A summary of NGO Perspectives and input to the National Development Plan (NDP) formulation process - PART I
1. Introduction
NGOs have over the years become key players in the policy process, making critical contributions to policies such as the national budget, the PEAP, PMA and many others. NGOs have been active in the ongoing process of developing a National Development Plan (NDP), a successor to PEAP. They have written over 20 Issues and thematic papers as input to the NDP process.
In this part, we highlight civil society’s understanding of development and expectations of the National Development Plan and present the 6 fundamentals that need to be overcome if the development aspirations of Uganda are to be met.
1.2 Understanding of Development
Civil society aims at developing people and their wellbeing. The CSO aggregate argues that development that centers on achieving an optimal level of health and wellbeing of people, is much more than the rise or fall of national incomes. It is about creating an environment in which people can develop their full potential, lead productive and creative lives in line with their needs and interests. Most important is the need to invest in building human capabilities to live long and healthy lives, to be knowledgeable, to have access to resources for a decent standard of living. Without the aforementioned, many life choices are simply not available or even accessible. The success of NDP should be gauged, not just on how much economic growth and infrastructural development is attained, but whether this growth has led to a meaningful improvement in the wellbeing and living conditions of Ugandans.
1.3 What the National Development Plan should represent
Civil society suggests that the NDP and its implementation should be informed by lessons from past policy and development frameworks especially the PEAP. The NDP is not simply a framework for development planning, but a plan in itself. Fundamentally, this means the NDP should represent a major shift in the way development is sought. During the PEAP era, the same routine of developing sector papers and priorities was followed, quite often turning the PEAP into a catalogue of issues lacking strategic priorities and time bound actions. For the NDP to create new opportunities for robust economic growth, help lift rural people out of abject poverty and lead to a dramatic and sustained transformation of society and the economy, there is need for a change both in the way national planning is done and its orientation. To begin with, the NDP must set national development priorities at a higher level so that sectors and local governments are only seen as vehicles to achieve those priorities. Secondly, the NDP must go beyond mere technical description of priority investment areas and ensure a clear understanding of the underlying governance dynamics that shape and determine the achievement of agreed development priorities, targets and outcomes. Civil society therefore expects that:
The NDP identifies strategic priorities, outputs and time bound targets that sectors, LGs and other development stakeholders should aspire to achieve. A new fiscal regime should then be aligned to support the attainment, on an annual basis, set development outputs and targets.
The NDP is representative of a development threshold that every Ugandan, whether in the public or private sector, NGO or political party should contribute to. In other words, ownership of the NDP should transcend government and should be nationally owned and supported.
The NDP reflects a delicate balance between technocratic planning and political aspirations of the ruling party and as much as possible other political parties. The NDP and election cycle should to a meaningful extent be aligned so that the NDP does not become a competitor for meager resources with a winning party manifesto. Secondly ownership across the political divide will ensure that the NDP isn’t held hostage should there be a change in government.
2. The Fundamentals: Prerequisites for Equitable Development
There are at least 6 fundamental challenges and dilemmas that need to be addressed if public investments are to bring about growth, transformation and prosperity for all Ugandans. First, there is need to resolve the paradox of Uganda’s economic transformation; secondly, there is need to reconcile the nation building project with core political party in power sustenance and survival objectives; thirdly, Uganda needs to rethink its past obsession with the neo-liberal economic dogma and find new ways in which the state and the market can interact to deliver equitable and sustainable development; fourth, is the need to invest in creating effective demand for good governance through re-energizing citizen agency; fifth, there is need for more decisive policy action to counter Uganda’s population growth rate; and finally there is need to consolidate the peace dividend and prevent the resurgence of conflict in the North or any part of Uganda.
2.1 Resolving the Paradox of Growth without transformation
It is possible to agree on the fact that the impressive economic growth record of the last two decades has not led to socio-economic transformation of Uganda’s society and the economy. The number of people dependent on agriculture, many of them largely subsisting is still estimated at over 70%, there are serious economic problems that underpin Uganda’s development trajectory. For instance the growth registered over the last two decades has not brought about socio-economic transformation and the declining fortunes of the agriculture sector and contribution to GDP means significant numbers of Ugandans are trapped in poverty.
The economy generally remains a nature-based and the progress towards industrialization remains marginal. While the services sector is growing, it employs a few people. It is a tragedy that a sector that employs over 70% of Ugandans and contributes over 21% of GDP gets only approximately 5% budget allocation. The challenge, therefore, is to agree on a new set of development priorities and targets that help achieve dramatic or faster progress towards the transformation of the economy and society. To reverse the trends above, the NDP needs to reflect:
A decisive commitment to substantially invest in the agriculture sector to the tune of about 15% of the national budget is the way out to benefit the over 70% of Ugandans eking a living from the sector. The resurgence of agriculture should also see its percentage contribution to GDP increase, making growth pro-poor in the process. In the end such investments will enable and empower Uganda’s rural folk to then invest in education and wellbeing of their children and the nation. Such an approach is more empowering and rewarding than the welfare approach to poverty eradication - a key feature of the PEAP era and favored by donors.
2.2 Reconcile nation building and ruling party sustenance objectives
There is need to reconcile nation building objectives with those of the ruling party’s survival objectives. According to our analysis, we find that the things that need to change through national planning are increasingly inconsistent with manifest intentions of the ruling party to survive. Because the state is increasingly unable to satisfy the aspirations of Ugandans, many of them are retreating into ethnic enclaves as a sign of distrust of the state and also as a bargaining measure to get a share of state opportunities. Uganda’s nationhood is either being contested or threatened and the state is failing in its cardinal role of ensuring equitable development for all Ugandans, irrespective of tribe, ethnic group or political affiliation. From various governance analysis by state and non state actors, the following indicators of the declining nation building project are discernable: a) Demands for districts on the basis of ethnic differences; b) Low trust in public institutions and the political leadership at various levels; c) Low trust in the electoral process and the electoral commission; d) Endemic corruption and accumulation of private wealth at the expense of the nation building.
On the other hand, there are several indicators suggesting that public choices and investments are shaped more by the desire for ruling political party survival, rather than public good: The last 2 decades have witnessed an exponential growth in a bloated and burdensome political bureaucracy that has nothing to do with better service delivery for Ugandans. The growing cottage industry of districts in this country defeats the manifest logic of decentralization as most new districts are so incapacitated financially and otherwise, as to provide any meaningful services to citizens.
In our understanding, the long term survival of any party will not depend on patronage. It is possible to reconcile ruling party survival objectives with the nation building project by curbing corruption and wastage, shifting meager public resources from financing a bloated public and political bureaucracy to delivering better services for citizens. Civil society proposes:
Downsizing the political bureaucracy to reduce the size of cabinet, parliament, presidential advisors, Resident District Commissioners and other administrative appointments.
Re-conceptualizing the role of districts in service delivery: majority of districts have no local revenue of their own and have to be financed from the centre, they have become more or less like NGOs. We therefore need to look at the LGs as production units where money is sent based on a business plan clearly setting out how the proposed investments would help deliver on national goals and output targets.
2.3 Balancing the supply and demand sides of good governance
During the first decade of the NRM, the Government invested in creating state institutions and managing reform processes that helped inspire confidence in the population. In particular, the constitutional making process and the subsequent promulgation of the 1995 Constitution, the creation of accountability institutions, and the decentralization policy created a sense of citizenship that partly account for the growth trends that are witnessed today. However, Uganda’s development paradigm has remained focused on the supply side of the development and governance agenda. On the side of governance, it is presumed that strengthening parliament, the judiciary, the police or the Electoral Commission, and creating a host of accountability institutions will improve governance and fight corruption. Important as these may be, they represent actions on the supply side which must now be matched with an equal if not more focus on the demand side of governance, leading to a greater sense of citizen responsibility, ownership of development processes and sense of citizenship.
Although neo-liberalism has held up political liberalization as a threshold to democratization, multi-partyism in its short life in Uganda has not fostered citizenship in any significant or sustained manner. Political liberalization has implanted a multi-party form of democracy which is more inclined towards the views of those from above without reconstructing state power from below. This shortcoming has limited attempts to address the crisis of citizenship–neglect and their exclusion from the governance process. To ameliorate the current trend of contracting political and economic space on which citizens can organize for the enjoyment of economic and political rights, NDP needs to reflect commitments towards:
Investing in strengthening civic institutions (both in the public and civil society spheres) right from the grassroots to national level and ensuring that they exercise oversight over what the public sector does. Citizen oversight committees should be encouraged and supported to oversee all public, private and NGO programmes at community level, both in urban and rural areas so that there is always value for investments made in the name of Ugandans.
A deliberate civic conscientization process in form of sustained and continuous civic education must be supported to enable Ugandans demand for and cause change when necessary. This conscientization agenda should go beyond voter education which is usually done during election times, but should involve providing an environment that allows citizens to freely organize, debate, engage and oversee development processes in Uganda.
2.4 Reconsidering the macro economic policy model for Uganda
Uganda has for long been lauded as one of the countries that religiously followed the neo liberal agenda of the IMF and the WB. Throughout the process of designing and implementing the three Poverty Eradication Action Plans from 1997-2008, the dominant discourse was one of praising markets and rolling back the state as a bad business manager. This model initially paid off and during the 1990s, and especially over the second half of the decade, Uganda experienced high economic growth, falling income poverty, and relative political stability. The impressive economic development and poverty reduction to date has to a large extent been based on discrete events, including: the mid 1990’s short-lived coffee boom, peace dividends evident in large parts of the country save for northern Uganda; macroeconomic stabilisation programmes and the increase in foreign aid. All these factors did yield one-off bonuses in terms of growth and poverty reduction. They also took place at the backdrop of a ruined economy in the pre 1986 era of military dictatorship and state failure. It is now of concern today that these factors cannot be expected to drive future growth. Fundamentally however, serious concerns have been raised about the foundation and ideological underpinnings of what was until recently largely considered economic dogma.
A Democratic Developmental State Model as an Alternative
This NDP would tremendously benefit Uganda if we developed an alternative economic approach that will drive Uganda’s transformation and which is not based on neo liberal principles that are at the center of the present capitalist crisis. We advocate for a developmental state and mixed economy model anchored around the following:
The state reclaiming full responsibility for key sectors of the economy such as agriculture and revival of cooperative marketing;
Redistribution through a more progressive tax regime which should lead to eventual exit from dependence on aid for growth and more loans for recovery;
More intervention and or regulation of markets and in particular the financial and banking sector which driven largely by the desire to maximize profits are risk averse and not providing in a meaningful way, the much needed financial services to key sectors of growth;
Increased public investments and ownership of critical infrastructure including public works, energy development, road and railway infrastructure;
A reasonable level of protection of domestic industries and subsidies to agro based industries against unnecessary competition and cheap goods from out;
More focus on developing and consolidating regional markets;
2.5 Need for decisive policy on population issues
The other fundamental issue relates to Uganda’s population growth trends and its implications for planning and development. The current population growth rate is 3.2%, compared to the world’s average of 1.2%. The rapid growth of the population in such a short time has serious implications for Uganda’s aspiration to evolve as a middle income economy over the next 25 years. This is further compounded with the high fertility rate in the country; on average, a woman in Uganda has 6.7 children (7.1% in rural and 4.4% in urban areas respectively). This compares unfavorably to a global average of 2.7 and an African average of 5.1.
The current population growth and fertility rates have serious implications for future planning and additional burden on an already constrained budget. For instance in the health sector using Health Center II as an example - Uganda currently has 746 HC II’s or one for every 29,225 persons in the population. The last PEAP goal was to have a HCII for every 5,000 persons that require about 2,200 more health units by 2015 and 10,740 in 2025. Regarding health staffing, if Uganda is to achieve 1 nurse/midwife per 1000 persons by 2025, the number will need to rise from the current 2,800 nurses to 53,000 nurses in 2025 at the current population growth of 3.2. By contrast, about 11,000 fewer nurses will be required under the declining fertility projection. The number of doctors required will be 10,700 under current high fertility as opposed to 8,600 doctors with low fertility of 2.9 children per woman. Current estimates put the cost of training a doctor at US$ 27,500 and training a midwife at about US$4,800. The country will therefore require US$111 million to train extra personnel by 2025. The health budget will need to rise from US$ 262 million in 2000 to US$ 1,500 million in 2025 with high fertility US$ 1,200 with declining fertility. Between 2000 and 2025, the cumulative saving will be more than US$ 2billion. Such savings could be used to improve overall coverage and quality of care.
The same analysis can be done for education sector already suffering severe quality challenges, in part because of the increasing numbers of children, especially in UPE; for the employment; agriculture and land sectors with unprecedented pressures on the environment and natural resources. Already, population pressures on land have demonstrated serious problems in the south western, southern and eastern parts of Uganda where population densities are high. In these areas, average land holding size declined from about 5.5 hectares to 2.2 hectares between 1970 and 1990s because of the rapid population growth. Land fragmentation is one of the outstanding factors hindering the introduction of modern farming techniques and land management and leading to soil erosion and land degradation. Even with continued levels of urbanization, the rural population will continue to grow very rapidly. In the high fertility projection, the rural population would increase from 18.3 million persons in 2000 to 35.1 million in 2025. This means that most of the unused land will be divided into peasant small holdings. In that case, Uganda will have used its land resources to expand the size of the peasant sector but it will not have achieved a modernized, commercialized agricultural sector.
Rapid population growth not matched with growth and transformation of the economy and society as already mentioned earlier can be an obstacle to development and transformation. As civil society, we recommend that more decisive policy action is needed to contain the high population growth and fertility rates above to avert a potential crisis in the future as it is unlikely that Uganda will have the resources and capacity to meaningfully meet the needs of the increasing population. We suggest that:
In the short term, focus on ensuring a high quality of the existing population: The NDP must as matter of priority fully embrace MDG, 5 (b) ‘ensure universal access to reproductive health by 2015’ with its indicators; improved contraceptive prevalence rate, reduced adolescent pregnancy rate; reduced unmet need for family planning, and improved antenatal coverage. Increased investment to improve human resources for health should be guaranteed. This is because there is already an existing population momentum and young population.
Be more decisive and institute a policy on the number of children and family size as China did in the 1970’s and Rwanda in 1990’s. This will require a revision of the current population policy which in line with the convoluted political, traditional and cultural messages doesn’t offer decisive policy guidance for the long term.
There is need to intensify the campaign and public education on the negative repercussions of a very high population growth rate in order to counter political and traditional stances on this matter. This campaign, at different levels should focus more on males, whose actions have greater consequence to the population trends than women.
2.6 Consolidate peace, invest in conflict resolution, and disaster response
Final there is need consolidate the peace dividend and invest in peace building and conflict prevention. Conflicts, some of which escalated to create serious political instability in the country have been occasioned by issues ranging from; inequitable distribution of resources and the struggle for natural resources, migration and population movements, cattle rustling, political marginalization and the struggle for political power, the country’s geopolitical positioning and its being used by the west to forestall foreign interests, including religious and political.
The impact of the conflicts in Uganda has been documented in several studies by both state and non state actors. In Northern Uganda for instance the LRA Conflict has meant that the region posts some of the worst socioeconomic indicators in education enrollment and performance, nutrition and other health indicators, HIV/AIDS prevalence and poverty levels. We expect the NDP to re-affirm and provide practical national guidance on how the constitutional obligation tasking the state and people of Uganda to ‘work towards the promotion of National Unity, Peace and stability…’ as well as ‘the establishment and nurturing of institutions and procedures for the resolution of conflicts fairly and peacefully’. Uganda’s future depends on its capacity to prevent, manage and resolve conflicts.
In view of Uganda’s present and possible future security and peace challenges, civil society would like to propose the following:
a. The NDP should as a matter of principle re-affirm the constitutional provision highlighted above and make peace building and conflict prevention one of the key development objectives of the NDP, establish and fully finance a National Commission for Peace, Conflict Prevention and Resolution as an institutional framework to provide leadership in this area.
b. Given Uganda’s geopolitical positioning and experience, it should provide leadership for a more peaceful regional conflict resolution mechanism that will support the peace in the great lakes region and its surrounding.
c. In response to the decades of conflict and destruction in Northern Uganda, the NDP should reflect a systemic change in approach to Northern Uganda from a largely project approach to one that sees the recovery and development of Northern Uganda as a development priority, not just for its recovery but for impact it will have on national development aspirations. Specifically, the NDP should provide for:
Affirmative action for Northern Uganda and considerable public investment in the next five years (2009 - 2014) in infrastructure (social and economic), restoration of rule of law by strengthening the police and other security agencies, the judiciary and other support to livelihood initiatives.
Establishing a Northern Uganda Fund within the National Budget which should be additional to ongoing allocations to affected districts and ring-fenced (as was the case with PAF) to avoid intermittent budget cuts. This should replace the short term project orientation in disparate initiatives such as NURP, NUSAF and PRDP.
In the 2nd and final part of civil society’s aggregate paper for the National Development Plan, we shall feature civil society’s 5 national development priorities, partnership principles civil society consider crucial for the success of the NDP and finally a proposed budget strategy for the NDP.
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written by Air force 1 high , June 10, 2010
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