Golooba-Mutebi’s report on decentralization and popular participation in Uganda highlights the shortcomings of participatory development. He traces the development path followed within the primary health care sector and concludes that decentralization and popular participation have failed to correct the short comings thought to have been a result of the top-down political system previously in place. He does not support the top-down approach and acknowledges its shortcomings, but argues that decentralization fails to correct them.
Enthusiasts of participatory development stress empowerment and accountability. Golooba-Mutebi correctly argues that the transfer of power does not necessarily lead to empowerment, and that local level management does not lead to greater accountability. While decentralization and popular participation in Uganda’s primary health sector did yield improvements in infrastructure, it failed to address service delivery and accountability. This is where Golooba-Mutebi makes his greatest contribution. Following authors such as Hyden and Chaason, he argues that participatory development makes little significance in states that are weak. He does not argue, as do authors like Cooke, against the usage of participatory development. But rather states that efforts made using the participatory development model, within the framework of a weak state, are bound to be insignificant.
Golooba-Mutebi identifies two broad obstacles present in weak states that hinder participatory development efforts; limited access to resources and restricted information and knowledge. He argues that community health workers failed to provide adequate services as a result of not receiving their salaries on time. This lead to various fo...
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...ticipatory development continues to bring about seemingly positive results
Johnston argues that the understanding of community participation is taken for granted. She believes that participation may be defined according to the level of responsibility the participant is afforded. Ranging from powerless to being creatively in control she identifies several levels of participation. Johnston goes on to argue that the level of responsibility one acquires is directly related to the extent of their knowledge. The more informed and individual is, the greater the meaning a particular initiative will carry- the greater the meaning, the greater the (level of) participation. Through creative participation in the development process the individual becomes empowered. This ties in with Golooba-Mutebi’s argument that knowledge is key to the success of participatory development.
... it needs (four thousand instead of the needed twelve thousand) and nearly ten percent of the doctors (three hundred instead of the needed three thousand) for a population of over fourteen million. Malawi is the perfect example for a show of how destructive the Structural Adjustment Programs can be for a developing country and how much power it can give to the IFIs that they (an outer entity) can overrule the demands of a sovereign government and can thus have far greater influence over a country’s economy and development than the country’s government itself.
...cipation into democracy, which contains “constant activity, ceaseless willing, and endless interaction with other participants in quest of common grounds for common living” (p. 64, ¶ 3). Participation's goal is to establish public-mindedness, necessitating participation in public discourse as well as public action in the name of developing public products. Participation maneuvers an individual to speak using the language we, as opposed to I, which is the language of consent. A participating citizen is an individual which has a malleable characteristics, for example the transition from bachelor to spouse to parent. Participatory politics is sensible means of comprehending the association which may be developed between an individual and community, and ways that partnership might be integrated .
...Uganda as well. The population of about 36 million is growing at an annual rate of 3.4% however HIV/AID's and malaria have impacted certain areas of Uganda making it difficult for them continue of the upwards path of development. The pandemic of HIV/AIDS specifically has caused the death of large numbers of young adults and orphaned up to 1.2 million children. While Malaria on the other hand shows in recent estimates that the disease kills at least 100,000 Ugandans a year, most of them being children under the age of five. However HIV/AIDS infection levels in Uganda have shown a slight decline over the past decade due a national campaign to control the spread of the virus. Whereas malaria still runs rampant even though it would be simple on part of the government to assist in alleviating the problem by spending more on mosquito nets and other preventative methods.
Imagine being miles away from home in a country without your native language, without many technological advances, and where communities are plagued by otherwise avoidable diseases. This was my first impression of the small communities in Guatemala that I visited as part of a volunteer medical group. The lack of medical care, education, and resources put these village members into turmoil. Parasites, infections, and nutritional deficiencies needlessly took the lives of natives. Access to adequate healthcare and education could have easily prevented this situation.
Having read a number of health in developing countries I chose the health care system in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian health care system was completely foreign to me before. And I felt the challenge to explore an entirely new health care system. The Ethiopian health care I found getting to know how unequal the world's people are in respect of health care. Our health care system problems affect the insignificant if compared to the development of health problems. Developing countries, population growth poses challenges for health care. As well people living in rural areas and health care services and nurses' low level. (The Earth Institute at Columbia University 2013.)
Access to health care in Ethiopia has left many people without proper health care and eventual death. Millions of people living in Ethiopia die because of the lack of access to the health care system; improving the access to the healthcare system in Ethiopia can prevent many of the deaths that occur, but doing so will pose a grueling and challenging task. According to Chaya (2012), poor health coverage is of particular concern in rural Ethiopia, where access to any type of modern health institution is limited at best (p. 1). If citizen of Ethiopia had more accessibility of the healthcare system more individuals could be taught how to practice safe health practices. In Ethiopia where HIV, and maternal and infant mortality rates are sky high, more education on the importance of using the healthcare system and makin...
In scanning the recent literature on participatory management certain themes arise. Participatory management is a way to empower employees and create a more innovative bottom up structure for organizations. It is a movement toward decentralizing power. There are many suggestions on how this type of structure is to be realized. Most articles I reviewed have positive views of this structural method.
Pressured by the demands of a growing population and limited by resources in a volatile economy, the government of Tanzania has created a decentralized multi-tiered health system. The majority of the system’s health facilities (approx. 65%) are government-run; however faith-based and for-profit providers also supply instrumental care services (Borghi et al. 2012). The system assumes and facilitates disparities in individuals’ wealth and accessibility to care. It employs a hierarchy of health services to provide people with general health services locally, and then refer them to increasingly more centralized and specialized facilities as needed.
The Uganda government has put in effort to provide better social services like clean water supply, drainage system, sanitation facilities, solid waste management facilities, and electricity in order to contribute towards improving the living conditions in urban slums for example in the 1984 project of upgrading the Namuwongo slum, launched by the government and the Un- Habitat. However, these efforts have been futile
Over the past five years, Uganda’s education system has proved both effective and successful. Although in the process of further development, it has nonetheless served as a model for many developing African countries. The Ugandan government, with President Yoweri Museveni at its forefront, has determined primary education to be one of the major channels toward poverty eradication and as a vital resource for economic and social development. The Ugandan government has made a national commitment to eradicate illiteracy and educate its citizens through the 1997 initiative, Universal Primary Education (UPE). All levels of government, the private sector, grass-root organizations, local and international non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), community and church leaders, international aid agencies, and international governments have been major players in Uganda’s universal primary education policy and continue to structure the policy in ways to benefit Ugandans, while simultaneously protecting their own interests. Unfortunately with such an enormous national commitment and the underlying interests of the many contributors, there were many shortages in the realistic policy as experienced by Ugandans. I argue that these shortages, which ultimately affect the quality of primary education, can be linked to inadequacies in the deliberations, monitoring, evaluation, and feedback of Ugandan education policy; once these areas are reformed, a more comprehensive education system can be re-established.
Research is knowledge construction (Mertens, 2008). Researchers stand for different paradigms- positivism, post-positivism, constructivism, critical theory, participatory (Lincoln, Lynham, & Guba, 2011). A paradigm is a lens of thinking about the worldview that has a valid contribution to research. The paradigm is the skylight through which one can view in the world. It is a composition of individual’s values, beliefs, assumptions, behavior and attitude, verbal and nonverbal expression to observe the reality or truth in the world. The word ‘paradigm’ is drawn from Greek word ‘paradeigma’ (Kuhn, 1970b). It means ‘model’ or ‘pattern’. Guba and Lincoln made an important contribution to describe nature of five basic paradigms. Paradigm is a
greet you in Yumbe and Kaabong, in Hoima and Busia, in Bushenyi and Kamuli and in every household that sits on this favoured land. I greet you in neighbouring Kenya and Rwanda, and in far away Beijing, London and Boston. Wherever you are, we need to look to the future. This is the task that what we, The Democratic Alliance (Uganda), have undertaken in the last few months whilst putting together this manifesto. But this is not something only our leaders must consider, it is also our task as Ugandans. It is the duty that each of us as citizens owe to our children and grandchildren, to the children of our neighbours, to our respective communities and to the generations to come
The gap between developed and underdeveloped is evident in today’s world. In naïve effort to bridge this gap a host of aid projects and development schemes are plotted onto less developed countries. But what is development really? James Ferguson attempts to explore this concept in his book “The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho”. The book is an extension of Ferguson’s PhD dissertation and was published in 1990 by Cambridge University Press. The book is interesting in that it seeks to give the reader a critical understanding and insight of the actual processes that take place when development projects are implemented. Using the small African country of Lesotho as his setting, Ferguson’s book is centre around the Thaba-Tseka Development Project. This book is likely interest a variety of audience, namely anthropologists, sociologists, economists, development practitioners or any lay person interested in the field of development.
The overriding challenge Uganda faces today is the curse of poverty. Poverty, ‘the lack of something”(“Poverty.”), something can be materials, knowledge, or anything one justifies as necessary to living. Associated with poverty is the question of what causes poverty and how to stop poverty? The poverty rate in Uganda has declined from the year 2002 from the year 2009, which shows the percent of residents living in poverty has decreasing. Yet, the year is 2014 and the poverty rate could have drastically changed over the course of five years. One could assume the poverty rate would continue to decrease, which would be astounding and beneficial, but does poverty ever decrease enough to an acceptable level or even nonexistence? Poverty is a complex issue that continues to puzzle people from all across the globe. Poverty could possible be a question that is never truly answered.
Poverty, empty stomached or hungry person right to vote holds no meaning unless he/she gets what to eat. In other words, poverty is regarded as a bane to democracy. It is one of the root cause of inequalities and deprivation of citizens in Uganda. It’s perceived as a state of denial of opportunities to live fulfilling and health life. Politicians use poverty to bribe poor electorates with salt and a bar of soap in exchange for a vote. Electorates don’t think of voting the one with a better policy focus but rather the one who would give them what to eat.