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The economic vision of the NRM government for Uganda has been that every household in Uganda should have the means to earn the minimum income that enables it to afford basic human needs such as food, shelter, clothing , health care, and education. In this vision every adult household member is employed, and all household members are able to access essential social services. No household should be marginalized or exist in a state below the minimum poverty line. Every household should have the assets necessary to generate adequate income and savings. To realize this vision, government has pursued an economic development strategy (EDS) that is clearly focused on the needs of the household, with the subcounty as the unit of planning, implementation, and monitoring. The EDS intends to build on past achievements in poverty reduction. For example , in the 2006–07 budget, the Ugandan government concentrated on empowering the subcounty and its structures to implement development and uplift household incomes through improved organization, productivity, marketing , increased access to rural financial services, and establishment of a community information system. The EDS was a long-term commitment that could not be accomplished within a single annual budget or even the lifetime of a single parliament. Therefore it was important for all stakeholders to buy into the EDS so that it would become the central point for all of the government’s short- and longterm interventions to uplift the standard of living of all Ugandans. I have often argued that a laissez-faire approach that relies on trickle-down effects cannot drive economic development; hence it is necessary to refocus the government ’s priorities and strategies. 13 The Rural Development Strategy 98 13-2589-3 CH 13:Cels 2262-5 3/26/14 10:44 AM Page 98 The Household The main challenge is to convert Uganda’s recent macrolevel achievements (such as improvements in economic growth, reflected in an annual average growth rate of 6.5 percent from 1987 to 2010) into economic development— that is, visible improvements in Uganda’s poorest households. This challenge is perhaps best exemplified by the current situation: despite Uganda’s significant progress in macroeconomic performance, its poverty level remains a stubborn problem, especially in the rural areas where the absolute number of people living below the poverty line has actually been increasing. Therefore the task for the government is to ensure that the national economy continues to perform well while enabling the poor to adequately benefit from this growth. The basic needs of any household are those things that household members must have in order to survive in a manner that befits human beings. These include clean water and air, an adequate and balanced diet, physical and emotional security, and culturally and climatically appropriate clothing and decent shelter. Most of Uganda’s poor households reside in the rural agricultural areas and thus are easily affected by global prices for the country’s agricultural exports. A significant number of Ugandan households currently operate on the periphery of the economy, eking a living out of subsistence agriculture. They are quite susceptible to even the smallest of external shocks (for example, changes in the weather) and are likely to fall below the national poverty line because they do not have any accumulated savings from which they can buffer temporary setbacks in income flows. For households to successfully navigate their way out of poverty, they must not only be able to meet their basic needs, but they must also develop the capacity to accumulate savings that can be used to cover their needs in times of emergency (for example, loss of employment, drought, floods, bad harvest) and to provide the resources for investment in income-generating assets. To improve their ability to generate income, households usually rely on their own internal capacity (for example, their level of education and skills, savings, access to credit) and on public intervention. Public intervention is crucial and includes the provision of a stable macroeconomic environment (for example, monetary stability), public infrastructure (for example, roads, electricity, communications facilities, farm-to-market roads, access to clean water, and sewage disposal structures), law and order, and other public goods necessary to maintain a fully functioning economic system. At the household level, individuals need resources to acquire both the physical capital (such as equipment, buildings, and machines) and the human Rural Development Strategy 99 13-2589-3 CH 13:Cels 2262-5 3/26/14 10:44 AM Page 99 [3.135.217.228] Project MUSE (2024-04-26...

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