Reconstructing the Ugandan state and economy: the challenge of an international Bantustan

Attempts at reconstructing the Uganda state and economy have been underway since Yoweri Museveni came to power in 1986. By necessity, the country turned to the international donor community for aid funds as well as technical and managerial personnel to administer it. Foreign aid, in effect, became the cornerstone of the reconstruction process, while donor expatriates increasingly constituted the principal actors in the realm of public policy. While initially signaling a temporary reprieve, as in most other reconstruction processes, this arrangement became an almost permanent condition. An aid‐driven economy and an administrative apparatus highly dependent on donor personnel, is a novelty, for not even a direct colony was as acutely reliant on external forces. A historical parallel is, perhaps, the Bantustan regimes whose entire budgetary needs were derived from outside their territories, in this case from the South African state. The Ugandan phenomenon has some astounding implications in light of the decl...