Rapid growth is reducing poverty, prices are stable, and investor confidence has increased more than anywhere else in Africa. This is the main example of successful African economic liberalisation and so it is important to understand the process. However, Uganda s current success can only be understood in terms of its past. Over the period 1971-86 both the Ugandan economy and Ugandan society collapsed. By 1986, when the National Resistance Movement captured Kampala and formed a government, Uganda had suffered the predations of Idi Amin and three further transient presidents, including civil war, mass emigration of the skilled, and mass murder.
Current success is thus a recovery from conflict.
Indeed, Uganda is the main example of successful African post-conflict recovery. The preceding collapse made the attainment of rapid growth easier in some respects, and more difficult in others. It was easier in that there were resources to draw upon, for example, there was the scope to induce repatriation of human and financial capital. It was more difficult in that social and institutional collapse left a persistent inheritance, such as low trust and high opportunism. This makes Ugandan success more complex, but also potentially even more illuminating than if it were a straightforward story of economic liberalisation.