7.12.2022: Citizens’ fear of dissent and strategies for survival in rural Uganda (Ahimbisibwe)

This study explored the kinds of citizenship that can be promoted by and learned in civil society spaces in constrained settings of the developing countries. It also sought to draw implications for citizenship-strengthening in NGO-led grassroots interventions. The study deployed an understanding of citizenship as taking place in a variety of spaces and levels where rights and responsibilities related to decent living, social participation and expressing dissent are contextually constructed.
Karembe Ahimbisibwe
Published
7.12.2022

Conducted in two rural districts of Uganda, the main respondents were the active participants and beneficiaries of NGO livelihood programmes and training offered by Action for Development (ACFODE) and Community Volunteer Initiative for Development (COVOID). The study employed a qualitative participatory research approach that involved use of multiple strategies for data collection, analysis and dissemination.

The main findings revealed that NGOs going through village associational groups promoted that is localised, active, gendered and based on material possessions. In contemporary Uganda, where the state reacts punitively and arbitrarily to expression of dissent, livelihoods interventions of NGOs proved crucial in promoting decent living and incremental change in the communities. Rural citizens learned and internalised narratives by both NGOs and the state that implored them not to ask what Uganda can do for them but what they can do for Uganda.

Overall, the study advanced the notion of constrained citizenship and emphasised the role of NGOs in lifting the burden of poverty and hopelessness off the shoulders of constrained citizens. The study recommends that in semi authoritarian and unaccountable states, international development discourse need to focus on local initiatives that address citizens’ agency and seem easy to replicate with minimal efforts at the locale.

Karembe Ahimbisibwe defends his doctoral dissertation in Subject ‘Poor citizens cannot advocate': Learning citizenship in constrained settings in Uganda. The doctoral dissertation event is 7.12.2022 at 12, Seminarium-building, S212. Opponent Associate Professor Ben Jones (University of East Anglia) and Custos Assistant Professor Tiina Kontinen (Ä¢¹½Ö±²¥).
The doctoral defense is held in English.

Publication:

Further information:
Ahimbisibwe F Karembe,
hkarembe@gmail.com, fabian.k.ahimbisibwe@jyu.fi, +358405783274