Uganda

One of the factors sustaining violent conflict in Uganda is an economy that has fuelled and supported war, rather than peace. International Alert is trying to help change this with a new project to promote increased awareness and understanding of the links between economy, conflict and peace among key stakeholders in Uganda. The three-year project, beginning in late-2007, aims to shift policy and decision-making among government officials, international development agencies and the private sector to create an economy that is better aligned with sustainable peace.

Alert’s engagement in this new area is based on research conducted in Uganda in 2005-06, which identified the links between economy and conflict, as well as ways in which some economic actors are already working towards peace. Building on this research, our new project will further explore these issues in Uganda through:

• Promoting increased awareness and understanding of the links between economy and conflict/ economy and peace among key stakeholders in Uganda.
  
  
• Supporting proactive engagement on the part of some Ugandan businesspeople in pursuing a peacebuilding goal at both national and local levels.

With this new project, which is funded by SIDA and will be managed from Kampala, Alert is further expanding our field presence in the Great Lakes region, better placing us to assist local peace actors, both in specific country projects, and with a region-wide approach that crosses borders and fosters international dialogue and learning.

The conflict context

Uganda has experienced violent armed conflict almost continuously since its independence in 1962 – a period of more than 40 years. The persistence of conflict in Uganda is indicative of its deep-seated roots in the country’s political economy. This is exacerbated by the country being situated in a region which is itself characterised by violence.

Because of this history, there is very little sense of a national identity in Uganda that includes all the country’s ethnic and regional groups. Even efforts to promote ‘national reconciliation’ tend to focus exclusively on the conflict with the Lords Resistance Army in Northern Uganda. Ugandans’ perceptions of each other have been all-too-often violently polarised as part of a strategy of rule by successive colonial and post-colonial administrations and by resulting experiences of war.

One of the primary instruments of division between Uganda’s peoples has been economic policy. Unequal distribution of wealth and economic opportunities has persisted to the present day, and is apparent through a whole range of dimensions of economic policy and decision-making, land use, and trade and investment practices. To date, the opportunity to harness the economy and to engage economic actors for peacebuilding in Uganda has been under-exploited. Efforts to promote greater alignment between Uganda’s economy and the demands of building lasting peace are long overdue.


For more information, contact Jessie Banfield

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Last updated: October 2007