EU-Uganda relations: friction, change, or business as usual?
This brief analyses the multilayered frictions in the relations between the EU and Uganda. First, it shows how the funding of governance and human rights activities by the ‘West’ – and particularly the EU – has put the latter in the spotlight in Uganda, leading to an increasingly repressive response by the government – of which the suspension of the Democratic Governance Facility is the main example. Second, the briefing explains the EU’s limited reaction to governance transgressions by the Museveni regime through Uganda’s geopolitical importance, and because of donors’ internal institutional incentives. Third, this results in a piecemeal approach by the EU, which largely is the outcome of ad hoc responses to dramatic events, and compromises between a variety of European actors and incentives.
(Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons-Graham Carlow)