in emphasis from international exchange visits to local exchange visits offered an opportunity for dealing with frustrations among ordinary savers. Bradlow⁽⁶⁰⁾ writes of innovation that comes with conflicts in civil society movements and encourages the examination of moments of inspiration when the federation and support NGO experience intra-alliance difficulties. The findings from the case study show that civil society movements can learn, innovate and repurpose their practices to address internal threats and continue to impact policy at scale. Mitlin says the more successful pro-poor strategies for social mobilisation seem to be those that can “innovate new approaches which strengthen collective capacity, and which maintain the autonomy of such collective capacity, enabling the poor to constantly renew its pressure on the state”.⁽⁶¹⁾ The findings from this case show that co-production engagements go through growth cycles and can act as sites for innovation, introducing new ways of engaging with stakeholders, staying more alert to manipulative state actions, and renewing the movement.

VII. Conclusion

The Kampala case study adds new perspectives to the co-production literature by uncovering and analysing the extent of the divisions that characterise urban civil society movements that implement co-production within the context of a predatory state. The central argument in this paper is that co-production can generate greater benefits for both low-income communities in the South and local governments if the state and civil society are willing to collaborate while remaining conscious of some fundamental facts: that the civil society organisations may be deeply divided within and between themselves and that achieving impact at scale depends on the conscious management of contested relationships between diverse civil society groups on the one hand and with an interventionist state on the other. The paper establishes that while civil society is diverse and internally conflicted, the SDI philosophy of building an autonomous social movement that is able to negotiate with the state during co-production has been key in facilitating the intention of the Ugandan government to work with low-income communities. Implemented within the context of an increasingly autocratic state and a strong and interventionist ruling party, co-production engagements in Kampala have embodied multiple tactics of negotiation and resistance. For SDI, securing gains in this context has entailed a continuous striving for the autonomy of its alliance, resisting silent capture by the state and by cliques within civil society, and building capacity in the civil society alliance to better understand the politics of the country.

This paper establishes that the divisions within civil society are fuelled by various factors: a collision of the mandates of federating savers and those of the support NGOs; and widespread abuse at different levels, patriarchal relations and asymmetric social relationships, interventionist ruling elites, and elements of corruption. The co-production approach challenges the dominant role of men and shows that women, as individuals and collectives, can take on the multiple identities of mobilisers, community workers and civil society leaders – all gendered roles meant to achieve cooperation, avoid overt conflict escalation and focus on collective societal good. The Kampala case study shows that co-production can succeed if a culture of learning is embedded in the design of community programmes. The case shows that civil society has the capacity to learn and reform itself as was the case when the Uganda civil society alliance shifted focus from international exchange visits to local exchange visits and when the federation used state courts rather than internal mediation processes in Kawempe region.

Co-production is a dynamic approach to society–state relations in urban interventions. The paper recommends further research on the role of women in structuring co-production engagements and outcomes and also on how divisions within the state interact with divisions within civil society. In terms of policy, the paper notes that co-production could generate more gains for communities if communities are alert and able to keep the state in constant check to avoid state capture. The early initiatives of the government of Uganda to ensure a productive developmental relationship with residents of informal settlements was key to the initiation, growth and consolidation of the co-production approach in Uganda in general, and in Kampala in particular. The paper further recommends the introduction of term limits for federation leaders and regular capacity building for these leaders. This would help to ensure that the federation remains dynamic and simultaneously able to deploy multiple tactics of negotiation for both collaboration and resistance to limit the excesses of elites within civil society groups and within the state.