A failed state is defined as a state that has lost its ability to fulfil fundamental security and development functions, lacking effective control over its territory and borders. Common characteristics of a failed state, however, include a government incapable of tax collection, law enforcement, security assurance, territorial control, political or civil office staffing and payment of salaries and allowances to workers on time and infrastructure maintenance.

When this happens, widespread corruption and criminality, the intervention of state and non-state actors, the appearance of refugees and the involuntary movement of populations, sharp economic decline and military intervention from both within and outside the state are much more likely to occur. But these are not the only indicators of a failed state.

CSRC (2006) write that a failed state is one that can no longer reproduce the conditions for its own existence. However, the term failed state is used in very contradictory ways in the policy community (for instance, there is a tendency to label a “poorly performing” state as “failed” – a tendency CSRC reject).

The opposite of a “failed state” is an “enduring state” and the absolute dividing line between these two conditions is difficult to ascertain at the margins. Even in a failed state, some elements of the state, such as local state organisations, might continue to exist and function, although not optimally.

Robert Rotberg (2016) says that failed states are tense, deeply conflicted, dangerous and contested bitterly by warring factions. He adds that in most failed states, government troops battle armed revolts led by one or more rivals; and that occasionally, the official authorities in a failed state face two or more insurgencies, varieties of civil unrest, different degrees of communal discontent, and a plethora of dissent directed at the state and at groups within the state. He does not say that a state in which the powers that be effectively oppresses, represses and suppresses civil society is a failed state.

Robert Longley (2020) sees a failed state as a one with a government that has become incapable of providing the basic functions and responsibilities of a sovereign nation, such as military defence, law enforcement, justice, education, health or economic stability. To him common characteristics of failed states include ongoing civil violence, corruption, crime, poverty, illiteracy, and crumbling infrastructure. He, however, adds that even if a state is functioning properly, it can fail if it loses credibility and the trust of the people.

One writer said that state failure is not necessarily state collapse. Political transitions, repression, factionalism, intra-elite rivalry and external interventions and armed opposition groups concurrently combine to precipitate conditions of state collapse. Such are the conditions necessary for deep state (dominated by unelected individual connected to power) to replace the political state run by elected officials.

Some thinkers believe a state may simultaneously be a crisis, fragile, weak, collapsed and failed state. Uganda is a bit confusing because the political regime has passed what would be the legitimate functions and responsibilities of its government in control to the private sector in its revolution of surrender – the neoliberal revolution, as I showed in my article ‘Uganda Leadership and Politics: Transformational, Transactional or Both?’” published by the Tell Media of Kenya recently.

Can we call a state that relinquishes its responsibilities of education, health, infrastructural development and business to the private interests – domestic and foreign – a failed state, if it continues to design policies and frame laws to enable the private sector to perform?

I don’t know if that is a sign of failure, but definitely it is prone with corruption, patronage, deep state tendencies, nepotism, ethnicity, injustice, unfairness, marginalisation and neglect of the broad masses of the citizens

Way back in 2012 a debate picked up in Kampala over whether Uganda should be considered a “failed state”. Makerere University professor Frederick Jjuko began the discussion at the National Dialogue on Freedom of Expression and Information. He argued that Uganda meets the criteria of a “failed state” or a state that does not meet its basic responsibilities. A state collapses as a government (Cory Kuklick, 2012). The debate followed President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s choice of 100 per cent liberalisation of the economy, privatisation and divestiture and globalisation as the way forward for Uganda’s development. At the debate, Moses Byaruhanga, then one of President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s Political Advisors, saw “A failed state is a state that has failed to govern some parts of her territorial borders.’

So, when you look at Uganda, we have managed to control all our borders… That alone means we are not a failed state.” (Cory Kuklick, 2012).

Later, however, at variance with the thinking of his political advisor, President Tibuhaburwa Museveni, the most devout advocate of interests politics in Africa in general and Uganda in particular, tried to convince all and sundry that Uganda became a failed state because of the politics of identity (Uganda Media Centre, 2019). He knew that the indigenous communities of Uganda value their belonging and identities far more than they value monetised interests, and wanted to disorient their socio-culturally-oriented being towards embracing interests’ politics.

This was probably because he had already embraced neoliberalism, neoliberal economics and money economy. There was no way he could pursue these without eroding the indigenous people’s commitment to their belonging and identities. Apparently, at the beginning of the new millennium, President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s government became the first one in Africa to declare that globalisation would be Uganda’s pathway to development in the 21st century. He influenced the African Union also to embrace globalisation as its pathway to development in the 21st century,

Despite the fact that President Tibuhaburwa Museveni agrees that Uganda is a failed state, he led and governs Uganda as if he never revealed his view of the country as a failed state.

In this article, I want to handle the question “Is Uganda Really a Failed State of the 21st Century?” I will initially refer to The Failed State Index (TFSI), which is an annual report put out by the Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine.

There are 13 factors that are used when ranking states for the index, although there is no clear definition for what constitutes a “failed state”. In 2012, almost every African country was represented on the list. The Index, however, has come under criticism for applying universal standards to specific and diverse countries (Cory Kuklick, 2012), and therefore regarded as a flawed index, although the Index provides a good way to measure Uganda against  the standards of other countries. 

Uganda was ranked among the top 20 countries most vulnerable to state failure, according to the 2008 Failed States Index, published by the Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine. With a score of 96.1 out of a possible worst of 120, Uganda tied with Ethiopia for 16th most vulnerable, and faired just marginally better than North Korea (97.7), Haiti (99.3) and Burma (100.3). Countries were scored based upon twelve social, economic, political and military indicators, and data were collected between May and December 2007 from over 30,000 open-source articles and reports. Uganda has barely improved since the 2007 Index, where it was ranked 15th most vulnerable. Does the Failed States Index do the country justice?

Is Uganda in critical danger of becoming a failed state? (Melina Raquel Platas,2008). President Tibuhaburwa believed, Uganda is a failed state, not according to the indices used in the IFSI, but because the citizens of the 15 traditional states that were woven into the British Protectorate of Uganda, the Commonwealth Realm of Uganda and then Uganda, are stuck to their identities. The 15 traditional nations he did not explicitly mention, are Acholi, Ankole, Buganda, Bugisu, Bukedi, Bunyoro, Busoga, Karamoja, Kigezi, Lang’o, Moyo, Sebei, Teso, Toro and West Nile. As part of his strategy to destroy the belongings and identities of these nations, he has not only allocated enormous presidential time and energy as well as public money to bantustanise them and disconnect their peoples while also presiding over the grabbing of land and the greens by foreigners. I will come to this when I discuss what is happening to the indigenous ecologies in the country.

Meanwhile, Uganda’s quality of leadership and governance has also plummeted, with poor governance on the rise as militarisation of everything conceivable takes centre stage. This has dictated that the command-obey approach to governance supersedes the negotiated approach to governance. Indeed, presidentialism, whereby the president is at the centre of everything, now dominates governance.

However, rather than perceiving this as failure of the state, many Ugandans regard it as an indicator of a strong state with a strong man at the fulcrum of leadership, almost to the point of worshipping him.

Uganda is ranked the worst by far in the category of Refugees and Displaced Persons. Uganda is the third worst performing country worldwide in this category, only above Somalia and Sudan. According to the Uganda country profile compiled by the Fund for Peace, Uganda’s score is attributed to high numbers of refugees and people residing in internally displaced person’s (IDP) camps. This situation is getting worse as the Uganda government’s soft spot for refugees is encouraging large numbers of refugees to flock in the country, where it has planned to allocate billions of taxpayer’s dollars to educating their children at the expense of Ugandan children.

The quality of education for the natives is meteorically plummeting while that of refugees and former refugees is supersonically rising. Also, accelerated land grabbing by refugees and former refugees in Uganda has proliferated throughout the country, leading to huge numbers of the natives to lose their belonging and identities to become internally displaced people (IDPs).

Uganda’s environment is conflict and violence rich. Untimely deaths due to conflicts and violence at all levels of society are on the rise despite so much money being cowed into the physical security of Ugandans. Besides mental breakdowns are on the rise, with 4m of the estimated 45m Ugandans being characterised as mentally sick. The rising number of youths taking illicit drugs, such as marijuana, is pushing the number of mentally deranged people to astronomical levels. If Uganda is judged as a failed state on the basis of deteriorating mental health, then it is one.

However, public health facilities have never been worse than they are today, with many dispensaries and hospitals being unable to provide basic health services and drugs to the increasingly sick society. 

Whether or not Uganda is lapsing or has lapsed into a failed state, one may look at the ecology of institutions. Institutions are the formal or informal ‘rules of the game’ that facilitate economic, social, and political interactions. These include such things as legal rules, property rights, constitutions, political structures, and norms and customs (2017).

In ‘Musevenist’ Uganda, the president is the beginning and end of everything. As institutions have been consummated by the personal power and influence of Yoweri Tibuhaburwa Museveni. Some people say institutionalism in Uganda is on its death bed, and that the only functioning institution is the State House, which used to be just a residence of the person who occupied the post of president and his family. However, it operates like a mini-state, with all trappings of functionality and power. Unfortunately, it has become the epicentre of patronage, corruption and misuse of taxpayers’ money. In the recent past, we heard of some workers of State House forging the President’s signature, defrauding the country and even appointing and disappointing people using the forged president’s signature. seem people think this an indication of state failure. To be useful institutions must work and succeed each other sustainably. Let me say something about the ecology of institutions.

The ecology of institutions is the study of how institutions change over time and across space. Institutions are socially created rules that define roles and expectations in society and can involve a variety of areas, such as legal systems, marriage and government. Among other things, Currie, et. al (2021) use macro-scale empirical comparative analyses to demonstrate how evolutionary theory can be used to generate and test hypotheses about the processes that have shaped some of the major patterns we see in institutional diversity over time and across the world today.

However, where rulers use their influence to retune institutions to dance to their dictates, the institutions will not function properly. They will decay and collapse while consuming a lot of money before it is realised they can no longer perform and deliver public goods and services.

There has been a high rate of institutional decay and collapse of institutions in Uganda – both public and private – during the last 40 or so years, precipitated either by the Luwero combatants outside power between 1981-1986 or in power from 1986 to the present. Much of the institutional decay and collapse has been because of executive interferences and impromptu policies designed to ensure (i) power retention by the power that be; or (ii) access to resources by state functionaries at the expense of the indigenes. Presidentialism has been, and continues to be at the centre of the high rate of institutional decay and collapse in Uganda. 

Collapse is considered a breakup of institutions and entire socio-economies. Collapse has accompanied socio-economic history, but seems to have become more topical again in recent decades (e.g. Elsener, 2021). In Uganda, institutional collapse is these days achieved by both irrationalisation when institutions were broken into small breaking the state institutions into smaller ones that consumed far more than they produced in terms of goods and services; and by rationalisations when the smaller institutions that were created out of mother ministries are then reintegrated back into the ministries, ostensibly to enhance efficiency and save money. This is what we are seeing happening regarding the coffee industry whereby the president wants the efficient Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) reintegrated into the inefficient and ineffective Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Animal Husbandry.

Since fear has been married with legislation, the Bill required to achieve this is likely to be passed by legislators stuck between fear of the President and fear of losing elections to their political adversaries in 2026.

Institutions stick around for all sorts of reasons, and we don’t have to accept that they must remain static and eternal. Yes, we can tear them down, alter them intentionally, turn informal guidelines into formal rules backed by the power of law, and all sorts of other things. Our political system is indeed in trouble; its constituent institutions are under all sorts of pressure; but this doesn’t have to be the end (Wyman, 2020).

Change will necessarily entail overhauling the current political order with new leadership and political agenda that genuinely serve the public interest. As long as leaders are driven by vanity, corrupt intent, and incompetence, we will continue to reap the same bitter fruits (e.g., Mzukisi Qobo, 2022)

Niall Ferguson (2013) says the common thread in the growth of unaccountable elites, the explosion of regulation, the corrosion of rule of law, and the shrinking of civil society is the fact of the overmighty state. In Uganda when we talk about the state, we really mean the overwhelming influence of one man – President Tibuhaburwa Museveni – on and in every institution of government, creating unaccountable elites, corrosion of rule of law, shrinking civil society participation and institutionalising one man rule at the expense of political development of country and people.

The political regime in power has allowed ecological imperialism (e.g., Alejandro Pedragal and Nemanja Lukic, 2024; Crosby, 2004; Khan Haider, 2023)) to consummate Uganda at the expense of the indigenous ecologies (e.g., Pamela McElwee, et.al., 2018). The foreign ecological imperialists are mainly Indians and Chinese who are being encouraged by the government of President Tibuhaburwa Museveni to extend their ecological footprints into the country. The government has more or less sacrificed the indigenous Ugandans to the modern-day ecological imperialists.

For example, the indigenous Ugandans have lost their cultural, biological and cultural attachments to Lake Victoria and other lakes, to the Chinese, Indians and Rwandese refugees and former Rwandese refugees now enjoying Ugandan citizenship and dual citizenship, end everything that goes with that enjoyment. Protein deficiency among the displaced fishing communities has risen supersonically as some people have had to lose their lives due to shooting by soldiers securing the interests of the foreign ecological imperialists and their supporter.

We have lost indigenous knowledge and ecologies of fishing communities linked to the lakes for centuries. The same has happened among land-based communities linked to forests, swamps and different agroecological systems due to land grabbing and green grabbing by the ecological imperialists.

I have written about the new imperialism in Uganda through primitive accumulation by dispossession (Oweyegha-Afunaduula, 2023) and local imperialism (2023), which are a renewal of the selfishness and greed of power at the expense of the citizens.  So Uganda is under stress and strains generated by the foreign ecological imperialists and by the new imperialism of accumulation by dispossession and by local imperialists, who are selfish, greedy people either in government or connected to government.

I don’t want to be the one to say that on the basis of highly unstable institutionalism, ecological governance and diminishing indigenous ecologies, Uganda is a failed state. Make your own conclusions after reading this article. What is true, however, is that our institutions and ecological governance are in trouble. When ecological governance is in trouble, usually due to political ineptitude, political bankruptcy and the politics of bankruptcy, we can’t assure the citizens of environmental and ecological justice. We can’t prevent the degeneration of the indigenous ecologies being degraded further until the people are totally delinked from the land and they become internally displaced people. This is already happening and wide spread. Failed State?

For God and my country.

• Tell report / By Oweyegha-Afunaduula / Environmental Historian and Conservationist Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA), Seeta, Mukono, Uganda.

About the Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA)

The CCTAA was innovated by Hyuha Mukwanason, Oweyegha-Afunaduula and Mahir Balunywa in 2019 to the rising decline in the capacity of graduates in Uganda and beyond to engage in critical thinking and reason coherently besides excellence in academics and academic production. The three scholars were convinced that after academic achievement the world outside the ivory tower needed graduates that can think critically and reason coherently towards making society and the environment better for human gratification. They reasoned between themselves and reached the conclusion that disciplinary education did not only narrow the thinking and reasoning of those exposed to it but restricted the opportunity to excel in critical thinking and reasoning, which are the ultimate aim of education. They were dismayed by the truism that the products of disciplinary education find it difficult to tick outside the boundaries of their disciplines; that when they provide solutions to problems that do not recognise the artificial boundaries between knowledges, their solutions become the new problems. They decided that the answer was a new and different medium of learning and innovating, which they characterised as “The Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis” (CCTAA).

Some Readings

Adam J. Levitin (2011). Bankrupt politics and the Politics of Bankruptcy. Researchgate,  August, 2011 DOI:10.2139/ssrn.1898775, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228158260_Bankrupt_Politics_and_the_Politics_of_Bankruptcy Visited on 6 November 2024 at 13.49pm EAT.

Alejandro Pedragal and Nemanja Lukic (2024). Imperialism, Ecological Imperialism and Green Imperialism. Researchgate, March 2024, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379017855_Imperialism_Ecological_Imperialism_and_Green_Imperialism_An_Overview Visited on 5 November 2024 at 18.22pm EAT

Alfred W. Crosby (2004). Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe. 900-1900.

Anderson, Eugene N. 1996. Ecologies of the heart: Emotion, belief, and the environment. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

Berkes, Fikret. 2008. Sacred ecology: Traditional ecological knowledge and resource management. New York: Routledge.

Conrad Schetter ( ). Why do states collapse and what really happens? Governance and Conflict Research Group Center for Development Research Bonn, Germany. https://www.rural21.com/fileadmin/_migrated/content_uploads/ELR_Why_do_states_collapse_0206.pdf Visited on 4 November 2024 at 12.37pm EAT

Cory Kuklick (2012). The Failed State Argument. Makerere University News, 11 November 2012. https://news.mak.ac.ug/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/20121111-The-Independent-The-failed-state-argument-Cory-Kuklick.pdf Visited on 4 November 2024 at 10.39am EAT

CSRC (2006). Crisis, Fragile and Faile States: Definitions Used by CSRC. https://www.lse.ac.uk/international-development/Assets/Documents/PDFs/csrc-background-papers/Definition-of-a-Failed-State.pdf Visited on 4 November 2024 at 1200 Noon EAT

Elsner, W. (2021). Collapse. Institutional Decline and Breakdown, Its Endogeneity and Its Asymmetry Vis-á-Vis Emergence: A Theoretical Frame. Journal of Economic Issues, 55(1), 79–102. https://doi.org/10.1080/00213624.2021.1873048 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00213624.2021.1873048 Visited on 6 November 2024 at 12.37

Howitt, Richard (2001). Rethinking resource management: Justice, sustainability and indigenous peoples. London: Routledge.

Johais, E., Bayer, M., & Lambach, D. (2020). How do states collapse? Towards a model of causal mechanisms. Global Change, Peace & Security, 32(2), 179–197. https://doi.org/10.1080/14781158.2020.1780204 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14781158.2020.1780204 Visited on 4 November 2024 at 12.54pm EAT.

Johais, E., Bayer, M., & Lambach, D. (2020). How do states collapse? Towards a model of causal mechanisms. Global Change, Peace & Security, 32(2), 179–197. https://doi.org/10.1080/14781158.2020.1780204 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14781158.2020.1780204 Visited on 4 November 202r4 at 12.58pm EAT.

Jonathan Di John (2008). Conceptualising the Causes and Consequences of Failed States: A Review of the Literature.            Working Paper No. 25 – Development as State-Making. Crisis States Research Centre, School of Oriental and African Studies. https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/57427/wp25.2.pdf Visited on 4 November 2024 at 13.03pm EAT.

Khan, Haider (2023): Ecological Imperialism: A 21st Century Circuits Approach. MPRA, 29 March 2023. https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/116844/ Visited on 5 November 2024 at 18.15pm EAT.

Lisa Herzog, Frank Hindriks, Rafael Wittek (2024). How Institutions Decay: Towards an Indigenous Theory. Economics and Philosophy, Researchgate. DOI:10.1017/S0266267124000208 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/382048794_How_Institutions_Decay_Towards_an_Endogenous_Theory Visited on 6 November 2024 at 12.43pm EAT.

Liya Palagashvili,, Ennio Piano and David Skarbek (2017). The Decline and rise of Institutions: A Modern Survey of the Austrian Contribution to the Economic Analysis of Institutions. Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2017. https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/decline-and-rise-of-institutions/37AF85206D8C82C60F33374AB63FD115 Visited on 6 November 2024 at 13.00 pm EAT.

Melina Raquel Platas (2008). Is Uganda a Failed State? 27 June 2008. https://melinaplatas.com/2008/06/27/is-uganda-a-failed-state/ Visited on 4th November 2008 at 11.11am EAT.

Mzukisi Qobo (2022). What will it take to halt institutional decay and defend the rule of law? Mail Guardian, 28 JANUARY 2022, https://mg.co.za/thought-leader/opinion/2022-01-28-what-will-it-take-to-halt-institutional-decay-and-defend-the-rule-of-law/ Visited on 6 November 2024 at 13.10pm EAT

Niall Ferguson (2013). The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die. The Independent Review, A Journal of Political Economy, Volume 19 Number 2 Fall 2014, Penguin Press New York.

Oweyegha-Afunaduula (2023). The New Imperialism in Uganda: Primitive Accumulation by Dispossession. Ultimate News, February 1, 2023 . https://ultimatenews.co.ug/2023/02/oweyegha-afunaduula-the-new-imperialism-in-uganda-primitive-accumulation-by-dispossession/ Visited on 5 November 2024 at 18.06pm EAT

Oweyegha-Afunaduula (2023). Local Imperialism has taken over from foreign imperialism over a century after. Uganda Today, November 24 2023. https://ugandatoday.co.ug/local-imperialism-has-taken-over-from-foreign-imperialism-over-a-century-after/ Visited on 5 November 2024 at 18.10pm EAT.

Pamela McElwee, Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares, Marian Ahn Thorpe, Kyle Powys Whyte, Beth Rose Middleton, Kaitlin Reed, Waaseyaa’sin Christine Sy, Alysse Marie Moldawer (2018). Indigenous Ecologies. Oxford Bibliographies, https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199830060/obo-9780199830060-0199.xml Visited on 5 November 2024 pm EAT

Patrick Wyman (2020). What are institutions and why are ours crumbling? Norms, Systems and Breakdowns.

Pierotti, Raymond. 2012. Indigenous knowledge, ecology, and evolutionary biology. London: Routledge.

Richardson, Benjamin J. 2009. The ties that bind: Indigenous peoples and environmental governance. In Indigenous peoples and the law: Comparative and critical perspectives. Edited by Benjamin J. Richardson, Shin Imai, and Kent McNeill, 337–370. Oxford: Hart.

ROBERT I. ROTBERG (2016). Chapter One. Failed States, Collapsed States, Weak States: Causes and Indicators. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/statefailureandstateweaknessinatimeofterror_chapter.pdf Visited 4November 2024 at 12.07pm EAT.

Robert Longley (2020).   What is a Failed State: Definition and Examples. ThoughtCo. Published on July 27, 2020. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-failed-state-definition-and-examples-5072546 Visited on 4 November 2024 at 12.17pm EAT.

Thomas E. Currie, Marco Campenni, Adam Flitton, Tim Njagi, Enoch Ontiri.Cedric Perret and  Lindsay Walker (2021). The Cultural Evolution and Ecology of Institutions. The Royal Society Publishing, Published:17 May 2021https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0047 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2020.0047 Visited on 5 November 2024 at 17.29pm EAT.

Uganda Media Centre (2019). Uganda Became a Failed State because of Politics of Identity” – President Museveni.  Uganda Media Centre, 8 July 2019 https://www.mediacentre.go.ug/media/%E2%80%9Cuganda-became-failed-state-because-politics-identity%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93-president-museveni Visited 4th November 2024 at 10.34 am EAT.

ULRICH BECK (1997). SubPolitics:  Ecology and the disintegration of institutional power. Organization & Environment, Vol. 10, No. 1 (March 1997), pp. 52-65 (14 pages) Published By: Sage Publications, Inc.

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