Abstract
It is now over a decade since poverty reduction strategies were embraced by Uganda as a one of the preconditions to reach the debt relief completion point associated with Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative. Between 1997 and 2008, the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) was the overarching planning framework for the country. The PEAP has been Uganda’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), guiding policy formulation and program implementation. In 2007, a review of the PEAP was done culminating into the National Development Plan (NDP), 2010/11 - 2014/15. It has been observed that while the PEAP was being formulated and implemented, the participation of the civil society (including workers and employers organisations) was limited to very few organizations, with no full-time engagement. This was founded on the premise that policy formulation was a preserve of government and the social partners had no business in the process of national planning. The engagement and participation of workers and employers began in 2002, when PEAP was being reviewed. However, the engagement was weak because it had no clear institutional framework. There was commendable participation during the recently concluded National Development Plan. In this article, we used a qualitative case study mainly involving key in depth interviews and documentary analysis. The participation of workers and employers’ organisations’ (Note 1) involvement in the poverty reduction strategies since 1999 is presented in four parts. First, an overview of the socio economic development trends in Uganda is outlined. Second, the concept of social dialogue is outlined. Third, the state of social dialogue in the country is highlighted. Fourth, we analyse the social partners’ participation in the country’s national development planning process.
Highlights
Uganda is considered the pioneer among its African peers in developing its own planning framework for poverty eradication, known as the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP)
Its first revision coincided with the introduction of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in 1999, so that the revised version produced in 2000 naturally became Uganda’s first PRSP
The Government revised the Plan again in 2004 and 2007(MOFPED, 2007) and the third review turned into the National Development Plan (NDP) 2010/11–2014/15
Summary
Uganda is considered the pioneer among its African peers in developing its own planning framework for poverty eradication, known as the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP). Other than the governance issues, it has been argued further that participation has greatly influenced the content of PRSPs (Mcgee, 2001; Mkandawire, 2005) This background is one reason why the participation of employers and workers organizations (sometimes referred to as social partners) in the formulation and implementation of the PEAP in 1997 was limited to minimal engagement of very few organizations. Despite the rhetoric from senior government officials concerning the participation of other stakeholders in reforms, ‘authoritarianism, arbitrariness, corruption and other manifestations of patronage politics’ have remained a dominant feature of the Ugandan public administration management and reforms (Van de Walle 2001) Social partners made their first attempt at genuine participation in the poverty reduction strategies during the second revision of PEAP in 2004. The nature of participation of employers and workers organizations remains highly attributed the national politics and the macro international political economy as stipulated by the neo liberal paradigm (Mkandawire, 2005)
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