Uganda's Parish Development Model, 2022: A Preliminary Assessment of its Probable Socio-Economic Impacts

Abstract

The Parish Development Model (PDM) is Uganda’s latest attempt at making devolution work for local development, economic transformation, and social inclusion. Launched in early 2022, it raises the critical question of whether state-led local development, even when in partnership with the private sector and civil society, is feasible in a low-income country. The paper looks at four challenges of PDM implementation: maintaining policy and institutional coherence; establishing credible partnerships for local development between the government, the private sector and civil society; mobilizing human and financial resources, including at the local level, to sustain program implementation; and fostering self-determination and preventing system capture. ?

?I.??????????????Background

?This paper examines the potential impact of Uganda’s Parish Development Model (PDM), launched in 2022,[1] as an instrument for bottom-up economic transformation. The Ministry of Finance (2022) has defined the PDM as “an approach aimed at organizing and delivering public and private sector interventions for wealth creation” with the parish as the administrative and operational hub for all government services. At its introduction, the Government declared the PDM as the “last mile” in Uganda’s quest for social inclusion, poverty eradication, and sustainable development.

?That the PDM was introduced after the devastating impacts of Covid-19 was also politically significant. The issue of economic transformation, though reportedly the guiding principle of public policy in Uganda, has been heightened by the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. In two short years, the pandemic revealed several structural and capacity gaps in Uganda, ranging from insufficient food production to paucity of medicine supplies and related products. Moreover, infrastructure and social and economic service provision across a range of sectors, crucial for sustaining economic activities during external shocks, also were inadequate. While stakeholders expect strong policy measures to address these challenges, it is not clear what role the PDM will play in the new push for economic transformation and inclusion: the need for "strong sensitization" has entered Uganda's political discourse in recent months.

The main goal of the PDM, according to Uganda’s finance minister, is to "enable households still in subsistence agriculture to join the money economy” within a generation. [2] To examine this objective, the paper discusses the political economy of bureaucratic modernization and local development in Uganda, in the face of limited financial and human resources. An underlying question is: what needs to be done to translate PDM aspirations into discernible changes at the local level? The challenges of PDM implementation are fourfold:

?Financial resource availability – PDM implementation will demand a good deal of financial resources, with all three possible sources i.e., domestic taxes, incurring domestic or external debt or budgetary reallocations having stark political implications.

?State delegation versus market imperatives – while the state aims to provide leadership on PDM implementation, market-oriented strategies, notably public, private (or community) partnerships, are expected to drive the process in the medium to long run. In reality, “market-orientation” in Uganda will be challenged by the serious disparities in asset ownership, skills, and access to credit – and even non-existence of markets in parts of the country. The institutional weakness of the local bureaucracies, notably at parish level, might simply mean that “state-led” equals to “laissez faire.”

Robust support structures – The large number of parishes in Uganda and their widely-varying needs have made it quite difficult to provide technical support and advisory service on an expeditious and fair basis. Thus, even for the PDM, a program focused on local empowerment, the urban or peri-urban bias in providing support services already is palpable.

Self-determination versus fiscal dependence – Self-determination will ultimately imply weaning parishes off PDM cash as soon as possible, while at the same time boosting local revenue sources to inculcate fiscal independence – managing the associated political dissonance will require both dexterity and innovation.

II.?????????????Issues for Examination

The PDM’s conceptual framework, and indeed that of Uganda’s recent planning frameworks more broadly,[3] is patterned on the “developmental state” experience of Asian countries. The latter have been lauded for their robust domestic institutions and for creating viable “coalitions for development” between the state, the private sector, and civil society (Kayizzi-Mugerwa 2013; Kayizzi-Mugerwa and Lufumpa 2020). Noteworthy, recent Asian growth performance has been accompanied by sharp declines in poverty and inequality. In analysing the PDM’s likely impact, this paper attempts to respond to three broad concerns:

1.????Given the PDM’s similarity to previous frameworks, what is new in terms of policy approach, emphases, and expenditure trade-offs? [4]

2.????What innovations, especially with respect to social inclusion, will be needed during PDM implementation to guarantee better results than those from Uganda's earlier devolution programs?

3.????Is the state’s role in guiding and facilitating local development in Uganda under the PDM credible? Will it lead to the prized goals of local mobilization, self-determination and economic transformation in the medium to long term?

The analytical framework of this paper is mostly eclectic drawing on elements of political economy, while also using macroeconomic discourse where needed. However, given that the PDM only has been launched recently, as is meant as a long-term project for Uganda's transformation, the paper does not attempt to pronounce on its ultimate outcomes. The paper is, thus, more of an examination of PDM’s intervention logic, policy coherence and plausibility more broadly.

III.???????????PDM’s Conceptual Framework and Theory of Change

Decentralization and self-determination, as critical bases for national prosperity, have been vastly debated in Uganda since the 1990s, culminating in the country’s decentralization strategy. With the launch of the Third National Development Plan (NDPIII) (ending in 2025) in 2020, bottom-up economic transformation and social inclusion once again were reinforced as Uganda's policy pillars. Moreover, NDPIII also underlined the importance of “strengthening the role of the State in guiding and facilitating development.” [5]

Outline of the PDM Strategy. In terms of hierarchy of responsibilities, the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) has the supervisory role for the PDM while the Ministry of Local Government (MoLG), which hosts the PDM Secretariat where the main consultations and reviews are done, is the implementer. The PDM Secretariat comprises six working groups, aligned with pillars of the PDM (Box 1) [6], with membership drawn from the most relevant agencies and line ministries. The working groups report quarterly to a technical committee of the Secretariat.

?Box 1: Seven Pillars of the Parish Development Model


1. Production, storage, processing, and marketing
2. Infrastructure and economic services
3. Financial inclusion
4. Social services
5. Mindset change and crosscutting issues (gender, environment, disability etc.)
6. Parish-based management information system and community data
7. Governance and administration
?
Source: Republic of Uganda (2021).        

Although the “whole-of-government” approach is the modus operandi of the PDM, curiously the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development (MFPED) is only directly represented in one working group that of financial inclusion. It has been remarked that as financial inclusion deals directly with money issues, it has become the de facto pillar of PDM implementation probably at the expense of institutional and related logistical issues. Design issues are palpable.

The Parish Development Committee (PDC) is the technical and operations arm of the parish council. It generates action plans, budgets, and reports and is responsible for the mobilization of the community for public private partnerships.[7] It is chaired by the LCII Chairperson (i.e., head of the second tier in the hierarchy), while the Parish chief acts as its secretary. Among others, members of the parish executive hold portfolios such as secretary for production; information; environment; and representatives of special interest groups i.e., youth, women, and persons with disability. Additionally, the Committee has seats for civil society and local business. However, compensation for sitting on the Committee, though a source of friction in similar instances in the past, is not discussed explicitly, seemingly left to local discretion.

PDM’s Theory of Change. Chart 1 summarizes PDM’s theory of change, starting from the model’s key assumptions (1) to its overarching goal (5). The Government is ware that it is futile to pursue the PDM’s goals on the basis of the same set of public attitudes from the past and that it is crucial to change the mindsets of the bureaucracies, local citizens, and the private sector in dealing with Uganda’s development challenges. Still, although the term “mindset change” has gained much currency in Uganda lately, it is at best vague and at worst diversionary: it needs to be defined more explicitly to be operationally useful in the PDM case.

?Inputs in the PDM’s theory of change are multifaceted (Chart 1), including consultation and review work by working groups, technical and managerial inputs from the Parish Development Committee, and inputs from various interest groups, notably the private sector and civil society. Moreover, steps to improve the role of Saccos, women and youth groups, as well as pace of adoption of the area-based commodity cluster planning and improved coordination of extension services also are key inputs.??

Chart 1: Comprehensive Theory of Change for Uganda’s Parish  Development  Model (in Ascending Order)


5. Overarching Goal: Economic Transformation i.e., “Enable households still in subsistence to join the market economy, hence, moving Uganda to middle income status” (Republic of Uganda 2022).
?
4. Intermediate outcomes: Greater capacity for local governance, rising shares of local revenues in local expenditure, hence, rising capacity for self-determination; Higher household incomes, better service delivery and lower poverty incidence; Greater market orientation, and productive engagement among the private sector, civil society, and local government.?

3. Changes in Technical and Institutional Capacities: Local bureaucracies better at problem solving, using local data; Local citizens increasingly influencing the service delivery (quality and timeliness); Concrete evidence of institutional accountability i.e., meetings and other forms of reporting; Evidence that performance failures have consequences i.e., poor performance is sanctioned not just shrugged off.??

2. Inputs: (i) Consultation and review work from the PDM working groups; (ii) Planning and coordination activities of the Parish Development Committee; (iii) Contributions from Saccos (as the main thrust for financial inclusion); (iv) Views from women and youth groups; (v) Identification of “suitable crops” for the region and support to market chain development through accelerated area-based commodity cluster planning; (vi) Coordination of extension services (focused on agricultural output and post-harvest management, including storage); and ?(vii) Research and information analysis using local data collection and management.

1. Key Assumptions for the Success of the PDM: (1) Mindset change; (2) A whole-of-government approach to avoid policy silos; (3) Formation of a “coalition of the willing” among government, private sector, and civil society for PDM implementation; (4) Robust local bureaucracies and support structures at the center, including availability of social and economic infrastructure services (electricity, roads and water); (5) Adequate human and financial resources.?

Source: Own computations based on Republic of Uganda (2020, 2021, 2022).??        

Ultimately, the success of Uganda's PDM is premised on achieving a sustainable balance between state delegation and market imperatives. Given the vagaries of politics, this is by no means guaranteed. For example, the PDM potentially allows for only one “PDM Sacco” per parish, hence imposing a solution on the local community that does not derive from market conditions and hence raise the risk for system capture.

However, although the PDM has been in operation for less than a year, the Ugandan authorities feel that much has been achieved already, at least in terms of “mindset change,” and that further “sensitization” will help get the PDM over the hump i.e., the popular skepticism that often hovers over “political projects” such as the PDM in Uganda. But the real work of rolling out the PDM has just begun, and the critical test of the new framework's viability still lies ahead.?

?IV.???????????PDM’s Political Economy: No Easy Path to Transformation and Inclusion ?

Quest for Transformation. Devolution projects such as the PDM are attractive to politicians and their constituencies because they are driven by the premise that smaller political units help to narrow the distance between the people and their leaders, making access to officials easier and "real" political dialogue plausible. Researchers have thus argued that devolution has important growth-surrogate properties: local bureaucracies are well-placed to mobilize local communities for productive activities, including PDM-like incentives, and local citizens in turn are able to voice their grievances or even vote with their feet (Green 2015; Golola 2003). It has been argued that this more democratic dispensation is good for resource allocation and ultimately for growth and development.

?As noted, the PDM is a reinforcement of Uganda’s strive for bottom-up economic transformation, which began in earnest in the 2000s, with the Government’s launch of Vision 2040 (Republic of Uganda, 2010). [8] The Vision document projected that by 2040 Uganda would have eclipsed its rural-urban/center-periphery duality and transformed from a predominantly peasant economy into a middle-income one, propelled by manufacturing, ICT, other industrial activities, and modern services.

?Thus, at least in theory, Uganda’s PDM is a potential "win-win" for local communities and bureaucracies alike: on the one hand, it aims at expanding local economies and revenues, while on the other it has potential to raise the scope for local self-determination and social inclusion (i.e., “leaving no one behind”). ?Both outcomes would in turn boost the political legitimacy of local and central bureaucracies. However, socio-economic transformation does not happen overnight and often is strife-ridden and not beyond reversal. The path from PDM implementation to development impact on the ground is bound to be long and tortuous as outlined below:?

Parish as Point of Intervention. The designation of the “parish” as the administrative denominator of the PDM in not a wholly new approach; it draws on pre-independence administrative structures in Uganda that once pervaded the countryside. The authorities think that in spite the well-known political constraints, in colonial times the parish structures were quite cogent and effective in passing on development information to the center and vice versa.

Colonial era parish chiefs wielded a legendary amount of power over their administrative areas, including maintaining law and order, mitigating local disputes, ensuring food security (i.e., each household was forced to store food reserves for leaner times), promoting cash-crop production, notably coffee (to guarantee that taxes were paid in cash not in kind), enforcing health and sanitary rules (each household was forced to construct an “out house” for example), maintaining local roads and related infrastructures, and collecting “hut” taxes. Moreover, within their jurisdictions, the colonial chiefs exercised considerable discretion over the use of local resources, including water and land.

Under the PDM, the Parish chief guarantees effective leadership at the parish level, with the following TORs: planning, budgeting, and budget implementation, supervise/monitor the implementation of socioeconomic development projects, implement (lawful) policies/decisions of the council, report to the relevant sub-county council and/or the chief administration officer. In the new setup, Parish chiefs are expected to be well-educated, young and financially and ICT literate to guarantee flexibility. Parish chiefs will be the de facto supervisors (CEOs) of the parish Saccos mentioned above.

Given the large number of parishes in Uganda (over 10k), Parish chief vacancies are expected to be a major boost to the employment of educated young people in the country. However, the candidates will initially likely have little local knowledge and even less experience in bureaucratic troubleshooting, hence for most of them targeted training will be required at the outset.

The technical driver of development policy at the parish level is the Parish Development Committee/Ward Development Committee (for urban areas). Its TORs include popular mobilization and sensitization, identification of needs and priorities (using a participatory approach), preparation of action plans and budgets (i.e., avoidance of unfunded mandates), identification of groups to benefit from PDM activities (although the criteria to be use is indeterminate),?data collection (PDM activities), oversee the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of projects at village level, and overall accountability for PDM projects, and mobilization of the community for Public Private Community Partnerships (PPCP).

Innovations: Mindset Change and “Whole-of-Government” Approach. Prima facie, the PDM is a well-designed policy intervention that seems to touch all the bases, including those of implementation strategy (Box 2). Still, if Uganda’s previous devolution efforts are any guide, PDM implementation is bound to test the capacity and commitment of the line ministries and government agencies in Kampala, as well as local bureaucracies in the districts to the limit.[9] ?

?In terms of what is new, the PDM underlines the importance of a “mindset” change, among bureaucrats, the private sector and civil society. The new way of doing things must eschew dependence on “handouts” and oppose poor governance and lack of accountability, especially over the use of public resources. Still, while talk of mindset change seems to accompany regime shifts across Africa, attracted by its abstract suggestion of a new beginning, it is significant that in Uganda the Government is admitting that its earlier devolution efforts fell well short of projections and that the general neglect of the private sector’s role in reviving the rural economy was a mistake.[10]

Box 2: Key Features of the Parish Development Model: What is New?

?
·?Appeals to personal initiative and boosts private sector incentives. 

·?Already “serious” money has been allocated for the program’s implementation, with direct injections of funds into each parish, buttressed by planned financing for local public projects from the Parish Revolving Fund. The government has promised that the PDM will not be an unfunded mandate.

·?Savings, credit, and cooperative organizations (Saccos) will provide integrated parish-level services, including production, marketing, financial services, and technical support.

·?Business decisions will be managed and owned by parish residents, with the parish chief acting as CEO. 

·?A parish development committee will provide implementation oversight and monitor and evaluate results. 

·?Model implementation will be based on a “whole-of-government approach”, involving all concerned ministries and agencies. 

·?Data for monitoring and evaluating performance will derive from the community information system.

·?The focus of the new approach will be on the needs of the country’s 3.5 million, in the lowest income bracket.

Source: Republic of Uganda (2022)?        

Moreover, the Government has adopted a “whole-of-government” approach in implementing the PDM. It helps avoid “silos” and encourages as many views as possible to come on board. This also means that the parish will use the same program-based planning, budgeting, and delivery framework as the rest of the public sector. This will help streamline PDM implementation by improving coordination and governance, lowering resource leakage, and enhancing results. The authorities hope that as the program “settles” down, teething problems, such as the currently rampant abuse of PDM allocations sent out from the center, will be contained.

?Still, given the potential size and spending implications of the PDM, several fiefdoms are bound to emerge around its key procurement programs, with potential to disrupt the proposed “whole-of-government” approach and to raise malfeasance. In Uganda the latter has been a recurring threat to most programs -- invariably reversing promising beginnings. It seems that the Parliament of Uganda has caught interest in PDM implementation, and the process has been debated several times during 2022 – this attention might help improve results but does not replace the need for robust and monitorable implementation.

Constraints to Self-Determination. Uganda’s ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) believes in empowering local communities and enhancing their independence vis à vis the center, at least according to its ambitious election manifestoes (Kayizzi-Mugerwa 2002). However, the political economy of the PDM suggests the contradiction of local communities seeking self-determination and independence of action from the center while continuing to be beholden to government for revenue and institutional support likely will continue. As argued earlier, how quickly local economies are weaned from dependence on government handouts will be a key determinant of PDM success.

?Although the local community’s capacity to mobilize financial resources is a major plank of PDM’s implementation strategy, the readiness of the “periphery” to benefit from the PDM remains a matter of contention. At the parish level, savings, and cooperative organizations (Saccos) will be the main units for business interaction, to which the PDM allocations from the center will be sent. This innovation could help eliminate a substantial amount of risk, as Saccos will be able to co-guarantee loans, sanction errant members, set conditions for the use of the resources, monitor operations, and enhance administrative discipline.

?However, across Uganda, the capacity to manage Saccos or engage in business varies widely. In less financially literate regions, where the bulk of households are engaged in peasant farming, there is a real risk that with a view to capturing the PDM benefits, notably the allocations from the center, well-connected individual and groups could “capture” the local Saccos and unduly influence their activities (Nakijoba 2022). The Government is insisting on strong private sector and civil society partnerships to help counter this potentially high risk facing the fledgling parish development system. ?

Although parishes are expected to stand on their feet in the medium term, following PDM injections, the Government will need to find the resources to sustain the program before local capacities to raise sufficient revenue are established. However, the resources the Government requires to implement the PDM will likely not be generated from tax increases and domestic and external borrowing alone; expenditure switching, and related budgetary measures might be required. It is important to highlight that the PDM is not a free good and its costs will eventually be passed on to the general public in one form or the other.

The political economy of decentralization suggests that governments, irrespective of political persuasion, will only embark on devolution if it helps keep them in power i.e., there is no “free lunch” (Kayizzi-Mugerwa 2021). Therefore, there is an enduring, but largely unproven, suspicion in Uganda that the PDM might be a conduit for transferring resources across households, notably towards the incumbent party’s political enclaves.?

The onus will be on the authorities to make a success of the PDM effort, as the credibility of such wide-ranging frameworks has been relatively low in Uganda, as argued above.

It is also obvious that the PDM will have short- and medium-term macroeconomic impacts on the wider economy, which must be addressed. How the PDM will affect aggregate demand needs to subject to rigorous analysis. Notably, boosting the supply side of the economy via PDM cash if successful will require a corresponding expansion of national and regional markets. The supposition that the PDM will only have macro-economic upsides might not be valid.

V.????????????When the Rubber Hits the Road: Mechanics of PDM Implementation

Money Starts Flowing. When PDM money started flowing to the parishes in the latter part of 2022, opportunities for exercising patronage emerged on a grand scale, with local officials allocating some of the money to PDM “sensitization” seminars and others to private wealth creation projects. Central bureaucrats have ameliorated this to some extent by declaring that Saccos receiving money from the center must first be gazetted by the Government (i.e., PDM Saccos), duly registered under the Cooperatives Societies Act and committed to the principles of the Parish Revolving Fund (PRF) (i.e., saving, borrowing and investment to grow opportunities for members and not simply to “eat” the money).

Ultimately, how PDM money is disbursed to and managed at the local level will determine the economic and political feasibility of the program. There is currently a lively debate in Uganda on how to ensure that the funds that the Government is dispatching to the parishes, an amount of up Shs.100 million (less than $30K) to each parish is planned, will not be stolen,[11] or simply seen by recipients as political spoils to use for own consumption. Given the still quite weak institutional and accountability structures at the local levels, the risk of heightened malfeasance under PDM implementation is not negligible.[12]?

However, although it was feared that sending resources to parishes would be the equivalent of “switching on the taps,” this has not happened, and the Government has trodden softly, launching the PDM only in districts that were “more ready” than others.[13]

Still, given the influence wielded by insiders, mere formality of the Saccos might not entirely eliminate the risk of local capture (Byamukama 2021). The parishes have thus been encouraged to conduct their businesses with computers and other digitally enhanced technologies to provide the means to monitor functions and trace funds. However, ICT competences are very unevenly distributed in Uganda and the parishes at a remove from urban areas will be at a decidedly high disadvantage.

Risks to Implementation. With respect to feasibility, the key assumptions for PDM success listed in Chart 1 are realistic and the overarching goal might be attainable with time. However, in the past a combination of external shocks and the vagaries of Uganda’s politics saw similarly ambitious initiatives derailed. Constrained resources and the political economy of spending have been key impediments to program implementation in the past and likely will continue to pose similar risks in the future.

The general of lack of coherence, abandoning of “first principles” (i.e., programs must be affordable) and poor linkage to the broader macroeconomy have implied latent implementation risks for the PDM. First, though only a portion of the National Development Plan, the PDM has virtually taken over the policy debate in the country: an example of the “tail wagging the dog.”?As the PDM debate has gained traction across the country, several individuals and institutions have sought to influence its thrust, raising issues of feasibility and coherence.

The PDM’s operational emphasis is on pillar 3 (financial inclusion) and more broadly on agricultural development. With respect to the latter, a key feature is the identification of a priority commodity list for the parishes, depending on their ecological endowment (from semi-arid Kaabong district in Karamoja to oil rich Buliisa district in Bunyoro): coffee, cotton, cocoa, cassava, tea, vegetable oils/oil palm, maize, rice, sugarcane, fish, dairy, beef, bananas, beans, avocado, shea nut, cashew, and macadamia nuts. Surprisingly, millet, sorghum, vegetables, sweet potatoes, pineapples, bamboo, piggery, goats, sheep, and poultry are not included among the “usual suspects.”?This raises issues of the criteria used to select commodities on the PDM's strategic list.

Examples from Asia (Kayizzi and Lufumpa, 2021) show that broad-based programs such as the PDM were managed there by institutions, comprising a closely knit framework of officials, with a mandate to troubleshoot and eradicate technical and political impediments and all signs of institutional incoherence at an early stage. Typically, such coordination requires a high level of technical competence and long-termism, which is not yet evident with respect to the PDM. Hence, weak institutional capacities are the greatest threat to the implementation of the new program.

Ultimately, politics will be the biggest challenge of PDM implementation. Still, the Government seems to have managed the process relatively well, thus far, and notably, there have been political points to reap from the commencement of the disbursement of money to the parishes. However, the process will become less tractable and "noisier" when “less ready” parishes, from the traditionally more disadvantaged parts of the country, start demanding for their fair share of PDM money – irrespective of their institutional situation. Moreover, issues regarding the longer-term benefits of the PDM for increased productivity and wealth creation, not to mention those of self-determination mentioned earlier, are just round the corner.

VI.???????????Conclusion

The formulation and implementation of the PDM have enlivened the political and economic debate in Uganda in recent months, with questions raised on whether it will finally resolve the challenges of wealth creation, social inclusion and self-determination at the local level. The fact that the PDM was introduced when Uganda was emerging from the Covid-19 crisis, and a recent election, heightened the local development debate’s relevance for the country's future. Four issues can be underlined in conclusion:

Implementation is key. The PDM has demonstrated once again Uganda’s keenness for devolution and local empowerment and its pursuit of strategies for poverty reduction and social inclusion. It also shows, however, that Uganda has had a relatively poor record of meeting its own decentralization objectives and targets. The PDM closely resembles earlier devolution models and would perhaps have not been necessary if earlier efforts had borne fruit. Thus, above all, the fate of the PDM will be determined by the seriousness with which the Government takes the issue of its implementation: allocating it sufficient financial and human resources and protecting it from malfeasance.??

All hands-on deck? A big argument against the PDM has been that it is overtly political, being a pillar of the ruling party’s election manifesto from 2021 and hence a potential conduit of grants to party adherents. However, broad-based programs such as the PDM are inherently political (driven by politics) and require buy-in from political constituencies, this happens everywhere. Still, if PDM resources are distributed strictly along political-party lines, the market dynamics on which the process is reputedly based will fail, along with hopes of reviving local economies on a sustainable basis.

The "developmental state" is an "able state." It is plausible to argue that the Ugandan authorities see the PDM as the vehicle that could resuscitate the “scientific” approach to policy and planning that was pursued in the earlier decades of the NRM regime with laudable reductions in urban and rural poverty incidence.?What is easily forgotten, however, is that policy was far more coherent then, with a well-formulated implementation and accountability framework, than today. When implementing the PDM, it should not be forgotten that above all, a developmental state is an able state--not merely one that aspires to be. ?

Allow for learning by doing. In operational terms, the PDM departs from the premise that local capacities and needs across Uganda are quite similar and, hence, can be addressed by a uniform set of strategies. This is not the case. Aside from the discussion of commodities to be produced in the different ecological zones of the country, few other differentiating factors have been incorporated into the PDM's broader implementation strategy. Some parishes will need more financial help than others, while some, mostly urban, might solely rely on private sector interventions. What is certain is that it is not possible to pin down local needs ex ante with any degree of confidence. It will be important to allow for a process of learning by doing and for local communities to participate more explicitly in the design of local activities. ??????

References

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[1] In February 2022, Uganda’s leader, Yoweri Museveni, formally launched the PDM in Kibuku District, Bukedi sub-region, in the east of Uganda. The area is highly populated, with a high poverty incidence, hence launching the model there had a great deal of political significance.?

[2] See Republic of Uganda (2021). Opondo (2022), the ideologue of Uganda’s ruling party, NRM, called the PDM, with characteristic panache, “a flagship ‘Leap Forward’".?

[3] They include the Poverty Reduction Action Plan (PEAP) (Republic of Uganda 2000), Prosperity for All (better known locally as “Bonna Bagaggawale”), Entandiikwa, Poverty Action Plan (PAP) etc. See Kayizzi-Mugerwa (2013) and Odomel (2003) for a review.

[4] These national programs i.e., Operation Wealth Creation (launched in 2014) and The Presidential Initiative on Wealth and Jobs Creation (Emyooga) (launched in 2019) tended to emerge during or close to national elections or following politically cataclysmic events in Uganda.

[5] The National Planning Authority (NPA) undertook a review of the decentralization policy as part of its work on NPDIII. See also the NRM’s Election Manifesto, 2021-2026, Kampala, and Mushemeza (2017).

[6] The Governance and Administration pillar was not allotted a specific working group, likely because there is much attention on it elsewhere i.e., The Inspectorate of Government, the Auditor General and the Ministry of Integrity and Ethics.

[7] Also referred to as Public Private Community Partnerships (PPCP).

[8] Uganda was among the Sub-Saharan African countries lauded for their effective poverty reduction strategies by the international community in the 1990s and early 2000s, notably its donor-supported Poverty Eradication Action Plan (Republic of Uganda 2000). However, the Government, like many others in the region, wanted to shift the focus to economic transformation (and wealth creation), through greater investment in local production capacities, hence Vision 2040 (Republic of Uganda 2010).

[9] Notably the Ministry of Local Government (MoLG), Ministry of Finance and Planning and Economic Development (MFPED), and the National Planning Authority (NPA).

[10] See for example Opondo (2022) cited earlier. He argues that to avoid implementation failures from the past, the PDM needs to be subjected to “a high standard of rigorous, sustained and independent evaluation before it’s too late to make the necessary adjustments.” The new Zambian Government, which attained power in 2021, also has "mindset" change on top of its agenda.

[11] See Muhindo (2022).

[12] Politicians outside the ruling NRM have queried how the fixed amount of Shs.100 million (less than $30K) per parish was reached, given that parishes have varied population sizes (urban/peri-urban parishes/wards have populations that are many times larger than rural ones) and needs. An article by Ronald Acema in Daily Monitor, 9 December 2022 entitled “Koboko youth borrow Emyooga funds to marry more wives” noted that the authorities in the West Nile region of Uganda were concerned that the country’s youth remained “ideologically disoriented” while the government’s efforts at engendering a “mindset change” were recalcitrant at best.?

[13] See for example the comments made by VP, Jessica Alupo, during her launch of the PDM in Kayunga District (see New Vision 15 Dec. 2022).?