Uganda: The irony is that USDA's crime is revamping coffee

Mahmood Mamdani - as a side comment in Scholars in the Marketplace - tells us that when the IMF and World Bank pushed their debilitating privatisation drive across Africa - which ruined many still agrarian economies - in Uganda specifically, they found some subserviently willing allies. The former rebels of NRA/M, only recently arrived from the bush, saw privatisation as an opportunity to enrich themselves. (They actually own many, many things, including estates and farms hitherto belonging to people of Uganda). These former rebels also understood that privatisation would enable them immense political control over an impoverished mass. Indeed, Mamdani continues, even when the WB and IMF walked back on some of their dangerous proclamations, Museveni and co. simply doubled down. It was under the 1990s structural adjustment/ privatisation drive that Uganda Coffee Marketing Board (CMB) was liquidated. Scholarly opinion is divided on whether CMB was still viable. But we can conclude ...