Why our poverty eradication programmes do not work
One of the things that President Museveni has been fighting endlessly in his three decade rule alongside rebellion is poverty. Uganda has experimented and implemented many programmes such as Rural Farmers Scheme, Modernisation of Agriculture, Poverty Eradication Plan, Prosperity for All, etc, all designed to fight and eradicate poverty.
The Presidential Initiative on Poverty and Hunger was set up to drive this agenda. The Poverty Alleviation Department in State House was established in 2000 as a clearing house for pledges made by the President in this war. In 2003, the department was mandated to develop wealth creation models.
The department has so far designed more than 12 initiatives aimed at increasing productivity and value addition. A lot of donor money has also been sunk into this war.
Putting aside the devastating impact of corruption siphoning away much of the money , the extent to which these magnanimous initiatives have gone in reducing poverty, if assessed appropriately, would reveal astonishing results in terms of value for money and effort invested in the project.
As it is with regard to any predicament in life, the most effective mode of intervention against poverty is that which would tackle the causative agents even beforehand and not the symptoms. One needs full insight into the predicament to be able to design such an intervention. We gain such insight only when we critically explore the subject for the tenets that constitute and sustain it.
This is when we get empowered to ask provocative questions such as ‘what are the primary causes of poverty in Uganda?’ What sustains and perpetuates it? Why have the numerous interventions failed? Such soul searching questions lead us searching for the most appropriate intervention designs potent with curative power.
The concept of ‘fighting poverty’ is in itself a misnomer. It denotes a reactive response that looks for ineffective quick fixes rather than a proactive one that would analyse the system holistically. These initiatives do not address the root causes of poverty but rather its characteristics, the reason they are sterile and stale.
What then are the root causes of poverty in Uganda? Poverty is a physical manifestation of our mental construct, and it is right there to start undoing it, not in saccos. Things will not change before we ourselves change the way we perceive, interpret, value and do things. These are factors of human development. Human potential is the real wealth of a nation. It is not about the rise of national incomes.
It is about creating an environment conducive for people to develop their full potential and lead productive, creative lives according to their aspirations. It will take more than good intentions to conquer poverty. The level of human development attained, which feed our mindset is literally a function of the State.
How much is the government doing in this regard? If Ugandans were to be swapped with the Japanese, Ugandans would wither in Japan as the Japanese thrive in Uganda. This adage points to the fact that there is some invisible non-monetary, non-material resource or force, that relates to the dynamics of poverty or prosperity that the Japanese have and we do not. There are two aspects to poverty – the invisible software one and the visible hardware one.
In order for us to engage effectively with nature and tame poverty, we need to download the appropriate software onto our system. This is a factor of human development which cannot be short circuited. It enables us to update our perception, understanding and interpretation of nature, which subsequently feed into our beliefs and attitudes that beget our vision, inform our values and ultimately construct our culture, behaviour and practices – the hardware.
The mechanical method of dishing out money in sacks to saccos and in those high sounding initiatives is a reactive hardware approach (fight) that is destined to fail. However effective the hardware may be, the quality of the output will be determined by the quality of the software. Improve the level of human development, or else even the dream of a middle income society remains the dream that it sounds.
odoiyoga@yahoo.com