Uganda Working Brief Series
Insights from the District Development Project: Table of Contents
Linking the Clients with Service Providers
By Ssewankambo Emmanuel
Abstract
The challenge of ensuring that the approaches adopted and services delivered meet the interests of the clients have remained unresolved in a number of development processes. This brief describes the constraints of nomadic clients and the service providers trying to respond to their needs. An attempt has been made to propose ways through which the connections can be improved in Karamoja and elsewhere.
Background
The clients in Karamoja are unique. [Karamoja is a region in north-eastern Uganda covering the districts of Moroto and Kotido. The Karimajong are people of Karamoja.] They are characterised by a pastoral and volatile way of living. They have a militaristic culture and unique power relations. Whereas the elected leaders and appointed officials command some respect and honour from the Karamojong community, the non-state institutions are still stronger. [The elected leaders are the local councils at the village, parish, sub-county, county and district levels and Members of Parliament.] The male elders, youth warriors (karachunas) who possess the gun, and traditional healers and fortune tellers still make the majority of decisions for the Karimojong.
Unfortunately many service providers in the region have limited appreciation and conceptualisation of the exceptional characteristics of the clients in Karamoja. More often than not, government, NGOs, bilateral, and multilateral organisations adopted inappropriate, usually top-down and non-consultative implementation modalities in the region, partly because of the difficulties associated with tracking and working with them. There is an assumption by the service providers that they can better describe the problems of the Karimojong and prescribe more effective solutions. The very strong traditional governance system makes it more difficult for the local governments to provide the structure, framework, and service delivery expected.
The Challenges of Linking Clients with Service Providers
The challenges and constraints experienced in trying to develop a good relationship between the Karimojong (clients) and the service providers (government, NGOs, and donors) are inherent within their basic power characteristics and are mutually reinforcing.
There are wide and changing differences between the interests, wants, views and capacities of the three different socio-economic groups found in Karamoja. There are three different socio-economic groups found in Karamoja. They are those who are less mobile (male elders and women with children); the young males that are very mobile guarding, herding, and raiding others animals; and those who are cultivators (no longer pastoralists). The unique needs and wants of these three groups of clients make the appropriateness of full community participation questionable. This is because these different sections of the community do not have the same interests, yet decision making is monopolised by the powerful members of the community (the male elders and youth) who may not be direct and regular users of services. This requires putting in place many and different services and facilities using a variety of approaches to meet the needs of the interest groups. Invariably this will increase not only the cost but also the complexity of the service delivery mechanisms. Even when the services and facilities are provided for all three groups (e.g., boreholes for potable water), mechanisms for operating, maintaining and sustaining them are difficult to institutionalise. For instance, many boreholes have been vandalised so the parts could be used to make the ‘more useful’ gun.
The Karimojong culture marginalises women from decision making. Women have different and crucial interests in decision making because of unique needs that directly affect their lives (such as provision of safe water). Women have a low opinion of themselves and lack forums to express their needs so they have limited access to decision making within project allocation and planning cycles. This is compounded by the fact that service providers omit the interests of women and privilege those of men who are more dominant.
Both the Karimojong and the service providers have a negative perception and attitude of the other. The Karimojong perceive the service providers as strangers and usurpers of traditional power. This can be explained by the delayed government and NGO interventions in Karamoja, which did not start until the 1950s as well as the use of administrative structures and service delivery structures basically borrowed from the Buganda Kingdom set up in the central region of Uganda. These structures were not applicable to the traditional Karimojong structure. For example under decentralisation planning for service delivery is based on the administrative local governments (district and sub-county) that do not count the needs of mobile Karimojong.
Some service providers, especially NGOs over-relied on expatriate staff who did not have an adequate appreciation of the local context, who stayed for short periods of time (high turnover rate), and who sometimes did not have the facilitation skills to build from and enhance local capacities. On a number of occasions, the Karimojong have not responded to the demands of the government or NGOs.
Also, service providers have had an inadequate conceptualisation of the unique problems and situation of the Karimojong and a negative attitude about the socio-economic system in Karamoja. Some believe that pastoralism is a stumbling block to development and that it should be replaced with market-oriented crop production. For example between 1982 and 1998, Oxfam adopted a strategy of agricultural resettlement of stock-poor pastoralists. Others view the non-state institutions as hindering rather than facilitating development and therefore do not consider them within programme design.
As such the service providers have not or, at best, have marginally involved the clients in the planning, design, and implementation of programmes. For instance under the KPDP an attempt was made to consult the clients, however, the service providers tended to push their own views about what the priorities should be thereby resulting in health units and schools that were constructed but at times not sufficiently used. This manipulation of beneficiary consultation coupled with poor co-ordination of service providers and their use of contradicting approaches and activity overlaps has contributed to the formulation of inappropriate strategies, the slow pace of development and the high cost of implementation.
The Karamoja region is highly insecure with frequent cases of cattle raiding, banditry, inter-tribal wars, and incursion of rebels. The insecurity repulses potential service providers from the region or the intensity of their involvement. For instance in March 1999 the Karimojong had a bloody conflict with government forces who were trying to combat cattle raiding. Some NGO’s suspended their programmes in the region.
Linking the clients in Karamoja and service providers is further constrained by isolation due to long distances from the centre (Kampala) and poor infrastructure. The districts of Karamoja are located approximately 600 kilometres from Kampala (the capital of Uganda). They are further hampered by a poor road network and limited communication links both within the region and outside. This, in light of the region’s already limited resources, has made service delivery in Karamoja more prone to bureaucratic delays and low quality services. Under KPDP (Karamoja Pilot Development Project), materials for the construction of facilities were often delayed and in some cases the materials were spoilt before use because of the delays in transit. Local procurement is not possible because the private sector is grossly under-developed.
Moreover, Karamoja is the driest region in Uganda. Often it experiences crop failure and famine. The seasonal migration of the Karimojong herders outside the region in search of grass and water has resulted in some of the infrastructure such as dams, water tanks, boreholes, and schools to be abandoned. The Karimojong movements negatively impact the services and facilities of the neighbouring communities by becoming an unplanned burden on these systems.
How to Improve the Client – Service Provider Relationship
There are several ways to improve the relationship between the Karimojong and service providers. This brief offers three recommendations that can be considered, given the context presented.
Ensure the Involvement of the Karimojong Non-state Institutions
The Karimojong
non-state institutions are still very powerful but to-date their involvement
in decision making about development matters has been minimal. As a
result they have either not sanctioned the activities or even sabotaged
the development process. There should be a conscious effort to involve
the traditional leaders in the initiation of development activities
and implementation procedures not just in ensuring implementation.
The Karimojong elders should have specific representation on local councils
and development committees or their views should come on the agenda
and be considered in local government decision-making forums. This will
lead to designing Karimojong-tailored strategies, creating a sense of
ownership of the project and ensuring effective implementation of the
decisions made.
Mechanisms for their participation should not be blueprints copied from the central region but should be Karamoja specific, developed with the involvement of the Karimojong. Their commitment to the implementation arrangements and monitoring systems should be resolved at the planning stage.
Improve the Understanding of the Service Providers and the Karimojong
The Karimojong do not perceive the service providers as development partners but as usurpers of traditional power and hence respond with caution to their development messages. Changing this perception requires re-orientation of the development workers in Karamoja to start appreciating the local values. The use of people that understand and appreciate the Karimojong institutions should be emphasised and the use of the Karimojong themselves should be given precedence to the use of expatriate staff. Appreciating the Karimojong values will help to convince them to participate in development activities like planning, resource mobilisation and allocation, including the payment of taxes and the use and maintenance of services.
There is a need to develop a two-pronged strategy to provide services that cater for the interests of both the mobile and stationary populations.
For the stationary
populations consultations should be made with purposively sampled
groups representing their different interests. For instance, the women
should be consulted separately from the men, like the case under KPDP,
in order to capture their unique interests. Efforts should be made to
down play the influence of the powerful men in the process even in cases
of their physical absence. Reducing the male influence of the powerful
men in the process even in cases of their physical absence. Reducing
the male influence will not be an overnight issue and the process of
transformation will be gradual, not radical. Also, efforts should be
made to sensitise women on the need to articulate their interests and
to sensitise the men on the need to let women’s perspectives reach
the planning agenda.
The rationale of the participation and voices of the different sections
of the community should be explained. In the process of encouraging
a more effective participation of marginalised sections of the community,
especially women, service providers should try to offer services that
benefit those that may still have been omitted. Benefiting from these
services could make them more aware of their needs, and over time they
may start to demand for them.
For the mobile population the involvement in the planning process should not be based on particular geographic locations but should be done wherever the Karimojong are at any particular moment. Since they impact negatively on the services of settled communities where they go to graze their animals, the settled communities should be helped to provide for the influx of the Karimojong on their services. Mobile services for the Karimojong could be designed to mitigate the problem as well. An attempt has been made in education (Alternative Basic Education for Karimojong—ABEK) and other services like health, veterinary services should follow suit. It will be a bigger challenge for the development and maintenance of infrastructure projects, especially with regard to the high investment costs connected with operation and maintenance as well as their sustainability.
Finally, although
these recommendations have been made about improving service delivery
mechanisms, the development challenge in Karamoja will not be solved
until the insecurity problem is addressed. This is a multi-faceted problem
and attempts made to resolve the conflicts so far have achieved little
success. In these respects, improving client – service provider
relationships in Karamoja will not happen overnight but slowly over
time.
Footnotes
1 The service providers in the region include the central government; local governments; NGOs (Oxfam, Save the Children Fund-Norway, Lutheran World Federation); religious organisations (Catholic Church, Church of Uganda); bilateral donors (DANIDA); and multi-lateral donors (UNDP/UNCDF and World Food Programme). [return]
