Where is Culture in National Development Plans?

Where is Culture in all this? Was the question theatre and cultural practitioners posed when invited as Civil Society Organisations to make an input into the revision of the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP), now set to become Uganda’s National Development Plan (2008-2012).

The Cross-cultural Foundation of Uganda (CCFU), a local NGO dedicated to promoting the recognition of culture offered its self to act as the focal agency to contribute to this process, in particular with regard to the importance of culture in our national development. Cultural practitioners and artists in general were invited to join government’s sector working group on Social and Cultural Development to produce one of the thematic papers; “Culture and Development” that would directly inform the National Development Plan (NDP) on issues to do with culture.

Culture has, for a very long time, been marginalised in development policies. Thus, such an invitation marked the first time in history, that the practitioners had been provided with an opportunity to place culture at the centre of our national development agenda.

It was therefore timely that a civil society consultative meeting was organised in January 2008 at the Uganda National Cultural Centre. The meeting was attended by over 50 participants cutting across a spectrum of traditional cultural institutions, religious institutions, faith-based organisations, the visual and performing arts, as well as selected representatives from the Sector Working Group on Social and Cultural Development. The objectives of the meeting were to share information on the 5-year National Development Plan and other current policy processes, relevant to culture and development and also to make specific proposals on what should be included in the National Development Plan from a cultural perspective.

Mr. Stephen Kasaijja and Mr. Bakaye Lubega both from the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development made presentations on the National Development Plan (NDP), the Sector Review Process (SRP), the Social Development Investment Plan (SDIP), and the Uganda National Culture Policy. This was followed by a presentation from CCFU’s Emily Drani on the role of civil society in the National Development Planning process, highlighting opportunities for it as well as some observations and issues to consider. Sarah-Ayito N’guema from the French Embassy made a presentation on the French experience in integrating culture in development.

Five focus groups: Performing and visual arts; Culture, values and development; Tangible heritage, Intangible heritage and Traditional cultural institutions, discussed and presented issues related to i) Situation analysis ii) Priorities and how these contribute to specific national objectives iii) Implementation strategies and actors, and other relevant considerations.

Participants unanimously welcomed Government’s recognition that culture has an important role to play in the nation’s development. This was realised through achievements in terms of cultural development in form of the recent policy initiatives, including: the launch of Uganda’s national culture policy, the launch of the policy on the use of local languages as medium of instruction in primary education, the development of a draft national policy on traditional and complementary medicine, the restoration of “institutions of traditional and cultural leaders”, as per the 1995 Uganda Constitution, the initial elaboration of a data base on national monuments and sites, the promotion of local languages as subjects in educational curricula, the translation of key policy documents in Uganda’s principal local languages to mention but a few.

Nevertheless, practitioners deplored the limited emphasis placed by government on culture and cultural affairs that is evident in the marginalising of culture, often considered as a “by-the-way”, instead of being central to our nation’s development. Cultural affairs only command a low priority in spending, with only 0.03% of the national budget. There is no approved plan to implement the National Culture policy and resources are grossly inadequate. This results in a negative attitude towards the arts and other cultural aspects. In addition, mechanisms to promote and maintain positive cultural values are not in place. Inadequate infrastructure has also resulted in limited or decaying infrastructure, almost absent outside Kampala. Thus, publicly owned art galleries are few, there is no art museum, and there is inadequate capacity to absorb trained man-power. The prevailing laws are obsolete and inadequate; relevant international conventions are not ratified or applied, for example the UNESCO Convention on cultural diversity of cultural expressions and UNESCO Convention on the intangible heritage. The 1967 Historical Monuments Act and its 1977 Amendment for instance currently provide for a penalty of only Shs. 2,000 for the destruction of a historical monument, yet such monuments are dear to make and carry hug and vital information behind them. With this status quo and the continued influx of the foreign arts and media forms on our local market, a lot remains to be desired from the government to promote the indigenous cultures and arts so as to enable them to compete favourably on the world markets.