WHEN IN MANCHESTER
A Game of Tug of War? The Politics of Uganda’s Youth Livelihood Programme
While works on decentralization imperatives stem from ensuring improved public service provision (Rondinelli, Nellis and Cheema, 1984), many scholars have acknowledged the patrimonial and ethno-territorial roots in Africa’s decentralized institutional landscape (Crook, 2003; Awortwi, 2010; Lambright, 2014). In Uganda, argued to be one of the more radical cases of decentralization in Africa (Mitchinson, 2003), a particular focus on decentralization politics have uncovered how central-local relations exert central government dominance and political patronage to policies relating to poverty reduction, urban service delivery, and social protection (Crook and Sverrisson, 2011; Lambright, 2014; Lavers and Hickey, 2016).
More recently, the Government of Uganda (GoU) allocated UGX 265b in rolling funds that target youth entrepreneur groups under the Youth Livelihood Programme (YLP) in hopes to boost youth employment and reduce poverty throughout the country. Building on a political settlements analysis of the institutional landscape in Uganda and recent YLP evaluations (Hickey, 2005; Izama, 2011; Hickey and Bukenya, 2019), this essay seeks to highlight the key factors detrimental to the success of the YLP in achieving its aims. This essay argues that a political settlements approach draws attention to how a recentralization paradox and a strong (but possibly fragmented) contention by the central government coupled with potentials of windows of opportunities in Uganda lead to the sustained implementation of the YLP despite its poor outcomes.
Yielding Youth Potential: Neutral or Politicized?
Under the 2001 National Youth Policy, the government of Uganda has prioritized addressing unemployment issues as being most apparent amongst Ugandan youth (Makumbi, 2018). High growth rates of 6.5% over the past fifteen years has resulted in high levels of unemployment and ‘feeling of marginalization’ amongst youth (MoGLSD, 2015), a critical issue to transform Uganda from a peasant to a middle-income country by 2025 (MoGLSD, 2013).
Since then, under the dominance of President Museveni, the central government of Uganda has ventured on various decentralized poverty reduction and youth empowerment programmes. Some of its early programmes include Uganda’s Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP), Northern Uganda Social Action Plan (NUSAF2) and the Plan for the Modernization of Agriculture (PMA). Not only have these previous programmes been linked towards practices of political patronage to further entrench the state in decentralized mechanisms, but also signals the central government’s shift towards demand-driven targeting of groups to harness and mobilize public support (Francis and James, 2003).
In 2011, Museveni claimed a controversial win as he became accused of spending public funds to support his campaign and special projects to win over support from the previously excluded North. It was only after this controversial moment that Museveni further embarked to harness youth potentials in Uganda through a decentralized, community demand-driven programme called the YLP (Izama, 2011; MoGLSD, 2013). Since its initial establishment in 2013, the YLP has been a rolling government policy that aims to empower Ugandan youth, aged 18–30 years, to self-employment opportunities, harness their socio-economic potentials, and secure for an absorptive labour capacity in Uganda by 2025 (MoGLSD, 2013). The rolling loan system ensures that funds from the central government channelled to the selected youth groups through the local district governments are to be returned within three years. As part of its decentralized mechanism, the role of the local district governments includes facilitating participatory community selections, approving centrally funded transfers to youth groups, and conducting monitoring and evaluations of youth group progress and payback.
While recent works on the implementation of the YLP have noted persistent issues relating to the programme outcome (Hadijah et al., 2018; Makumbi, 2018; Bukenya et al., 2019), scholars have yet to uncover the political underpinnings of the YLP’s contested uptake. Therefore, this essay contends that the YLP also reflects a decentralized distribution of power, enabling such policy to take place in a political manner (Crook, 2003).
Contesting Museveni’s Political Settlement and Youth Fund Politics
With conflicting central government claims towards the second phase of funding, wider targeted beneficiary, and measures to cut local government influence, the YLP reflects a compelling case on how decentralization has proven to be an instrument for and of power in Uganda. By examining how the programme has distributed organizational power in a proclaimed decentralized approach (Khan, 2018), this section argues that two key factors are detrimental to the success of the YLP, namely the recentralization paradox and a strong yet fragmented central government.
A Recentralization Paradox
Formalized under the 1995 Constitution and the 1997 Local Governments Act, recentralization has always challenged Uganda’s relatively new decentralization trajectory (Izama, 2011). Under Museveni’s one dominant party regime, decentralization has been used as an instrument to diminish opposition competitiveness and assert central control (Hickey, 2005; Lambright, 2014). For instance, such a manoeuvre has exemplified in the central government’s takeover of the opposition-led Kampala and the weakening of lower government’s financial discretion to allocate resources (Awortwi, 2010).
In other instances, local government performances are deliberately labelled as inefficient. They are believed to lack the capacity for public service delivery in order to hide the central government’s reluctance to disperse power to other agencies (Steiner, 2006). Others even disagree entirely on the conception of decentralized local governments in Uganda, arguing that Local Councils itself was not established for poverty reduction measures but to ensure ethnopolitical rent seeking, thus resulting in varying levels of devolution (Crook, 2003; Mitchinson, 2003). Noting the ethno-clientelistic background of Uganda’s past decentralization efforts, there are features in the development of the YLP that suggest the same recentralization to occur.
First, in practice, the Sub-County Chief appoints one of its members to become the Community Development Officer in charge of the beneficiary selection committee. Designation of strategic posts in the policy’s implementation process enables the setup of ‘local bosses’ that can further succeed the interests of the central government (Crook, 2003, p. 5). Previously, such a manoeuvre has proved to successfully ensure the political support of the North during Uganda’s 2011 election (Izama, 2011). Nevertheless, there are also cases in the YLP where local politicians are also self-interested patrons. Youth groups are reportedly targeted based on the patronage of politicians in favour of support in upcoming elections rather than strict performance criteria (Bukenya et al., 2019). Whether the local government politicians choose to remain loyal to its clients or the central government, the placements of self-interested politicians appointed by the central government have shaped a peculiar understanding of the YLP. Ultimately, the YLP came to be publicly perceived as government grants, rather than loans and has resulted in the widespread uptake of the YLP among youth groups in Uganda (Dauda, 2006; Makumbi, 2018).
Second, contrary to the first phase of the programme, the implementation of YLP’s second phase deliberately excludes local governments in handling loans. As Awortwi (2010) argues, the exclusion of the local government in handling loans weakens the ability of the local government to allocate rent. Furthermore, the reformed second phase of the YLP now includes a broader base of youth groups, including not only village-level groups but has scaled up to include parish-level groups. Such reform can be attributed to the lack of monitoring from the local government and low payback rates, averaging only 47% (MoGLSD, 2017). Nevertheless, similar motives were also apparent in the scaling up of Senior Citizen’s Grant in the upcoming years towards the 2011 elections (Hickey and Bukenya, 2019). In the YLP case, both the local government exclusion and widening of the targeted beneficiaries power grants the central government better control over the allocation of funds and who are ‘eligible’ to receive youth funds. Therefore, with the 2021 general elections just around the corner, there are reasons to suggest for the central government to aggressively align the second YLP phase in order to extend support bases for the central government.
A Strong Leader yet Fragmented Central Government
It is important to note that the political settlements framework, as Behuria, Buur and Gray (2017) and Khan (2018) assert, encompasses not only elite power but a distribution of organizational power with or without the formation of pacts. While Museveni has a strong arm in personally intervening with the YLP, it is also indubitable that his line ministries remain divided on who should claim charge of the broad-based policy (Mulondo, 2019).
It is undoubted that Museveni has a personal history of addressing poverty through ‘modernization’ (Museveni, 2018; New Vision, 2019). Such motives have underpinned previous decentralized poverty reduction programmes, such as the implementation of PEAP, PMA, and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PSRP). In such programmes, there have been hints and precedence to suggest that political interests are at play (Hickey, 2005; Museveni, 2018). Despite allegations of interfering with opposition territory, Museveni himself has claimed that since 1966 he has been involved in transforming traditional agriculture into commercial agriculture in neighbouring opposition villages as part of his poverty reduction strategies for youth (Museveni, 2018; New Vision, 2019). Even when the intention for decentralization reform was to reduce ethnic conflict in Uganda, Museveni’s deliberate system of targeting of specific interest groups have paved the way for the NRM to assert its popularity among its beneficiaries (Goetz, 2002; Hickey, 2005; Steiner, 2006).
In the case of the YLP, Museveni’s strong contention to sustain youth funds despite its low payback may also stem from both his vision for transformation and also a political imperative to widen his support base into opposition territory. Such ease in doing so might reflect the political dominance of Museveni and the NRM, eliminating political space for opposition and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) as alternatives (Hickey, 2003). Against the backdrop of Museveni’s controversial win in 2011, the uptake of the YLP funds was unsurprisingly widely accepted by local governments and youth across Uganda.
Despite Museveni’s ‘competitive authoritarianism’ towards decentralized poverty reduction (Izama, 2011, p. 14), the responses from line ministries itself seem to reflect a fragmented and legitimacy-hungry central government (Kyeyune, 2019; Mulondo, 2019). As Hickey (2005) contends, the responses to whether the PEAP should be scaled up to improve success rates proved to split line ministries into those leaning towards the Finance Ministry and Civil Society or MoGLSD tendencies. Both agencies have been long time contenders in promoting decentralized poverty reduction programmes through which they gain their legitimacy.
Therefore, the tug of war of which ministry should be financing the second phase of the YLP does not necessarily translate to the central government’s will to improve payback rates or local government inefficiencies per se (Kyeyune, 2019; Labeja, 2019; Mulondo, 2019). Instead, the tug of war presents a similar notion of the contestation for power and legitimacy as in the case of PEAP. This time between the State House, the Ministry of Finance and the MoGLSD.
A Way Forward: Harnessing Windows of Opportunities
This essay has illustrated how the success of the decentralized YLP is contingent upon two key factors, notably the recentralization paradox and the presence of a strong leader yet fragmented central government. While it suggests that the YLP is a contested programme, this essay argues that it is because of this vigorous contestation between agencies that allows the YLP to sustain despite its low performance. In terms of decentralization efforts, it is evident that the current political settlement is driving to assert central control in the YLP by using decentralization as an instrument to position centrally-loyal ‘local bosses’ (or get rid of them altogether) and extend central control to opposition territories.
On the other hand, elections in Uganda have served the purpose as critical windows of opportunities to extend pro-poor policies as political commitments are renewed or reoriented for electoral support (Izama, 2011). As 2021 elections loom near, it is historically evident to suggest that the YLP trajectory will continue to be sustained but unclear. As Hickey (2005, p. 10) has pointed out, such tug of war for political legitimacy and power between central-local government and also within the central government itself enables the possibility for ‘ambiguous implications’ for poverty reduction and decentralization efforts in Uganda.
As part of the series ‘When in Manchester’, this piece was originally an assignment the author completed for the course Development Fieldwork at the University of Manchester.
