Promoting social protection in Uganda: the pros and cons of ‘going with the grain’

Sam Hickey (ESID & GDI, UoM) and Badru Bukenya (ESID & Makerere University)

DSA Conference, Bath7-8 September 2015

Current status of social protection in Uganda• Policy and legislative arrangements are largely in place

– e.g. 1995 Constitutional Commitments

• Multiple (uncoordinated) programmes

• Overall coverage of the sector is very low– Low levels of spending in the sector – less than 1% of GDP (ILO 2014 says 1.16%)– Financing for non-contributory social security only US$ 80 million in 2013 (0.33% GDP).

• 2013: towards higher levels of political commitment?– President extends cash transfer pilot to a 15th District; plans for a national roll-out– National Social Protection Policy Framework

The politics of development in Uganda• The shifting political settlement in Uganda

– From a ‘dominant/developmental’ coalition (1990s) to ‘weak dominant’ (since 2000)

– Pressures from excluded elites & rural base increase under multi-partyism

• Ideas– From poverty reduction (back) to structural transformation/economic

nationalism

• New (global) political economy (since mid-2000s)– Declining reliance on ‘traditional’ donors, oil, China, Russia…

Promoting SP in Uganda• A donor driven project– WB and DFID

• Began around 2002 – ‘SP’ literally a foreign concept before this point

• Three phases– 2002-6: Getting SP onto the policy agenda– 2007-10: Establishing a pilot & national policy framework– 2011-date: Roll-out

Phase I (2002-5)• Donor-led efforts to integrate a focus on SP into the PEAP

– Raise awareness: studies, seminars, brown-bags– Capacity-building: training for civil servants, wider support for key ministry

• Failed to engage key players (Ministry of Finance)• Over-reliant on the (weak) Ministry of Gender• Ideas: linked to poverty discourse

• Limited progress: strategy poorly aligned with dominant incentives, ideas and actors…but SP now on the policy (if not political) agenda

Phase II (2006-10)Clearer strategy:cash transfers and national SP strategy.

Smarter tactics: (informed by PEA)• Study Tours: key ministers sent to South Africa, Lesotho etc.• Informal lobbying: e.g. breakfast meetings with Ministers• Media: promote idea of SP and impacts of the pilot project• Donors: co-ordination increases (e.g. UNICEF, DFID & IrishAid)

Also luck: • New Minister of Finance is the ex-Minister of Gender

Progress…• 2006: Memorandum of Understanding between DFID and

GoU to design and pilot a cash transfer programme signed.

• 2009: Cabinet approval for roll-out of the pilot cash transfer programme (Social Assistance Grants for Empowerment)

• April 2010: SP is included in the National Development Plan (2010-15), but with limited budgetary allocations.

• June 2010: Cabinet approves the establishment of the Expanding Social Protection (ESP) programme within MGLSD

The importance of ideas• “…back in 2008 when the Ministry of Gender first requested permission

from cabinet to implement the program. They were rejected. The feeling in cabinet was that SP would lead to dependence, and was not sustainable, it was seen as welfare hand-outs and government didn’t want to give such…”

• “So what we did was that we redefined the program around vulnerability of certain groups of people, old people, orphans and disabled whom everyone would be comfortable giving money to basing on their vulnerability rather than their income poverty…so when we re-articulated the programme that way, cabinet approved it (in 2009). So I think that is the first political lesson we learnt”. – ESP source (Interview, March 2014)

My Government aims to restore the dignity of our senior citizens…through in particular the provision of Senior Citizens Grants…

Launching these grants in Nebbi today, represents a clear delivery on our Manifesto promises.

President M7, Nebbi, International Women’s Day 2012/Launch of SAGE

Phase III: 2011-• National Social Protection Framework drafted and promoted• 2013: formal Presidential support for the Senior Citizens Grant

– The 15th district (Yumbe, in W Nile) and national roll-out requested

• Ministry of Finance: now partially split– Budgetary support for first time in 2014-5: 2bn UgSch, 7bn in 2015-16– Senior bureaucrats and (ex)Minister opposed: cost/sustainability, other

priorities, sovereignty

• Political society now offering stronger support• Political feedback from grassroots

– Cash transfers are now a political fact on the ground– Understood within the rubric of patron-client relations

President handing over cash to one of the leaders of youth groups of Busoga region

Concluding thoughts• SP: a donor-driven agenda, only gains political support when it

reveals potential to support strategy for regime survival in line with political settlement dynamics• Increasingly competitive pressures, extend constituency in the North• But other forms of clientelism preferred (including within MGLSD)

• ‘Going with the grain’ (e.g. ideas, political approach) has costs– SCTs now on the ground but…– Evidence-based advocacy?– How pro-poor? Size of the transfer maintains the social ordering of poverty

• Social contract or mired in the politics of patronage?