There is an emerging school of thought, which holds that, despite repetitive talk of development, transformation and progress” of Uganda during the 40-year rule of the country by President Tibuhaburwa Museveni and his National Resistance Movement (NRM), Uganda has become both a renewed labour reserve and a lucrative market for domestic and external slaves.

The school of thoughts convinced that the conversion of Uganda into a renewed labour reserve and lucrative market for domestic and external slaves has been the political goal of President Tibuhaburwa Museveni and his NRM.

According to the school of thought, the president has been able to conceal the political goal of building Uganda as a labour reserve and a market for slaves in modern times, by preoccupying the people with politics, not production. “It is politics before elections and after elections in a cyclic manner”, says one proponent of the school.

If we are to agree with the school of thought, then we have to apply the word “Kugumaaza”, introduced in politics of Uganda by Museveni some years back to mean “diversionary” to ideas such as Operation Wealth Creation, Parish Development Model and Myooga, which are cast as tools for eliminating poverty.

It is obvious that just as ideas have been pursued and implemented at very high cost to the taxpayer, poverty has been proliferating even far more widely than ever before since the president and his NRM grabbed power in the country.

Simultaneously, Uganda has become more of a new slave labour reserve and a source of domestic and external slaves. This is a confirmation that rather developing and transforming Uganda in terms of people’s development, the governors have been de-developing and underdeveloping the country.

De-development and underdevelopment are at the core of what is these days known as Musevenomics. Those promoting and practising Musevenomics know exactly what it is all about, but are exploiting the collective ignorance of Ugandans, which they are not even committed to reduce.

Let me expound on the two negative processes undermining the development, transformation and progress of Uganda in the 21st Century.

De-development

De-development” refers to a process that undermines or weakens an economy’s potential to grow and expand and lead to a reduction in the stock of capital available to a group, and increases in poverty. It can damage data gathering and knowledge production abilities, let alone wreck the environment. Warring is an element in de-development.

According to Sara Roy (2016), “De-development is a process shaped by a vision of denial and renunciation. The deliberate uprooting and displacement of the indigenous population, the ‘de-skilling’ and underuse of the…..labourforce, the segmentation and fragmentation of the economic sector in the periphery, the usurpation of land and water, the proletarianisation of the workforce and the increasing insignificance of the ‘proletariat,’ the alienation of the…. labour force or the intentional denial of access to the means of production as a form of collective punishment. 

These phenomena are not simply the distortion of economic development, but the deliberate denigration of productive life to a lower level.  It is precisely what you need to create slaves –domestic and external. If they are domestic, they may even be lecturers, professors or bureaucrat, whose pay is not commensurate with the qualifications, expertise and experience, while that of the mediocre is astronomical.

Uganda has experienced 40 years of de-development and suppressed human potential and the right to development. Schemes such as Operation Wealth Creation, Parish Development Model and Myooga, which ultimately are tools of de-development are being cast as tools of development at the periphery. Fortunate for the rulers, most citizens are unable to perceive what is going on.

Underdevelopment

Underdevelopment, in the context of international development, refers to a state where certain countries or regions exhibit lower levels of development compared to others, often characterised by economic disparities, unequal trade relations and hindered progress. If we go by this definition or description, Uganda is indeed an underdeveloped country. It is characterised by diminishing political participation, including people withdrawing from voting people they want to lead them.

According to Adelman and Morris (1967), “The most important instruments for increasing political participation in underdeveloped countries are those that involve fundamental changes in socio-economic and political structure as well as a basic reorientation of development strategies.

Unfortunately, in Uganda, the economy is in the hands of foreigners and functionaries of the ruling party, whom the leadership seems to be protecting against the people. This explains the exclusion of the absolute majority of Ugandans from meaningful and effective political participation and the use of violence to contain them.

Underdevelopment goes hand in hand with dependence (Furtado, 2020). The more a country is underdeveloped the more it will be dependent in a diversity of human life and human endeavours. It cannot claim to be developing. Uganda for the past 40 years has been in this condition. Assembling cars and buses is an attempt to conceal this fact.

The sowing of seeds of de-development and underdevelopment started long before the NRM/A captured the instruments of power on April 25, 1986. It was a multi-process strategy. I will list them without further analysis.

The Luwero bush war (1981-1986), which is erroneously called liberation war, was only one of the elements in the multi-process strategies. The other elements, among others, were the following.

• Destruction of cooperative societies and unions
• Destruction of industries in Jinja
• Barter trade scandal, 1986-1987
• Foreign exchange scandal, 1987-1988
• Economic structural adjustment
• Retrenchment
• Sale of public enterprises at peanut prices
• Universal Primary Education
• Universal Secondary Education
• Discriminatory policies
• Discriminatory education system
• Impoverishment project
• Destruction of community responsibility for children
• Proliferation of production of vagabonds
• Conversion of Politics into a lucrative employer and employment
• Engineering and institutionalisation of corruption
• Scandals involving trillions of shillings, diverting money from social development to individual enrichment.
• Use of violence as an electoral tool and tool of public management.
• Raising nincompoops over and above educated, expert and skilled Citizens
• Raising war above social development
• Resistance of minimum wage.
• Allowing too many refugees in the country and not limiting their access to jobs, citizenship, nationality and sovereignty of Uganda
• Using ethnicity as a political tool through political ethnicisation and ethnic politicisation
• Military capture of civic spaces
• Executive capture of Parliament and the Judiciary, thereby denying Ugandans effective representation of their challenges, problems and issues and meaningful justice respectively
• Liberalisation and privatisation benefiting foreigners.
• Putting a halt to meaningful and effective change of leadership and governance
• Apartheid-like education system
• Closing of technical schools and teacher training colleges.
• Land grabbing by foreigners and people with unethical and immoral money.
• Removal of price controls

The combined effect of all these and other elements of the multi-process strategy of sowing de-development and underdevelopment is many in one: despondency, loss of interest in the country and work, drug addiction, suicides, killings, robberies, further impoverishment, and readiness (or compulsion) to offer oneself as a domestic slave or external slave.

Meanwhile politicians use money, often ill-gotten to manipulate the poor and needy to enhance their political resources and fortunes.

For God and my country.

• A 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).For God and my country.

Further reading

Adelman, I. and Morris, C.T. (1967) Society, Politics and Economic Development: A Quantitative Approach. John Hopkin, Baltimore.

Berberoglu, B. (1978). The Meaning of Underdevelopment: a Critique of Mainstream Theories of Development and Underdevelopment. International Studies, 17(1), 51-73. https://doi.org/10.1177/002088177801700103 (Original work published 1978)

Duffy, David (2002). Underdevelopment and Less Developed Countries. https://www.tcd.ie/Economics/assets/pdf/SER/2002/Underdevelopment%20and%20Less%20Developed%20Countries%20By%20David%20Duffy.pdf Visited on 8 April 2025 at 14:58 pm EAT

Furtado, C. (2020). Underdevelopment and Dependence: The Fundamental Connections. Review of Political Economy, 33(1), 7–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/09538259.2020.1827549 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09538259.2020.1827549 Visited on 8 April 2025 at 15:00 pm EAT.

Jo Kaybryn (2021). De-development: can it be managed. Linkedin, February 7 2021. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/de-development-can-managed-jo-kaybryn/ Visited on 8 April 2025 at 12:45 pm EAT.

Roy, S. (1999). De-development Revisited: Palestinian Economy and Society Since Oslo. Journal of Palestine Studies, 28(3), 64–82. https://doi.org/10.2307/2538308.

Robin MILLARD (2023). Gaza Has Gone Through 16 Years Of ‘De-development’: UN. BARRON’S, October, 25 2023. https://www.barrons.com/news/gaza-has-experienced-16-years-of-de-development-un-5e93cca8 Visited on 8 April 2025 at 13:08 pm EAT

Roy, S. (2016). The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development (Expanded Third Edition), Institute for Palestine Studies. 2016. https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1649448 Visited on 8 April, 2025 at 12:59 pm EAT.