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eight - ‘Food that cannot be eaten’: the shame of Uganda’s anti-poverty policies
- Edited by Erika K. Gubrium, OsloMet - storbyuniversitetet, Sony Pellissery, Ivar Lødemel, Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Göttingen
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- Book:
- The Shame of It
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 03 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 11 December 2013, pp 157-178
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
Over the past 25 years, the varying approaches encompassed within Uganda's anti-poverty effort have been touted as a best case model in the developing world (Hickey, 2011). Uganda is a land-locked country lying astride the equator in east central Africa. It is closely linked by economic and colonial history to Kenya in the east, Tanzania in the south, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to the north and west respectively, and Rwanda in the southwest. Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, contributing 31 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP), 85 per cent of exports and employing at least 77 per cent of the active labour force (MFPED, 2004; UBOS, 2007). This agricultural influence has resulted in an economic system dependent on rain-fed crops and livestock farming. As Uganda has yet to develop and adopt irrigation and water harvesting technologies to any significant extent that could reduce the country's dependence on rain-fed agriculture (UNDP, 2005; UBOS, 2010), the country's economic health has been subject to the vagaries of weather and climate.
With a per capita GDP of US$1,457 in 2003 (UNDP, 2005) and a per capita income of US$334 in 2005 (UNDP, 2005), Uganda was and remains ranked among the poorest countries in the world. Rural poverty has been influenced by a combination of factors, including the slow growth of the agricultural sector and low prices of agricultural products; decreasing soil fertility and crop yields; malnutrition and a heavy disease burden including HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis; gender inequalities in access to productive resources; and a lack of focus on the poorest in public sector investment to support agriculture.
Endemic corruption is also a key challenge that pervades all aspects of life. Said to be a legacy of colonial rule, it arguably impeded Uganda's economic development in the decades of autocratic rule following independence (Ruzindana, 1997). During the era of democratic reform, the Museveni government and its National Resistance Movement (NRM) promised ‘clean government’, both in its push to be elected in the mid-1980s and post-election in an effort to appeal to international donors. Corruption, however, has since remained a serious problem (Flanary and Watt, 1999; Akello, 2012; Izama, 2012). International aid was withdrawn in 2012 in response to rampant violations (Ford, 2012).
Poverty in Global Perspective: Is Shame a Common Denominator?
- ROBERT WALKER, GRACE BANTEBYA KYOMUHENDO, ELAINE CHASE, SOHAIL CHOUDHRY, ERIKA K. GUBRIUM, JO YONGMIE NICOLA, IVAR LØDEMEL, LEEMAMOL MATHEW, AMON MWIINE, SONY PELLISSERY, YAN MING
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- Journal:
- Journal of Social Policy / Volume 42 / Issue 2 / April 2013
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 28 January 2013, pp. 215-233
- Print publication:
- April 2013
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- Article
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Focussing on the psychosocial dimensions of poverty, the contention that shame lies at the ‘irreducible absolutist core’ of the idea of poverty is examined through qualitative research with adults and children experiencing poverty in diverse settings in seven countries: rural Uganda and India; urban China; Pakistan; South Korea and United Kingdom; and small town and urban Norway. Accounts of the lived experience of poverty were found to be very similar, despite massive disparities in material circumstances associated with locally defined poverty lines, suggesting that relative notions of poverty are an appropriate basis for international comparisons. Though socially and culturally nuanced, shame was found to be associated with poverty in each location, variably leading to pretence, withdrawal, self-loathing, ‘othering’, despair, depression, thoughts of suicide and generally to reductions in personal efficacy. While internally felt, poverty-related shame was equally imposed by the attitudes and behaviour of those not in poverty, framed by public discourse and influenced by the objectives and implementation of anti-poverty policy. The evidence appears to confirm the negative consequences of shame, implicates it as a factor in increasing the persistence of poverty and suggests important implications for the framing, design and delivery of anti-poverty policies.