Ugandan Youth and Creative Writing: New Perspectives on Conflict and Development

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Since its independence in 1962, Uganda has been beset with a series of conflicts. Ranging from cross-border 'spillover' conflict from South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the high-profile North/South conflict led by Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, these incidents of violence and terror have characterised Uganda's post-colonial history. Extant development studies suggest a link between deep-seated ethnic rivalries forged during the colonial era, uneven economic development, corruption in governance and the asymmetrical distribution of resources as key drivers of conflict in the country (Otunnu, 'Causes and Consequences of the War in Acholiland'; ACCS, 'Northern Uganda Conflict Analysis'). While the main brunt of conflict has been carried by the north, Uganda as a whole has been beset by its effects. Young people have been made particularly vulnerable, both in the high-profile cases of child recruitment in conflict, including the sexual trafficking of young women and girls, and in the overall effects of unemployment, instability and political conflict across the nation as a whole.While a number of high-level studies, development analyses and policy recommendations exist in the Ugandan context, these by and large fail to escape the pitfalls associated with development discourse, particularly as it pertains to the African continent, with the result of disempowering local populations and de-centring the everyday experience of conflict and its afterlives. As James Ferguson ('Global Shadows') argues, the rhetorical and discursive apparatus around development cannot be decoupled from its material effects and, more often than not, inefficacy in practice (see also Escobar, 'Encountering Development'). These complaints have become commonplace in postcolonial approaches to African development, where the perceived distance between the lived experience of African populations and discursive theorisation about them has been blamed for the continuation of colonialist patterns of exploitation (eg Jolly, 'Global Development Goals: The United Nations Experience'). The proposed research is a pilot study which seeks to redress these pitfalls by developing interdisciplinary methods to enable new understandings of conflict, its legacies and its impact among youth populations, using creative writing as a tool for self-expression and empowerment. The proposed research seeks to enable the agency of Ugandan youth, whilst minimising the risks of trauma associated with testimonial narrative through the leveraging of imaginative forms. At the same time, creative fiction offers the possibility for imagining other lives and other minds, and thereby presents the best potential for the development of empathetic identification across communal groupings (Keen; Nussbaum). This research exploits these characteristics, using youth-produced short fiction as the basis for teaching materials aimed at secondary-schools in Uganda which will use the empathetic potential of literary writing to develop cross-ethnic forms of solidarity and enable larger-scale dialogue around youth needs post-conflict. The research will also use these writings as critical discursive material which will enable a re-consideration of development needs in Uganda, uncovering the submerged narratives and impacts of conflict's legacy through the medium of expressive fiction. By re-centring young Ugandans as agents of knowledge production, this project foregrounds heretofore unheard voices and unseen development needs.Partnering with Writivism, run by the Kampala-based Centre for African Cultural Excellence, and the Centre for African Studies at Uganda Martyrs University, the project will lead to significant local benefits including the development of: pedagogical material and educational practice; research capacity; co-produced knowledge exchange; increased networks of influence; new audiences; and vernacular interventions into high-level development policy.