Rural Poverty Eradication and Sustainability Consciousness in Kyanamukaaka Sub-County’s Decentralised Framework

Abstract

Development and governance literature is affluent with theorisations that a decentralised system of governance stands high chances of translating into improved service delivery. Some of such literature hardly qualifies this expectation with a value addition that there are some minimum requirements for decentralisation to realise not only poverty eradication but 'sustainable poverty eradication'. They also seem to hold a limited view of decentralisation just as a development strategy and less as the ethical mandate that it is through the socio-ethical principle of subsidiarity. This paper is based on research carried out in Kyanamukaaka Sub-County in Masaka District which was prompted by the observation that despite the fact that a decentralised system of governance had been adopted there seemed to be (some but) minimal impact on the trend of poverty. In some instances, where there seemed to be traces of a downward trend of poverty, there were quite a number of inherent sustainability issues. The sustainability concerns within the scope of this paper are mainly social and economic. Thus the analysis focuses on the nature of poverty eradication initiatives in the area, the role of the community in the poverty eradication initiatives, and the life of the initiatives after the Sub-county hand. The findings indicated that some of the eradication measures through direct provision are not sustainable, as a number of them had died out. Further still, the level of community involvement in the conception and implementation of poverty eradication initiatives was found to be inadequate for the sustainability of the related projects.