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Inclusive growth and development are essential for the sustainability of poverty reduction and growth. Social protection has been promoted as part of the inclusive growth and development agenda by emphasising the positive impacts of social transfers on people’s participation in economic processes. However, the focus on the positive economic impacts of social transfers has led to the neglect of concerns regarding inequality of opportunity. Taking the case of Uganda’s Senior Citizens Grant, this paper critically assesses how inclusive the impacts of social transfers are on economic processes. This is done by examining the extent to which local economic structures interplay with the impacts of the Grant. Based on a qualitative case study design, the analysis reveals that the scheme has unwittingly reinforced spatial patterns of economic exclusion and disadvantage. Recipients in remote areas are more likely to stay or fall back into poverty compared to people in integrated areas. For social transfers to contribute to inclusive growth and development for all, it will be vital to invest in complementary development interventions in economically disadvantaged areas.

This paper is based on a PhD study undertaken in Uganda between 201 1 and 2012 that examined how governance dynamics in policy and institutional frameworks designed to bestow responsibility for overall operation and maintenance of rural point-water facilities may serve to disable community capacity to manage and ultimately sustain established water infrastructure and services. Theoretical and empirical literature agrees that functional communitybased water management (CBWM) systems are capable of transcending socialcultural, financing or technology barriers to sustainable and equitable access to safe drinking water. However, the effectiveness of these structures remains contextual and dependent on the institutional governance dynamics at macro, meso and micro levels of service delivery. In extending the debate about rural safe water service provision in resource-poor settings, this paper examines key governance dynamics that disable CBWM systems from leveraging sustainability of rural domestic water supply infrastructure and services. The paper questions the extent to which duty-bound policy and programme actors at central and local levels of service delivery consciously support or enable policy-prescribed CBWM systems as a necessary condition for functional sustainability of rural improved point-water facilities.

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 import...