Partners: Institut Francais de Recherche en Afrique (IFRA)
Funding: Deepening Democracy Programme (DDP), Kampala; ESRC (contribution as part of Postdoctoral Research Fellowship)
Researchers: Dr Jonathan Fisher, University of Birmingham; Anna Baral, SOAS, University of London; Florence Brisset-Foucault, University of Cambridge; Lauriane Gay, Sorbonne ; Dr Valerie Golaz, University of Paris ; Jerome Lafargye, IFRA (coordinator); Dr Sabiti Makara, Makerere University; Dr Claire Medard, IRD, Nairobi; Dr William Muhumuza, Makerere University ; Dr Julius Kiiza, Makerere University; Dr Kristof Titeca, University of Antwerp; Dr Paul Omach, Makerere University; Sandrine Perot, Sciences-Po.
In February 2011 Uganda held its fourth presidential and general election since Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Movement (NRM) captured power in 1986. It was also the second multiparty election in the country since 1980. The hallmark of Museveni’s regime has been the conduct of elections at regular intervals since 1996 but successive polls have been controversial, poorly managed and characterized by excessive regularities, reported rigging and even violence.
This project will examine every aspect of the 2011 elections, including the role of international donors, party financing, security personnel, ethnic politics and socio-cultural phenomena, in an attempt to assess whether it represents a step towards a consolidated, multiparty democracy for Uganda.
Dr Fisher will be examining the role of international donors in the 2011 elections and will be looking particularly at how their influence has been limited by competing foreign policy objectives, inter-donor politics and their own actions.
Project aims
The primary aims of the project is to produce a detailed, edited monograph on the 2011 elections which, it is hoped, will influence both academics working on democratization in Africa, Ugandan electoral and government officials and donor policy-makers planning future election assistance packages on the continent. Disseminating the findings of the research is a key objective of the project and will be carried out in the following manner:
- at the US African Studies Association Conference, Washington DC in November 2011 on a panel entitled ‘Understanding Uganda’s 2011 Elections’ (chaired by Kristof Titeca, papers from Florence Brisset-Foucault, Jonathan Fisher, Nicolas de Torrente, DDP and Nanna Schneidermann, Aarhus University)
- at a three-day colloquium in Kampala,Uganda in June 2012 to be attended by a wide array of stakeholders including Ugandan and European academics, Ugandan civil society actors and journalists, Ugandan electoral and government officials and US and European donor and diplomatic personnel from embassies, aid agencies and multilateral lending institutions.
Outputs
The 2011 Multiparty Elections in Uganda: Towards a Consolidated Democracy? (edited book, forthcoming 2013)
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Dr Fisher will be contributing a chapter entitled ‘The limits – and limiters – of external influence: The role of international donors in Uganda’s 2011 elections’
Journal of Eastern African Studies, Special Issue on the 2011 Ugandan Elections (forthcoming, 2013)
For further information about this project please contact:
Dr Jonathan Fisher (j.fisher@bham.ac.uk).