ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the recent proliferations of hydropower constructions and discusses it from perspectives of state-building and accountability in Uganda. Investing in the energy sector is seen as a priority by the government to meet the transforming Vision 2040 plan that aims to move Uganda from a peasant economy to a middle-income country through dam construction mainly on the River Nile. These dam constructions can be seen as part of a broader nation-building process that aims to transform the economy in which the energy sector has become a public good that necessitates government attention. The national ambitions to exploit the river through the construction of hydropower are further examined within the contexts of shifting accountabilities between the government, the World Bank and the civil society. This shift includes the new dominant role of China in financing dam construction in Uganda in relation to the World Bank. Uganda’s ambitions to construct several run-off dams as part of a nationbuilding project has not generated the same hydropolitical contestation from Egypt as, for example, the construction of reservoir dams such as Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). The run-off dams under construction in Uganda affect primarily local areas, including water access to people, and the ecology. The displacement and water grabs in the vicinity along the dams in Uganda have received little attention in terms of accountability claims from the public. This raises the question of the land-water-right nexus since the ecology is degraded, and there is inadequate compensation after appropriation and unintended consequences of restricted access to water along the Nile for the poor. In this chapter, the trajectory of hydropower constructions in Uganda is highlighted from perspectives of national-building and accountability. The chapter examines the demand for hydropower constructions in Uganda and discusses the conduct of accountability embedded in the demand for dam construction in Uganda from World War II onwards.
