Does political and economic stability improve people’s livelihoods and their quality of life? Does stability increase the success of development projects? Uganda has recently enjoyed a period of relative economic calm, leading researchers from the University of Bath to ask: how have poverty reduction programmes fared during this time? How far is success dependent on local conditions?

Uganda is at the forefront of efforts to institutionalise sustainable, government-owned, poverty reduction programmes in Africa. In 1998, when the research was undertaken, the country was tackling poverty in two major ways by:

• increasing understanding of poverty through its Participatory Poverty Assessment Project (PPAP) and
• creating local institutions to manage poverty reduction, through the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP)

The researchers assessed the impact of these two approaches in six different areas in Uganda’s central rural Mukono District. They found that the value attached by individuals to different government poverty reduction activities varied by area:

• Rural communities favoured poverty reduction activities related to agriculture (pig, chicken and other livestock rearing), water and sanitation facilities, and roads. The five different rural communities all had different priorities.
• The urban community preferred income-generating projects.

The report also found:

• rising inequality
• unemployment and under-employment
• local government corruption
• insufficient funding for education, health, and agriculture
• a rise in the economic status of women but also in casual marriages and polygamy

Recommendations to increase the effectiveness of poverty reduction programmes included the need for:

• more detailed analysis of local conditions, since their impact varied according to livelihood systems, which themselves varied, not only between urban and rural, but also within the rural category (eg smallholder coffee, tea plantation, subsistence plus cash crop vegetables), and within livelihood systems impact varied between households, and within households between individual members
• a combination of economic and sociological research into poverty for the benefit of policy.

Source(s):
'Exploring the Dynamics of Poverty in Africa: a Regional Case Study from Uganda' report to Department for International Development (Escor) by P. Bevan et al (1998)

Funded by: DFID (Escor) 1998

id21 Research Highlight: 13 February 2001

Further Information:
Philippa Bevan
Department of Economics and International Development
University of Bath
Claverton Down
Bath BA2 7AY
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 1225 826497
Fax: +44 (0) 1225 826381
Contact the contributor: P.G.Bevan@bath.ac.uk

Department of Economics and International Development, University of Bath, UK

Other related links:
Refer to ID21's recent highlight 'Polity quality – how does governance affect poverty?'

Also see ID21's 'The politics of poverty: is pro-poor politics possible?'

Search the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion pages for further research

UNESCO's MOST has further research into Poverty and Social Exclusion

The University of Sussex Poverty Research Unit aims to develop existing and new areas of poverty research

Refer to the UNDP for a broad selection of information on human development and livelihoods

IIED presents varied research and applied experience