Browsing by Subject "Uganda"

Infant undernutrition with associated diseases is a leading cause of under-five deaths globally, causing 45% of child deaths. A critical point for the nutritional status of the infant is the time when the first foods are introduced in addition to breastfeeding, i.e. complementary feeding. Based on prior research, complementary feeding practices are inadequate in East Africa, including Uganda. Particular concerns are the not timely introduction of complementary foods and low dietary diversity of children under two years. Complementary feeding is a complex set of behaviours. Good complementary feeding comprises, in addition to nutritious food itself, the feeding moment, technique and style. The promotion of good complementary feeding practices therefore demands multiple approaches. The aim of this study was to explore complementary feeding perceptions and practices in the context of the Health Belief Model (HBM) and to gain understanding on how to promote health behaviour change for better complementary feeding. The study was carried out in the rural area of Kirewa, Uganda. All together 9 focus group discussions (FGD) were held for caretakers of children under two: mothers, fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers. A set of educational videos on infant care and feeding practices, the GloCal-videos, were used as a projective tool in the FGDs. In addition, one individual interview with the local health care worker was conducted. The data from the FGDs and the interview were analysed with a deductive content analysis method based on the HBM. The findings from this research demonstrate that complementary feeding practices among the study participants were suboptimal in relation to timing, dietary diversity, consistency and feeding frequency. The importance of complementary feeding as a health behaviour preventing malnutrition and stunting was not understood among these Kirewan caretakers. The findings from the HBM based analysis suggest messages about the susceptibility of children to detrimental consequences of poor feeding and their seriousness should be targeted to caretakers. Based on this study, the GloCal-videos may work as cues to action for better complementary feeding practices.

This thesis answers to a question “Why adolescent girls drop out of school in Northern Uganda?” In Uganda, approximately 70% of the children drop out of public school before 7th grade, the final year of primary school. In northern Uganda, girls drop out of school in more significant numbers than boys, and it happens around the age when girls reach puberty. Northern Uganda is also a particular location because it is recovering from long conflict, affecting strongly the whole population living in the area. The thesis is based on two-month ethnographic fieldwork in northern Uganda during the spring of 2015. To answer the main research question this study seeks to analyse it through taking a look how the school, the community and the girls themselves experience and talk about dropping out, education and growing up in the current post-conflict state of the social life. The thesis argues that the dropout rate is linked to the adolescence as life-stage of becoming an adult that is making the girls to make decisions about the future. The analysis is done through three different perspectives – the educational, societal and personal narratives of the youth. The first perspective is the education and schooling in northern Uganda. It explores the concept of ’educated person’ by Levinson and Holland through sexual education and gender in education. The study shows that Ugandan public primary and secondary education is deriving its ideas and understanding of educated person from the national curriculum, which often conflict with the local concepts of the educated person in the Acholi community, influencing the blamed and real reasons for dropping out. The second perspective looks into the community and the societal pressures the girls are facing when growing up. It will describe family, kinship, marriage and gender in post-conflict context and show how in these areas of life, the past conflict, “loss of culture”, generational conflicts and subsequent disobedience are presented as reasons behind the challenges to stay in school. The third perspective tells the stories of the girls met and talked to during the ethnographic fieldwork in Northern Uganda. It answers the question “What is happening in the life of a girl when she drops out of school?”. It is argued that the girls take actions of a gendered agency to further their lives and become adults. Thus, dropping out of school cannot just be explained as a simple event just suddenly happening without their own will. It will further answer the question “What makes some girls stay in school?” to show how those girls still in school manage the crosscurrents of growing up in Acholiland. The thesis argues that the girls in northern Uganda are active appropriators and social agents who through their own actions contest, struggle and penetrate the structures in their society while also at the same time reproduce them. In Northern Uganda, both the community and the state together with different international agencies will have plans and expectations for the girls’ future. The study shows how the girls navigate the school, community and peer expectations and sociocultural and economic structures to stay or finally drop out of school. These structures are state organised and aid-infused formal schooling and society in amidst of post-conflict recovery which creates a framework where the girls are acting. The school presents the modern and globally orientated educated person, and in contrast to it, the community is looking for to restore ‘traditional’ way of life. It is argued that these two sides are often in conflict and in the middle of this conflict the girls act and solve their way out of it, looking for adulthood and gaining respectable status in the society. The schools, the community and even sometimes the development actors see the girls as passively following the things they will encounter. The thesis will show that they are not. The girls either stay in school or drop out of it, but more often as a consequence of their own decisions and actions than passively because the school or the community could not support them. It is demonstrated that dropping out of school looks more of line a tactic for the future as a respectable grown-up than mere problem to be solved.

Uganda’s recent oil discoveries have been described as one of the largest onshore findings in Africa within the past 20 years. It has been estimated that there are 6.5 billion barrels of oil in the Albertine Graben, of which about 1.4 are recoverable. Since the foreign and national stakeholders have launched their oil investment projects, concerns around human and environmental rights violations have been raised internally and internationally. Whereas much scientific work has been produced on oil in Africa, most of this can be placed under the concise umbrella of resource blessing and resource curse. The approach of ‘extractivism’ has come to challenge this simplistic dichotomy, but most of the work about extractivism focuses on Latin America. This thesis, thus, contributes to this growing body of literature. It does so by investigating the discourses that the Ugandan state and the transnational corporation TotalEnergies utilize to promote extractivism in Uganda. More specifically, this thesis aims to answer two questions, namely, what justification methods does the Ugandan state use to legitimate oil extractivism in the Lake Albertine region, and how does the oil corporation Total reproduce narratives of extractivist mindset in legitimizing its operations in the Albertine Graben? Data were collected from policy documents, newspaper articles, and website material. The methods of critical discourse analysis and content analysis and the approaches of extractivism and postcolonialism are applied. The findings show that the Ugandan state legitimates oil through five discourses, namely: economic arguments, employment and social arguments, no substantial ecological effects arguments; statements for energy poverty, energy security, and just transition; and stigmatizing critics arguments. Total uses three distinct discourses, namely, self-regulation and best practice, social and developmental arguments, and no substantial ecological effects arguments. These discourses, while reproducing the extractivist mindset, should be taken seriously as they have severe implications for the wider world.

Corruption poses a significant threat to political and economic stability in many developing and least-developed countries. There is increasing research exploring gender differences and attitudes towards corruption. While literature suggests that men tend to be more corrupt than women, the thesis investigates whether it holds true in the case of Uganda. Eight rounds of the Afrobarometer Survey, conducted in Uganda from 2002 to 2022, have been utilised to explore the gender difference in the engagement in bribery, a proxy used to capture corruption, with the help of a linear probability model. The results show that women are less likely to engage in bribery and the association is statistically significant while controlling for various demographic and political characteristics as well as round and region-specific fixed effects. However, this difference may be due to the gender difference in corruption perception. Even though the gender gap is persistent across all rounds, involvement in bribery has been increasing over time for both men and women. There are several limitations of the study, and further research is required to verify the gender gap as bribery involvement does not explain the other aspects of corruption. Future research can explore the Afrobarometer Survey even further and repeat the analysis for other African nations. Additionally, the datasets can be compiled together to assess the statistical significance of the gender gap in the presence of country-specific fixed effects. Furthermore, it is worth exploring the motivation behind involvement in bribery along with individual characteristics, such as degree of risk aversion, belief about oneself, and personality traits.

Ugandassa jätettiin parlamentille vuonna 2009 lakialoite, jossa esitettiin esimerkiksi kuolemanrangaistusta törkeästä homoseksuaalisesta teosta. Laki astui voimaan vuonna 2014 ja vaikka kuolemanrangaistus jäi pois voimaan tulleesta laista, se silti kavensi seksuaalivähemmistöjen oikeuksia Ugandassa. Ugandan homoseksuaalisuuden vastainen laki herätti median kiinnostuksen ympäri maailmaa ja lakia käsiteltiin paljon uutisissa. Tässä tutkielmassa keskitynkin Ugandan homoseksuaalisuuden vastaiseen lainsäädäntöprosessiin ja siihen, miten Suomessa uutisoitiin aiheesta. Tutkimuskysymykseni on, miten suomalaiset tiedotusvälineet Yleisradio ja Helsingin Sanomat uutisoivat Ugandan homoseksuaalisuuden vastaisesta lakiesityksestä ja laista? Aineistoni koostuu Helsingin Sanomien sekä Yleisradion verkossa julkaistuista uutisista, jotka sijoittuvat vuosille 2009-2015. Uutiset käsittelevät Ugandan homoseksuaalisuuden vastaista lainsäädäntöprosessia eli sen elinkaarta lakialoitteesta voimaantulleeseen laiksi. Analyysimetodina käytän laadullista sisällönanalyysia sekä kehystämistä. Tarkastelen aineistoa hyödyntäen jälkikolonialistista teoriaa. Sisällönanalyysin tuloksena syntyi neljä eri kategoriaa, jotka toistuivat uutisoinnissa. Ugandan homoseksuaalisuuden vastaisesta lainsäädäntöprosessista uutisoitiin useimmiten käyttäen näitä teemoja; homofobian yleistäminen Ugandassa ja Afrikassa, seksuaali– ja sukupuolivähemmistöihin kohdistuva vaino, kansainvälisten suhteiden heikentyminen ja lainsäädäntöprosessin kuvaaminen. Tulokset osoittavat, miten uutisissa korostuu vastakkainasettelu ”sivistyneestä” lännestä vs. ”sivistymättömästä” Ugandasta. Uutisista puuttuu ymmärrys Ugandan lainsäädännön kontekstista sekä kolonialistista valtasuhteista.

This thesis discusses what it means to live with breaking water supply in rural northern Uganda, focusing on boreholes and their governance. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork consisting of participant observation and interviews conducted mostly in the centre of a rural sub-county in central Acholiland, Uganda, in spring 2015. In development discourse, boreholes are perceived as a viable technology to increase access to safe water in the Global South. However, they are known to have high rates of failure, often seen to lead to their abandonment by the communities who manage them. The thesis argues that this perception has a limited view of borehole failure and uses overtly passive terms to describe the communities. Instead, the study intends to expand the understanding of the ways in which boreholes can fail, and show how borehole users try to cope with and overcome breakage. The main research questions revolve around infrastructural failure and its management: What does it mean when infrastructures break down? How is this breakage experienced, managed and lived? In the 2000s, in anthropology and other disciplines, (non-human) materiality has resurfaced as a significant focus of study. In many of such approaches, assemblage theory has garnered increasing popularity. Assemblage brings together heterogeneous elements, such as people, objects, discourses and events, and includes an understanding of the unexpected elements remaining in the peripheries of networks. Utilizing this framework, the thesis aims to broaden the view of infrastructural breakage, often predominated by a notion of failure as a particular moment, where the infrastructure moves between two categories of functionality. The thesis argues that the breakdown of boreholes is processual, anticipated, and embodied, and a consequence of multiple nonhuman and human factors. This thesis participates in another growing anthropological discussion; vulnerability and its management, often accomplished by seeking relations with others. The thesis shows that the research participants’ lives were penetrated by material and financial precariousness, which is why they hoped for support in borehole maintenance from those more powerful. This has been seen as evidence of their passivity and dependency, which are seen as hindering lasting change in the sustainable development discourse. The study illustrates why hoping for support made sense for the research participants by recounting the socio-historical developments impacting northern Uganda and water governance. It is suggested that instead of perceiving such hopes as passive neglect of responsibility, they can be better understood as active coping strategies, often relating to past NGO projects’ material sustainability. Besides asking for support, the communities and borehole mechanics were embarking upon various other means of navigating borehole failure and sustaining their water points in order to stabilize the assemblage. It is argued that these mechanisms were utilized due to the motivation that “water is life”, which is seen in the thesis alike to desire or wish, the human force capable of bringing relations in assemblages into existence. The thesis shows that the communities’ understanding of water as life as well as their strategies of coping, however, tend to be obscured in many of the descriptions of borehole breakage, which perceive the low sustainability of boreholes to be largely related to social factors. The study illustrates that a focus on the lived reality of breaking water supply reveals the politics surrounding predominant ideas of infrastructural failure; when the processual and cyclical nature of borehole breakage is neglected, the social factors become perceived as the main issues worth tackling to improve sustainability. Yet, for the water users, the boreholes held immense value as the suppliers of vital water, which is why it was crucial to try to maintain them. The thesis thus demonstrates how a more comprehensive focus on breakage and its management can help us to readjust the ways in which we perceive failures, as well as shed light on the politics in their discursive utilizations.

The study examines the meanings of faith in the work of the Finnish faith-based organization Fida International within their Children Affected by Armed Forces (CAAF) project in post-conflict northern Uganda. Many of the children and youths in the project had been abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels and were consequently traumatized by the experience. The project aims at bringing these children and young people back to normal life. In this context, the study contributes to discussions and research on religion and development and the role of FBOs in development. The study is an ethnographic case study that utilizes a holistic approach within its theoretical frame. Data was gathered during fieldwork in the project's operational area in Uganda in 2011 by participatory observations and semi-structured interviews. The main data consists of 30 interviews, two focus groups, field diary, and project documents. The data is analyzed using ethnographic approaches. In Fida's holistic approach, faith permeates the project work. Personal faith and vocation are the mainstay and basis of Fida's work, giving a clear vision, guiding everyday tasks, and helping the actors deal with work-related stress. Faith plays an important role in selecting, cooperating, and mandating work through partners. The partnership with the local church is both valued and criticized. A unifying theme of the project activities is restoring hope. Spiritual needs are seen as an integral part of development for the CAAF youth's healing, rehabilitation, and reintegration. Owing to the traumatic experiences of the youths, there is a need to forgive and forget the past. The project's spiritual aid resonates with this need. In this regard, Fida seems to transform traditional religious functions of cleansing and reconciliation rituals into Pentecostal Christian virtues, thereby reframing the same in a theological language.

Suurin osa Ugandan maataloustuotannosta tuotetaan kotitalouksien pienviljelmillä. Kotitalouksien markkinoille osallistumisen lisääminen on tärkeä keino Ugandan kaltaisten maatalousvaltaisten kehitysmaiden tavoitellessa taloudellista kasvua ja ruokaturvan parantamista. Kotitalouksien markkinoille osallistumisen helpottamiseksi on tärkeää tunnistaa tekijät, jotka vaikuttavat markkinointipäätökseen. Tämän tutkimuksen tavoitteena on selvittää, minkälaiset kotitaloudet myyvät tuotteitaan ja mitkä tekijät vaikuttavat kotitalouden päätökseen osallistua markkinoille sekä myyntipaikan valintaan. Tutkimuksen aineistona oli kyselyaineisto, joka oli tehty Ugandassa 1440 kotitaloudelle. Haastattelut kerättiin syys-joulukuussa 2012, ja niissä selvitettiin laajasti kotitalouden taustatietoja sekä sen harjoittamaa maataloutta. Tutkimuskysymykset olivat, myykö kotitalous tuotteitaan vai ei ja mitkä tekijät ovat päätöksen taustalla. Mikäli kotitalous myy tuotteitaan, selvitettiin lisäksi missä myynti tapahtuu ja mitkä tekijät ovat yhteydessä myyntipaikan valintaan. Tarkasteltaviksi tuotteiksi valittiin kolme kasvilajia: Maissi, keittobanaani ja pavut. Aihetta lähestyttiin kotitalouden hyödyn maksimoinnin kautta. Jokaiselle kasville luotiin logistisen regressioanalyysin avulla luotiin malli, jolla kuvattiin kotitalouden päätöstä myydä tai olla myymättä ja siihen vaikuttavia tekijöitä. Myös myyntipaikan valintaa varten kullekin kasvilajille luotiin malli, joka kuvasi missä kotitalous myy tuotteitaan sekä myyntipaikan valintaa selittäviä tekijöitä. Selittävät muuttujat molempiin malleihin valittiin kirjallisuuden ja kyselyaineiston perusteella. Tämän tutkimuksen perusteella erityisesti sadon määrä vaikutti sekä päätökseen osallistua markkinoille että markkinapaikan valintaan. Tutkituista kolmesta kasvista maissi vaikutti tulosten perusteella kaupallisimmalta kasvilajilta tutkituista kasveista.

Pro gradu -tutkielmassa tarkastellaan Idi Aminin hallinnon harjoittaman valtioterrorismin ja Aminin suhdetoiminnan ja esiintymisen rooleja Aminin vallankäytössä Aminin hallitessa Ugandaa vuosina 1971–1979. Valtioterrorismin tutkimuksessa lähdeaineistona käytetään Ugandassa Aminin valtakaudella asuneiden Henry Keymban ja Semakula Kiwanukan Aminin hallinnosta kirjoittamia kirjoja, International Comission of Jurists-järjestön raporttia ”Violations of human rights and the rule of law in Uganda” ja Amnesty Internationalin raporttia ”Human rights in Uganda report.” Suhdetoiminnan analyysissa hyödynnetään Idi Aminin televisioituja puheita ja haastatteluja, jotka on julkaistu YouTube-videopalvelussa. Työn tutkimusmetodina on laadullinen tutkimus. Tutkielmassa selvitetään, millaista Aminin hallinnon käyttämä valtioterrorismi oli, miten hallinnon käyttämä väkivalta muuttui Aminin valtakauden aikana ja miten väkivallasta rakennettiin Aminin hallinnossa yhteiskunnallinen instituutio. Lisäksi työssä hahmotetaan hallinnon käyttämän väkivallan pitkäaikaisia rakenteita ja käytetyn väkivallan muotoja. Aminin suhdetoiminnan tarkastelulla työssä vastataan siihen, miten diktaattorin julkinen persoona toimi ohjailevana, piilottelevana ja hälventävänä tekijänä suhteessa hallinnon valtioterrorismiin. Kokonaisuutena työssä vastataan siihen, miten valtioterrorismi toimii autoritaarisen hallinnon työkaluna ja millaisessa roolissa diktaattori toimii suhteessa hänen väkivaltakoneistoonsa. Terrorismin historian tutkimuksen osalta työn teoreettisena pohjana toimivat Emma Leonard Boylen artikkelissa ”Was Idi Amin’s government a terrorist regime?” (2015) ja Randall D. Law’n kirjassaan ”Terrorism: A History” (2016) esittämät terrorismin ja valtioterrorismin määritelmät. Terrorismi määritellään näissä teoksissa erityisesti välineeksi, jota voivat käyttää sekä valtiolliset että ei-valtiolliset toimijat. Tältä osin työn teoreettinen pohja poikkeaa perinteisistä terrorismin määritelmistä, joissa terrorismi määritellään erityisesti ei-valtiollisten toimijoiden tekemäksi, kun taas valtiohallintojen tekemänä on käytetty nimitystä valtioterrori. Terrorismin teorian lisäksi autoritaaristen hallintojen toiminnan logiikan hahmottamisessa käytetään Milan Svolikin kirjassaan ”The Politics of Authoritarian Rule” (2012) määrittelemiä autoritaarisen kontrollin- ja autoritaarisen vallanjaon ongelmia. Autoritaarisen kontrollin ongelma tarkoittaa keinoja, joilla diktaattori ja tämän kanssa hallitseva eliitti pitävät hallitsemansa massat kurissa. Autoritaarisen vallanjaon ongelma puolestaan koskettaa diktaattorin ja tämän kanssa hallitsevan eliitin välistä vallanjakoa. Näiden ongelmien sisällyttäminen työn teoreettiseen pohjaan auttaa ymmärtämään syitä Aminin hallinnon väkivallan ja Aminin suhdetoiminnan taustalla. Työn johtopäätöksiä ovat, että Idi Aminin hallinnon käytössä väkivallasta tuli valtioterrorismia vuoden 1972 aikana, jonka jälkeen väkivallan rooli hallinnon käytössä kasvoi räjähdysmäisesti. Tämän kehityksen taustalla vaikuttivat Aminin hallinnon tekemät lainsäädännön muutokset ja asevoimien tekemä siviilihallinnon ja Ugandan liike-elämän haltuunotto. Valtioterrorismista tuli lopulta käytännössä ainoa työkalu, jolla hallinto kykeni ylläpitämään valtaansa. Lähdemateriaalissa esiintyvä väkivalta on jaoteltu analyysissa sen piirteiden ja käyttötavan pohjalta systemaattisen-, satunnaisen-, valta-asemaa osoittavan-, reaktiivisen-, ja äärimmäisen väkivallan kategorioihin, joilla kullakin oli oma roolinsa valtioterrorismin toiminnassa ja hallinnon vallankäytössä. Tätä jaottelua ei ole aiemmin tehty Aminin hallinnon käyttämästä väkivallasta. Esiintymisissään Amin pyrki vahvistamaan omaa valta-asemaansa ja kiillottamaan hallintonsa julkisuuskuvaa populistisen puheen avulla. Aminin julkinen esiintyminen ja suhdetoiminta toimivat työkaluna, joka vähensi hallinnon kohtaamaa vastarintaa ja kansainvälistä kritiikkiä.

This thesis looks at the post-war reintegration of and war trauma in the former Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel force abductees in the Acholi subregion of northern Uganda. The work’s focus is on how the former LRA abductees make meaning of their subjective experience of trauma according to the Acholi world view and how these experiences guide their search for healing. These questions are examined in the context of three healing practices from which the formerly abducted research participants have sought help for their war-related psychological symptoms: public healthcare and non-governmental psychosocial trauma counselling, local ajwaka spirit mediums, and Pentecostal and Charismatic Christian churches. The research for this thesis is based on three-month-long ethnographic fieldwork consisting of participant observation, semi-structured interviews, group discussions, and other informal interactions in the Acholi districts of Gulu and Nwoya between October and December 2017. The core research participants are 20 formerly abducted LRA combatants (ten males and ten females aged between 24–55 years) who have returned back to civilian life before the northern Uganda conflict ended in 2006. Furthermore, medical professionals, trauma counsellors, ajwaka spirit mediums, Charismatic Christian pastor, and relatives of the core research participants were interviewed for this study. This thesis is built around medical anthropological theories of trauma and anthropological theories of subjectivity, where the former LRA abductees’ symptoms are approached through a three-dimensional theoretical framework of inner subjectivity, structural subjugation, and intersubjective relations. This thesis proposes that the war-related symptoms find their meaning through inner and bodily experiences, personal convictions, and subjective world views of their sufferers, which steer the former LRA abductees towards their preferred healing practices. However, these experiences are shaped by external constraints related to economic and sociopolitical subjugation under state rule, hierarchical social structure as well as intimate intersubjective power relations and cultural norms that can either enable or challenge the former abductees’ access to healing. The findings of this thesis suggest that even though the three healing practices approach war-related symptoms from ontologically different angles, they all offer meaningful tools to repair broken social relationships and retether the former abductees back to their social worlds in ways that can reduce trauma symptoms and foster healing. However, for various reasons the administered treatments sometimes fail, which forces symptom-sufferers to move beyond their preferred healing practices to find relief from their war-related symptoms. This thesis argues that the search for healing is full of uncertainty about the cosmological origin of symptoms, social tensions, and opaque motives of helpers. Thus, the healing process is dependent on intersubjective entanglements with kin, treatment providers, illness agents, and healing powers alike, which suggests that different forms of relationality lie at the centre of healing from war trauma. In conclusion, this thesis proposes that the gap between the former LRA abductees and the wider Acholi community has narrowed over the years since the conflict ended, but for some research participants the ongoing experiencing of war-related psychological symptoms still prevent them from fully participating in the Acholi society, which continues to hinder their reintegration. Until recently, the study of trauma in northern Uganda has revolved around the study of local spirits and Acholi rituals. The present study contributes to the broadening of the scope of the study of trauma among the Acholi towards other healing practices and provides a critical and multifaceted review of how the formerly abducted Lord’s Resistance Army combatants conceptualise their experience of war-related psychological symptoms from their socio-cultural perspective in post-war northern Uganda.