PRESENTATION ABSTRACT: "Challenging the politics of exclusion in Uganda? The case of the Northern Uganda Social Action Fund," by Frederick Golooba-Mutebi (MISR, Makerere University) and Sam Hickey (IDPM, University of Manchester)

This paper presents recent research into the politics of the Northern Uganda Social Action Fund, the largest single intervention to tackle chronic poverty in this region to date. The project explores the extent to which this particular type of initiative - a community-driven project underpinned by a 'residualist' understanding of chronic poverty - engages with the underlying causes of poverty, and what this tells us in turn about the national and global politics of poverty reduction. The findings suggest that NUSAF represents a failure to address the politics of adverse incorporation that this chronically poor region has historically experienced, in terms of the citizenship status and rights of northerners and the broader social contract between the centre and periphery. The 'residualist' and 'demand-driven' approach of NUSAF has tended to thrust responsibility for poverty reduction onto those least able to help themselves, leading to increased social tensions within communities rather than the social cohesion that some claim can emerge from social protection interventions.

These problems and the initial decision to use parallel structures for project management outside the local government system, has denied both state and citizens the possibility of 'seeing' the other in more positive and progressive ways. The approach that underpins NUSAF represents a convergence between the globalised ideology of the World Bank and the strengthening tendency of the Government of Uganda to make local communities responsible for their own escapes from poverty. These findings suggest the need to take the notions of adverse incorporation and social exclusion much more seriously as a diagnostic basis for pro-poor interventions and to reconsider the role of the state in challenging the politics of chronic poverty. Whether these (and other) lessons will inform the ongoing plans for the next phase of NUSAF remains to be seen.