Uganda

Africa: Large Gaps Remain in Meeting Needs of Burundi Refugees in Rwanda

Wed, 30 Sep 2015 09:56:46 +0000

[IFRC] Since March, approximately 200,000 people have fled pre-election violence in Burundi, heading to neighbouring countries of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Designing performance: the semi-revenue authority model in African and Latin America

R. Taliercio — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 13:35:48 +0000

The paper analyzes a subset of semi-autonomous revenue authorities (ARAs) from both Africa and Latin America. The cases (Kenya, Mexico, Peru, South Africa, Uganda and Venezuela) were selected based on three criteria: (1) the importance of the country in the region (measured by GDP in regional comparison), (2) the longevity of the reform experience and (3) the nature of the political context,

The author analyzes ARA performance in terms of output and input-based performance indicators: revenue collections, compliance management, and taxpayer services on the output side, and human resources and administrative costs on the input side. The paper then focuses on practical design issues, addressing the following key dimensions of autonomy: legal foundations, corporate governance mechanisms, funding mechanisms, personnel management systems, procurement and expenditure management systems, and accountability arrangements.

It concludes by offering guidelines for thinking about the conditions under which an ARA might be appropriate.

Are service-delivery NGOs building state capacity in the global south?: experiences from HIV/AIDS programmes in rural Uganda

B. Bukenya — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 11:46:39 +0000

It is argued that NGOs, through their technocratic interventions, can have progressive impacts on political processes in developing countries. This paper investigates the role of service delivery NGOs in building state capacity in the global south, examining a Ugandan NGO called the AIDS Support Organisation (TASO) as a case study.

The paper illustrates that TASO is an indigenous NGO established in 1987 to contribute to a process of preventing HIV. Furthermore, the paper points that TASO had a project called the Mini-TASO Project (MTP), in which it created units which were operated indirectly through existing government hospitals.

The document clarifies that primary research into the MTP reveals that NGOs can have a constructive impact on four aspects of state capacity – bureaucratic capacity, embeddedness, territorial reach, and legitimacy. In this respect, the author finds that TASO resulted in the following achievements:

strengthening the bureaucratic ability of government hospitals to deliver HIV/AIDS services
increasing the state’s embeddedness within society through co-production
enhancing state legitimacy in the eyes of beneficiaries due to increased accessibility to life-saving services and improved patient–provider relationships

However, the impact of the programme on the infrastructural reach of the state in rural Uganda was not sustained beyond its implementation.

All things considered, the paper concludes that service delivery by NGOs can actually be an avenue for building more effective states.

Overcoming the Limits of Institutional Reform in Uganda

M. Andrews — Sat, 01 Aug 2015 12:26:41 +0000

This paper notes that Uganda has been a public sector reform leader in Africa. However, it underlines that many of the reforms have been limited to these kinds of gains – producing new institutional forms that function poorly and yield limited impacts.

The paper clarifies that various kinds of data show that laws are often not being implemented, processes are being poorly executed, and there is insufficient follow-up to make sure that new mechanisms work as intended. Consequently, the document suggests that government should re-frame its reform agenda to address these limitations and close the gaps between what Uganda’s system looks like and how it functions.

In this respect, the authors propose an approach to doing reform, calling it a “problem driven iterative adaptation” (PDIA). The document points that the approach is to be built on past reform activity rather than new solutions.

The authors demonstrate that PDIA will require Ugandans to work together and own their reform processes more actively than ever, coming to terms with the problems they face and working iteratively to find and fit local solutions to these problems. Furthermore, the document underscores that there are many examples of interventions by developing countries where PDIA-type work is ongoing and is yielding far-reaching results.

Uganda profile

Thu, 21 May 2015 08:58:15 +0000

Provides overview, key facts and events, timelines and leader profiles along with current news about Uganda.