A sad tale of rural poor and Museveni’s PDM

Mr Museveni is said to have expressed frustration over the failure or limited absorption of the Parish Development Model (PDM). Indeed one wonders why policy absorption of the PDM is not optimal (when funds are said to be available). Why has the money not reached the bona fide beneficiaries?

My response: The problem lies in the structural organisation of power and the challenge of governance in Uganda. PDM has so far achieved two things: the recruitment of parish chiefs and town agents as permanent employees of the Government of Uganda. The second achievement is that the promotional topee cap I received when I was idling in one of the government offices in Kampala.

And by the way, if it were up to me, I would have adopted the sub-county as the principal administrative unit for policy absorption. The parish, as a unit of a local government authority, has structural limitations.

 ***************

Since 2020, I have been a regular visitor to rural communities in Kasese and Luweero. The poverty in the countryside is annoyingly disabling. Most of the able bodied youth strive to go to Kampala. There is a high sense of lacking hope. Lacking hope (being hopeless) is quite different from (and more challenging than) ‘attitude change’.

One can only change his or her attitude when he or she is hopeful or sees an inspiring and relatable story that gives him or her hope. It is wrong to ask poor people to change their attitude when they can’t fix two square meals a day. From 1962, Uganda has tried to alleviate poverty in many different ways. Up to 1990, the co-operatives were the central pillar of the social economic development of the people of Uganda. The co-operatives movement had two tiers: the state organised the architecture by policy, support system for production and marketing. The growers’ part was production.

However, from 1990, the socio-economic development agenda has been centred on the provision of finance with very limited symbiotic contact with the state actors. Whereas there has been several government efforts to spur up the socio-economic development, the challenges faced by the rural farmers have never been addressed.

PDM, like its predecessors, does not seem to appreciate the challenges of production. There was Rural Farmers Scheme, Poverty Alleviation Programme, Entandikwa (Start Up Fund?) Prosperity for All, Naads, Operation Wealth Creation and Emyooga. And oh yes, now we have PDM. The objective of all these programmes has always been to enable subsistence rural farmers to produce more than their consumption needs and earn some ka-money from the surplus.

So long as a programme involving socio-economic development puts the distribution of money at the centre, there is a likelihood of failure. The people’s effort and input must be the defining aspect of any programme. That’s why in spite of the challenges of cotton growing, my people in Kasese are still grow cotton. Why? Because cotton has an assured market; whether the price is low or otherwise, one will always get money from cotton.

When the elite talk about absorbing the people into the cash economy, one might think the people don’t know about money. They know. Mr Museveni has been talking about what I call ‘homestead depth’. I like it when he advises people to have coffee, matooke, poultry, two dairy cows, a wood lot and a place for seasonal food crops. It would be helpful if PDM funding was going into something like this. Otherwise the sad tale of the rural poor is about securing the next meal; not inclusion in the cash economy

Mr Bisiika is the executive editor of the East African Flagpost. [email protected]