Development and social policy reform in Uganda: The slow emergence of a social protection agenda (1986-2014)
Loading...
Date
2014
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Centre for Social Science Research University of Cape Town
Abstract
This paper provides a broad overview of the evolution of development and welfare
policy—and the politics surrounding—it in Uganda, but focuses primarily on the
increasing prominence of social protection, especially cash transfers, on the
domestic political agenda. It analyses both how and why the development and
social policy agendas almost fully excluded social protection prior to 2002, but
then increasingly embraced it, especially since 2006. Non-contributory social
assistance in the form of cash transfers have not traditionally played a significant
role in Ugandan development and poverty reduction policy, with policymakers
tending to focus on economic growth as a source of prosperity (expected to extend
to all sections of society), with opponents seeing cash transfers (and social
assistance more broadly) as unaffordable and counter-productive ‘hand-outs’
that create dependence on the state and disincentivise productive work. From the
early 2000s donors, sections of the bureaucracy and civil society promoted cash
transfers with limited success. But after 2006, systematic promotion of cash
transfers started to bear fruit, and from 2010 a largely donor-funded cash transfer
pilot scheme known as the Social Assistance Grants for Empowerment (SAGE)
programme has been implemented in fourteen districts (with a fifteenth added in
2013). The paper describes the evolution of Ugandan development policy and
highlight the political factors that have in the past been obstacles to social
protection programmes featuring prominently on the development agenda
(including the predominant socio-economic development paradigm, negative elite
attitudes, resistance from conservative technocrats and lack of familiarity among
key decision-makers) and examine how these have increasingly been overcome by
the proponents of social protection. While donors have played a critical role in
the promotion of social protection and cash transfers, other actors—including
civil society and social development bureaucrats—and macropolitical factors
(including electoral competition, changing international development discourse,
emerging evidence from other countries, etc.), have also contributed to increased
domestic political support. We conclude that the very existence of SAGE and the
politics surrounding the pilot indicate a significant change in attitudes among a
large proportion of policy-makers, including some historically sceptical technocrats, and political leaders, but that resistance is likely to continue from
certain quarters and that the future of cash transfers remains uncertain.
Description
Keywords
Citation
Grebe, E., & Mubiru, J. (2014). Development and social policy reform in Uganda: The slow emergence of a social protection agenda (1986-2014). Available at SSRN 2552562.