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Government’s misguided plan to turn Uganda into a country of prosperous peasants
THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | The government of Uganda has been promoting the “Parish Development Model” (PDM). The program seeks to draw farmers from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture and thereby make them rich. It gives each individual farmer Shs 1,000,000 to begin a business—in whatever they have chosen. People who form a business association, like a cooperative, can also get money, but in larger amounts, to do similar things. Government has become a lender and a venture capitalist, providing loans and risk capital to the poor. President Yoweri Museveni is, right now, on a countrywide tour promoting this program and finding out its achievements.
On Wednesday night, Ramathan Goobi, the permanent secretary in the ministry of finance, said the government has so far distributed Shs 3.6 trillion in rural areas to farmers. How much of this is loans and how much is equity is not very clear. How these loans, all given out without security, will be repaid is not clear. How money given as government equity will be held and protected is not known. It is possible some government officials in Uganda genuinely believe these fantasies. I don’t think Museveni, a keen student of history and political economy, believes you can turn every single peasant into a Schumpeterian entrepreneur. This article, therefore, is a conversation between me and those who believe these fantasies.
Museveni’s intellectual grounding is in political economy. That is why he talks more about “structural transformation” than most of his peers. What is structural transformation? It is characterized by the shift of most people’s livelihoods from depending on agriculture to depending on industry and services. This is occasioned by most people moving from rural areas (where agriculture takes place) to urban areas (where industries and services are located). Therefore, the process of structural transformation is a process of eliminating peasants as a social category. More than anyone else in Uganda, it is Museveni who knows this very well.
Historically, this process has involved the dispossession of peasants of their land. In England, it was through the “Enclosure Movement” where peasants were kicked off land and given to large-scale farmers to rear sheep. In late industrializing countries of Europe (except for the USA), similar processes took place of separating the peasant from land, even though by other means. In fact, industrialization became possible by drawing excess labor out of agriculture into urban areas where they could accept subsistence wages in factories. We have seen this process in South Korea and today in China.
Efforts to turn peasants into prosperous farmers have rarely succeeded. Studies I have read on Europe (Barrington Moore), Latin America (Eric Wolfe), Asia (Jim Scott), and Africa (Goran Hyden) show that efforts by states to transform peasants into commercial farmers have often failed. This is because states misunderstand the motivations of peasants and assume nonexistent aspirations among them—that they are driven by commercial motives. The lesson from history is simple but powerful: peasants engage in agriculture for subsistence. Only when their subsistence needs have been met do they engage in production for the market. The market is never the primary driver of their work. It is a secondary consideration.
The ethic of subsistence does not exist in a vacuum. It is solidified by a set of cultural norms and social relationships that ensure subsistence. These include work and food sharing and patterns of reciprocity that are good for subsistence but bad for commerce. The development of commercialized agriculture has often tended to strip away traditional structures of protection that are embedded in subsistence. To say one is commercializing agriculture is to say you are changing a people’s way of life. It is to change culture, norms, values, and habits. And this process is never benign.
The agents of such change cannot be impartial technocrats pursuing altruistic aims of making peasants rich. They would have to be self-interested individuals seeking commercial advantage. Uganda’s land grabbers, whom we love to hate, could be the agents of structural change. This transformation demands peasants be separated from the land by whatever means. They can be reunited to it through the agency and initiative of capital—this time as agricultural laborers. Others, lacking land, would move into towns and become industrial workers earning subsistence wages.
It is hard for me to predict the outcome of the struggle between peasants and land grabbers. However, it is impossible to create a large laboring class when every peasant is tied to their land. It is also hard to create a market where most people live and work in subsistence agriculture. As long as 70% of Ugandans live in their own homes, till their own land, feed from their garden etc., it will remain impossible to create a large market for rent (housing), food and other necessities. The struggle to commercialize agriculture is therefore a struggle to eliminate peasants as a social category, not to make them rich.
Museveni understands and appreciates what I am saying very well. Why then is he pursuing PDM which is an antithesis of the very project of social transformation he advocates? This is where Museveni the politician trumps Museveni the intellectual. I am sure the president sees PDM as a political slush fund for his candidacy in the coming presidential elections. I do not blame him because it is possible I would do something similar if I were in his shoes.
Museveni has always invented some rural cash-giving program during elections. In 1996, it was Kulembeeka and the Plan for Modernization of Agriculture. In 2001, it was Entandikwa, in 2006, Boona Bagagawale etc. Over the last 30 years of these programs, peasants have remained poor. Everyone therefore knows these programs do not work. Why then do some intellectuals continue to support them? This is not a case of self-interest, i.e. that they want to please Museveni. It is a case of misguided humanitarianism—trying to do good and harming the very results you seek.
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amwenda@ugindependent.co.ug
Interesting article, Mwenda. I wonder what the dispossession of peasants from their land will actually free them up for in a non-industrializing context. All evidence thus far points to boda-boda riding in urban towns and, possibly, emigration for menial jobs in the Persian Gulf. It would be informative also to investigate what kind of commercial ventures, if any, the successful dispossessors have actually implemented on the land they’ve managed to grab.
Andrew,
1. It is NOT TRUE that PDM was introduced just before the electioneering year. I came back here in 2020 and found plans for it in progress. In fact, my 2021-22 invention of a ‘Night-Day’ solar drying and crop water recovery machine at Busitema University was in part motivated by the thought that a scaled up system could be used to serve village communities at communal centres.
2. Just because peasantry could only be destroyed in ‘then industrialising’ Europe and Eastern Asia by moving people from rural areas to established urban areas ‘with services’ does not necessarily mean it should be done everywhere and all the time!! I think your arguments misread or conveniently omit China’s village micro factories approach in fast transformation to the giant construction and manufacturing capital of the world that it is today!
3. Further, your point of view misses the fact that the extent and nature of main services required for industrialisation have evolved with time – and I dare say in our case, with space (We are at the Equator, with equatorial climate, and two equally spaced sun-overheads!). Miicroindustrialising Uganda’s rural areas therefore does not have to follow Temperate Europe’s or Far Eastern Asia’s approach or anyone’s else. Energy, Water, Raw Materials for rural areas, etc. are available with or without direct Government help. What is needed (like elsewhere in this input) are people with necessary knowledge and skills to go to these areas and start the transformations.
I can go on and on. But let that do for now. My wish on your article is to avoid politicising Wealth Creation and Society transformation efforts because doing so may mean when there is a Government change, the little successes of such efforts could be blown away!
In my casual interaction with some of the beneficiaries of PDM, most of them have used the money to pay debts(loans) and others as school fees etc .In simple term the money is not even in anyway serving the intended purpose.
I agree with you Andrew. The president knows what to do if he wants to make peasants rich. For anyone to become rich, you don’t need to get any handouts from the government. I think we can learn a lot from Buganda using the POWESA as a case study.
I totally agree with you. Most of these government initiatives haven’t yielded the results they were intended for and i don’t know why we cant learn a lesson from that. Right from PMA, Entandikwa, boobs bagagawale, Emyooga, YPL among others all there achievements if any are either meagre or contestable.