The neoliberal morass in Uganda

A new book, Uganda: The Dynamics of Neoliberal Transformation, is out. It is a compelling and timely study of how the neoliberal economic reform experience has impacted Ugandan society and politics.
The book is published by Zed Books in London (should be available in Ugandan bookshop soon). It brings together a collage of analytical and insightful pieces by Ugandan and foreign scholars. I reviewed the manuscript for the publisher and strongly recommend it both for the academic community and the wider Ugandan public.
The neoliberal creed believes that free markets deliver prosperity and happiness to everyone, who freely participates in economic transactions and activities. It is an article of faith foisted on poor economies of the Global South in ways that have brought more economic distress than progress.
Uganda has been oversold as a roaring success story of economic liberalisation and privatisation of business. But the actual picture of Uganda’s economic performance looks dire when one scratches beyond official statistics and cosmetic indicators.
After three decades of full embrace of economic policy-dictates of the Washington Consensus, the progenitor of neoliberal policies, there has been very little structural transformation in Uganda.
Instead, we have witnessed the pervasion of social and cultural norms at the behest of the free-for-all scramble in the market place, the erosion of the basic sense of collective national identity, and rapacious personal profiteering by the few well-connected.
In a rather callous, if not reckless assertion, we are often told that the depressing traffic jams of Kampala and the distorted sprawling real-estate sector are signs of just how much transformation we are registering.
There is need to pause and reflect. The irony of what the rulers in Uganda have done in the last three decades is that some of the policies they have rigidly pursued cannot be implemented in the home countries of the foreigners who have dictated economic policy in Uganda.
Many of the orthodoxy policies that the IMF and the World Bank inserted deeply in the imagination of Bank of Uganda (BoU) officials, like the bizarre interest rates and fighting to keep down inflation for its own sake, are practices that cannot be entertained in America and Europe.
We were told, at the height of drumming up neoliberal orthodoxy, that governments have no business doing business and that the biggest threat to growth is State interference in markets. But then, over the past couple of decades, you have the world’s top performing economy, China, whose capitalist model is fundamentally driven by the State and organised around State-owned enterprises.
The followers of the neoliberal creed have had little to say about the Chinese model of growth, which stands at the opposite end of their one-size-fit-all prescription of leaving everything to the forces of the free market.
In the early 2000s, the coterie of local lackeys in the media, academia and government circles celebrated the give-away of our only national commercial bank. Now we have the filth flowing out slowly of how individuals at BoU and actors in the business sector may have colluded in handling crises in the banking sector. What might be most interesting is the full details surrounding Uganda Commercial Bank, or maybe we might never know.
At any rate, why would anyone think it’s possible to transform a country without a solid financial sector as the source of steady supply of affordable credit for trade and investment?
Imbibed with the globalised free market narrative, somehow the rulers and their agents at the Treasury and the Finance ministry believed that foreign capital would capitalise Uganda and provide the requisite credit supply for economic transformation. It is like this had ever happened anywhere in the world, that a poor economy can be transformed through foreign capital, which is necessarily in search of quick, if not parasitic profit.
Unless there is a systematic and sustained national economic strategy, properly coordinated and prudently executed, we shall chase the shadows of development and remain a begging lot looking for external handouts. Those who give the handouts are only happy to maintain their benefactor status – it must feel good to be begged and to paternalistically issue handouts.
In recent years, we have jumped to China, the new aggressive patron, but I wonder what national strategy informs our engagement with China.

Dr Khisa is assistant professor at North Carolina State University (USA).
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