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Uganda: Poverty - Money From All, Prosperity for Some
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The Monitor (Kampala)
OPINION
10 May 2008
Posted to the web 9 May 2008
Gawaya Tegulle
You probably remember that little story where Matron Duck, complete with apron, tray and all, waddled into the barn with a juicy steak, and all the little ducklings licked their 'lips', picked their knives and forks and approached the table chattering happily, scattering saliva.
To their consternation Mother Duck looked at each critically, checked their beaks, ploughed through their feathers and admitted only those whose beaks were shaped a certain way, or those with a particular colour of feathers or the ones that like her, waddled with a limp.
The rest were, as we used to say at Namilyango College (after being bounced for some reason at the dining hall), 'exempted' from dinner on technicalities.
This week I got a call from some little fellow - well placed in government - who was unhappy with the way funds for poverty alleviation were being disbursed. He was particularly unhappy about chits and calls from State House that regularly direct the institution to dish cash from the poverty alleviation fund to this or that individual.
His problem was with the sums involved. He has a hard time understanding why somebody is given 100 million shillings to alleviate his poverty. A poor person would be promptly admitted to the mental clinic at the sight of 100 million bucks.
Another name ought to be found for the programme, because the people receiving the biggest amounts are not even just rich (forget about being poor); they are outright wealthy.
But it is also clear that in spite the "Prosperity for All" banner, those getting this money (big time) either originate from a particular area of the country, or flaunt the NRM party colours.
In five weeks it will be Budget Day, and government will be announcing a Shs22 billion package in the name of "prosperity for all", which was the central theme of President Museveni's manifesto for Election 2006.
There is a big problem here. First, given that at least 50 percent of Ugandans live below the poverty line (forget the official figures), 22 billion is small beef. Second, because there is no policy for disbursing this money, it will be subject to the usual abuse.
Generally we have failed to democratise the criteria of access to public finance pools and they have always been dubious devices to facilitate state patronage, dispensed on the basis of which surname you bear, which area you come from or which political party you belong to. So while the 22 billion will in all likelihood advance the cause of the ruling party and a few predatory elite, the common man has no cause to smile.
Thirdly, there is something incompetent about the whole project because it shows a lack of appreciation of what poverty is, its inherent causes and solutions. Clearly government has in all naïveté and incompetence cocooned the definition of poverty into lack of money, and packaged solutions around supplying money so as to yield 'prosperity for all'.
Peter Booner (1996) notes that such monies do not significantly increase investment and growth nor benefit the poor as measured by improvements in human development indicators, "but it certainly does increase the size of government".
On the whole there are no robust findings that these funds have a positive impact on poverty reduction or economic growth.
This is money collected from all, so that it may create prosperity for some, because we are redistributing national wealth on the premise of nepotism. Poverty means more than having no money; and is about lifestyle rather than bank balances.
Its causes are multi-faceted and the solutions demand a multi-sectoral approach that affects the people's lifestyle; meaning you can eradicate poverty without distributing money.
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What Uganda needs is wholesome solutions integrated into the broader development policy framework, getting- and in fact guaranteeing- the desired outcome by simply managing the process correctly. In this paradigm, the focus moves from the goal- poverty eradication- to the process (designing the right policies and implementing them through an institutional framework that goes beyond selective state intervention based on political and tribal considerations.
And no, I doubt you remember that little Matron Duck story, because I am releasing the book next summer.
The writer is a media consultant
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