By Oweyegha-Afunaduula
During the bushwar in the 1980s and soon after, the combatants destroyed a lot of the infrastructure that the British colonialist and the post-colonial governments erected as they pursued social and economic development for Uganda. Many cooperative unions and associations did not stand the test of time as they were completely destroyed. The challenge of the combatants was how to reconstitute the infrastructure. They sold a lot of it to themselves, those connected to them and select foreigners at peanut prices. Many infrastructure developments were rehabitated and reconstructed and new ones were rerected over the last 40 years.
Today no one in Uganda doubts anymore the reality that there has been an infrastructure boom ever since President Tibuhaburwa Museveni decided that infrastructure development should come before environment, nature and people. This was a hidden articulation that social development is inferior to infrastructure development, and that if the environment and nature collided with infrastructure development, infrastructure would be priotized as superior and, therefore, as worthy of being valued higher than the people and their communities. This is despite the fact that the people are the ones who elect governments into power, pay taxes and must demand, not ask, for quality services ( i.e., education, health, agriculture, energy, transport).
Accordingly, the President of Uganda’s philosophy of development is that development can best be pursued best in the country this century if infrastructure is put ahead of the environment, nature, the people and their communities, in that order”.
Virtually all infrastructure developmentin Uganda has been concentrated in the towns and cities, thereby creating a more pronounced dual economy (rural s urban) than was the case before President Tibuhaburwa captured the instruments of power on 25 January 1986. The vision of the President is simply to have as many factories, hotels, supermarkets, petrol stations et cetera at the expense of human development. Roads and railways still leave a lot to be desired nearly 40 years into the President’s rule of Uganda.
The President believes that development that puts infrastructure first and people and their communities last will automacally have a trickle-down effect in building prosperity, which will then permeate whole communities in the country. Therefore, according to the development philosophy of the President, social development must wait and come slowly on the heels of infrastructure development. Unfortunately, there is virtually no questioning of the thinking and reasoning of the President regarding development and other issues because he has been successful in dosing the seeds of fear and silence and public intellectualism is almost dead in the country.
Since the highly touted, expensive, entirely politically-impregnated economic schemes of Myooga, Operation Wealth Creation and Parish Development Model target partisan individuals within the communities exclude the absolute majority of the members of the communities untargeted for development, the schemes manifest more as tools of community impoverishment than prosperity-imparting tools.
The official falsehood is that if the targeted individuals become properous, their prosperity will trickle down and permeate whole communities, thereby making other individuals prosperous. The schemes do not value families or extended family systems greater than the individuals that constitute them. This is an onslaught on the structure and organization of our cultural groups, which have stood the test of time.
Therefore, the intent and purpose of the schemes is suspect. However, the power of ignorance, money and imposed poverty have combined to wreck havoc on the communities, families and extended families. The future of our belonging, identity and cultural survival is now in jeopardy. Besides, no timescale is attached to the prosperity transfer mechanism of the schemes in the communities. So it is easy for the owners of the schemes are working by evoking a few individual any time they choose Meanwhile, however, poverty driven by the schemes is oppressing the communities supersonically rather than meteorically. But this does not matter. It is the poverty of targeted individuals that is the focus. If the targeted individuals are more prosperous than yesterday because of the schemes then whole communities have become rich! This is deceptive development.
Let me now look at the Buyende Nuclear Plant infrastructure, which the government of Uganda considers as critical tool of energy development in the country without due consideration of the environmental, social, ecological, health and cultural implications. The project is so married with business confidentiality that I am not aware of it’s environmental impact impact assessment, including community engagement of the people in the project.
In January 2025 I wrote about the Buyende Nuclear Plant under the topic “Is Buyende Nuclear Plant, Busoga, a disaster waiting to happen? What I write in this present article may mirror what I wrote in the previous article. But don’t worry. This might mean that the project is a critical phenomenon in our environment. It might also mean that I want consistency regarding the project.
The Buyende nuclear plant is easy to accept as as progressive and likely to resolve the energy deficit of Uganda. However, it is likely to disrupt the bioecological landscape of Buyende district, its environment, animal and population dynamics, its bioclimatology, its relation to Lake Kyoga, River Nile, and the socioecology, socioculture, socioeconomy and sociopolitics and environmental and community health of the area.
In the absence of an environmental impact assessment (EIA) report for the Buyende Nuclear Plant it is difficult to refer to what precautionary measures the government inbuilt into the nuclear plant in the short-, medium-term and short-term and be able to predict correctly what the impacts of the plant will be in the diverse dimensions.
With the Bujagali dam project, the environmentalists were able to ensure that the government as the project promoter and the project developer produced an EIA for the project, although it was highly corrupted by political and corporate considerations. The potential risks and mitigation strategies could be decerned.
This is not the case with the Buyende Nuclear Plant. With no involvement of environmentalists, the people, and other development actors, this is an entirely politically-driven project. It is, therefore, a case in exclusive development, not inclusive development.When environmentalists, the public and other development actors are excluded from a development project, the project is a truly exclusive. Its development can be characterized as an exercise in people’s development. It is an exercise in power intended to advance the money economy, conquest and occupation of a people, and the power and glory of a ruler. It has nothing to do with sustainable development of a country.
In such development, issues of democracy, freedom, justice, human rights, transparency and accountability do not matter. What matters is implementation of the wishes and desires of the ruler. The wishes and desires of the ruler are projected as the wishes and desires of the country and it’s people. Unfortunately the development may emerge as yet another white elephant in a series of costly white elephants.
The risks of a politicized nuclear plant, which the Buyende Nuclear Plant is, sempre many and diverse. If the plant does not involve high quality safety strategies, a 1986 Chernobyl type explosion is possible, with medium-term and long-term impacts that may be difficult to mitigate.
In conclusion, Uganda’s infrastructure development has been a cornerstone of President Yoweri Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s vision, with projects like the Buyende nuclear plant hyped to boost energy production. A nuclear plant driven primarily by political interests can pose significant risks to the environment, public health, and safety. The Buyende nuclear plant, if not managed with transparency and technical expertise, which is likely, could become a liability as a white elephant project. Political influence in the Bujagali Nuclear Plant means that there is no meaningful accountability, transparency, justice, democracy or respect for human rights in the project. Besides, environmental and community concerns are ignored in favour of political expediency. Environmental and community health risks are likely to incrementally rise with the passage of time, leading to environmental and and community decay and collapse well in the future. That is the price of not taking the people and their communities seriously when conceiving so-called development project which are done for the people, not with the people.
For God and My Country.
Prof. Oweyegha-Afunaduula is a Conservation Biologist and member of Center for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis
