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Uganda is home to 1.5 million refugees from DRC, Burundi, South Sudan and other countries. The Uganda political framework is one of the most progressive and inclusive toward refugees. Only a fraction of the refugees is likely to revert to their home countries. The papers collected in this special issue assess Uganda's progressive refugee policy with reference to how it functioned in the era of COVID-19 using a unique panel data collected between 2017 and 2021. The findings of the special issue stress that the support to refugees and hosts is helping to manage daily challenges but not to ultimately get them out of poverty. Further, this support was insufficient to provide a comprehensive response to COVID-19. For the long-term sustainable integration and development, new policy approaches are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses poverty dynamics and checks for the existence of poverty traps among refugee and host communities living close to each other in Uganda. Although some non-linearities emerge in asset dynamics, there is convergence towards one stable equilibrium for the whole sample that suggests the existence of a structural poverty trap. However, households are quite heterogeneous: when analysing refugees and hosts separately, refugees converge to a lower own-group equilibrium than hosts. The household size and education are asset growth enablers for both communities. Noticeably, access to land, past history and social cohesion are also significant correlates of refugees' asset dynamics. From a policy perspective, structural poverty traps are bad news, because standard anti-poverty interventions would not unlock the trap. Our results stress the need of more structural approaches aimed at promoting economic growth in the whole area where refugee and host communities live, targeting both communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research indicates that the political impact of aid, including its impact on accountability institutions, is contingent on its objective. This article explains how this occurs. It relies on evidence from two aid programmes in Uganda, one targeted at poverty reduction and one at democratic governance. I argue that the stated objective of aid programmes masks a deeper cause; individual aid managers’ views of what development entails and how it should be pursued. The evidence suggests that the ‘almost revolution’ in which development has purportedly confronted politics is far more partial, contested, and uneven than many admit. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Poor smallholder farmers in Uganda live at or below subsistence level. They are vulnerable to multiple risks and insecurities and have limited access to capital markets. In this article we propose a model to estimate household priority patterns in asset acquisition using cross-section data. The model is applied to a field-survey consisting of 938 farm households from three districts. The model predicts the distribution of asset ownership, conditional on the type of assets owned. Based on the established priority patterns the article proposes a low-cost, regional poverty monitoring instrument using only asset type data. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paradigm of 'inclusive neoliberalism' that currently characterises international development places a particular emphasis on community-based responses to the often structural problems of poverty and exclusion. Such approaches have become increasingly controversial: celebrated by optimists as the most empowering way forward for marginal citizens on the one hand, and derided as an abrogation of responsibility by development trustees by sceptics on the other. Uganda provides a particularly interesting context to explore these debates, not least because it has become a standard bearer for inclusive neoliberalism at the same time that regional inequalities within it have become increasingly apparent. Our investigation of the flagship response to deep impoverishment in its northern region, the World Bank-funded Northern Uganda Social Action Fund, offers greater support to the sceptics, not least because of the ways in which the more pernicious tendencies within inclusive neoliberalism have converged with the contemporary politics of development in Uganda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decentralisation is often claimed to be effective for improvements in welfare and hence the reduction of poverty but empirical evidence is scarce. This paper seeks to gain further insights into the relationship between decentralisation and welfare by investigating the role of local governments' capacity for household consumption and school enrolment in Uganda. Using household survey data, it finds suggestive evidence that both household consumption and school enrolment are positively related with the level of capacity of district governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty-four per cent of households in 36 village communities of Central and Western Uganda have escaped from poverty over the past 25 years, but another 15 per cent have simultaneously fallen into poverty. A roughly equal number of households escaped from poverty in the first period (ten to 25 years ago) as in the second period (the last ten years) examined here. However, almost twice as many households fell into poverty during the second period as in the first period. Progress in poverty reduction has slowed down as a result. Multiple causes are associated with descent into poverty and these causes vary significantly between villages in the two different regions. For nearly two-thirds of all households in both regions, however, ill health and health-related costs were a principal reason for descent into poverty. Escaping poverty is also associated with diverse causes, which vary across the two regions. Compared to increases in urban employment, however, land-related reasons have been more important for escaping poverty in both regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares and contrasts rural livelihoods in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi, with a view to informing rural poverty reduction policies within Poverty Reduction Strategy Plans (PRSPs). Low household incomes in rural areas of all countries are associated with low land and livestock holdings, high reliance on food crop agriculture, and low monetisation of the rural economy. These adverse factors are in some instances made more difficult by land sub-division at inheritance, declining civil security in rural areas, deteriorating access to proper agronomic advice and inputs, and predatory taxation by decentralised district councils. Better off households are distinguished by virtuous spirals of accumulation typically involving diverse livestock ownership, engagement in non-farm self-employment, and diversity of on-farm and non-farm income sources. Lessons for PRSPs centre on the creation of a facilitating, rather than blocking, public sector environment for the multiplication of non-farm enterprises; seeking creative solutions to the spread of technical advice to farmers; and examining critically the necessity for, and impact of, tax revenue collection by district councils on rural incomes and enterprise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]