HOW COLONIALISM UNDER-DEVELOPED UGANDA By Walubo Jude Tadeo, Makerere University Kampala Uganda - East Africa

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Under development is the failure of a country to rich maturity.(WW.Rostows) Afro centric scholars have traced the roots of the present state of poverty and misery in Uganda way back to the early days of imposition of British rule who established a dis-articulated economy. Rodney (1981) stresses the negative social, economic, and environmental impacts of the colonial period when he states: "The only positive development in colonialism was when it ended" (Rodney:1981, 261). Rodney (1981) accurately deconstructs the European colonization of Africa as a fundamentally oppressive relationship which fostered African dependency and alienated the African peoples from their cultural identities, their traditional sociocultural organization, and their sustainable relationships with the environment

"More often than not, the term development is used in an exclusive economic sense-the justification being that the type of economy is itself an index of other social features" (Rodney: 1981, 4). This simply states that social, political and religious development all depend on whether or not the culture is economically developed.

A culture's economy is the driving force behind how quickly and extensively that culture develops. The economy is what finances development and the culture's ability to progress. Rodney then goes on to state that "A society develops economically as its members increase jointly their capacity for dealing with the environment" (Rodney: 1981, 4). Uganda's under-development therefore can trace its roots into colonial practices of condemning and complete erosion of traditional African culture.

The core of Rodney's definition of development states that in order to develop, a society must understand the power of nature and technology. This point introduces the idea of using nature to boost the economy by means of production. Nature and technology must be applied hand and hand in order for a culture to fully benefit. Through understanding nature, a culture can invent different types...