Following fifteen years of Idi Amin, war and civil war, the Ugandan economy was in ruins by the time peace was restored in 1986. Since then Uganda has consistently been one of the fastest growing economies in Africa, leading to a substantial reduction in poverty. This book helps explain how this economic transformation was brought about. Uganda's success has arguably had more influence on development thinking and on the international aid architecture than any other country. The HIPC debt relief initiative, the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, and the growth of budget support have all be ... More

Following fifteen years of Idi Amin, war and civil war, the Ugandan economy was in ruins by the time peace was restored in 1986. Since then Uganda has consistently been one of the fastest growing economies in Africa, leading to a substantial reduction in poverty. This book helps explain how this economic transformation was brought about. Uganda's success has arguably had more influence on development thinking and on the international aid architecture than any other country. The HIPC debt relief initiative, the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, and the growth of budget support have all been strongly influenced by Ugandan experience and thinking, while Ugandan innovations such as poverty reduction strategies, public expenditure tracking surveys, and virtual poverty funds have been widely adopted elsewhere. Most of the reforms, that transformed the economy, originated inside the Ugandan government during the 1990s, rather than being imposed through donor conditionality. In this book, the architects of those reforms give their personal accounts of the thinking behind the reforms, how they were implemented, and their impact. Individual chapters cover reforms across the spectrum of central government economic policy and management, while Chapter 1 presents an overview and Chapter 2 the institutional and political background.