Anticipating Oil in Uganda

278 Pages·2017·2.96 MB·English

by  Annika Witte

The discovery of oil in Uganda in 2006 ushered in an oil-age era with new prospects of 11 Göttingen Series in
unforeseen riches. However, after an initial exploration boom developments stalled. Unlike Social and Cultural Anthropology
other countries with major oil discoveries, Uganda has been slow in developing its oil. In fact,
over ten years after the first discoveries, there is still no oil. During the time of the research for
this book between 2012 and 2015, Uganda’s oil had not yet fully materialised but was becoming.
Annika Witte
The overarching characteristic of this research project was waiting for the big changes to come:
a
a waiting characterised by indeterminacy. There is a timeline but every year it gets expanded
d
and in 2018 having oil still seems to belong to an uncertain future. This book looks at the n
waiting period as a time of not-yet-ness and describes the practices of future- and resource- a
g
making in Uganda. U An Uncertain Future –
How did Ugandans handle the new resource wealth and how did they imagine their future with
n Anticipating Oil in Uganda
oil to be? This ethnography is concerned with Uganda’s oil and the way Ugandans anticipated i

different futures with it: promising futures of wealth and development and disturbing futures il
O
of destruction and suffering. The book works out how uncertainty was an underlying feature

g
of these anticipations and how risks and risk discourses shaped the imaginations of possible
n
futures. Much of the talk around the oil involved the dichotomy of blessing or curse and it was i
t
not clear, which one the oil would be. Rather than adding another assessment of what the a
p
future with oil will be like, this book describes the predictions and prophesies as an essential
i
part of how resources are being made. c
i
This ethnography shows how various actors in Uganda, from the state, the oil industry, the t
n
civil society, and the extractive communities, have tried to negotiate their position in the oil A
arena. Annika Witte argues in this book that by establishing their risks and using them as –

power resources actors can influence the becoming of oil as a resource and their own place in e
r
a petro-future. The book offers one of the first ethnographic accounts of Uganda’s oil and the u
negotiations that took place in an oil state to be. t
u
F

n
i
a
Annika Witte studied Social Anthropology t
r
and Media Studies at Johannes Gutenberg e
c
University Mainz and holds a PhD in Social n
Anthropology from the University of Göttingen. U
She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in n
Benin, Uganda and Cameroon. Since 2013 she A
has been working as a lecturer and researcher e
at the Institute of Social and Cultural tt
Anthropology in Göttingen. Wi
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ISBN: 978-3-86395-360-7 Göttingen University Press Göttingen University Press
eISSN: 2512-6881

Annika Witte
An Uncertain Future – Anticipating Oil in Uganda

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
International License.
Published in 2018 by Göttingen University Press
as volume 11 in “Göttingen Series in Social and Cultural Anthropology”

This series is a continuation of “Göttinger Beiträge zur Ethnologie”.
Annika Witte

An Uncertain Future –
Anticipating Oil in Uganda

Volume 11

Göttingen Series in Social and
Cultural Anthropology

Göttingen University Press
2018
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Nationalbibliographie; detaillierte bibliographische Daten sind im Internet über
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“Göttingen Series in Social and Cultural Anthropology” Editors
Prof. Dr. Elfriede Hermann
Prof. Dr. Andrea Lauser
Prof. Dr. Roman Loimeier
Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Schareika
Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Theaterplatz 15
D-37073 Göttingen

This work is protected by German Intellectual Property Right Law.
It is also available as an Open Access version through the publisher’s homepage and
the Göttingen University Catalogue (GUK) (http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de).
The license terms of the online version apply.

Set and layout: Steffen Herrmann
Cover picture: Tankstelle Hoima; Annika Witte

© 2018 Universitätsverlag Göttingen
http://univerlag.uni-goettingen.de
ISBN: 978-3-86395-360-7
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17875/gup2018-1090
eISSN: 2512-6881
Contents
Acknowledgements ....................................................................................... 9
1 Introduction ....................................................................................... 13
2 The Conceptual and Methodological Framework ............................. 23
2.1 Oil, Risk and Uncertainty .................................................................... 25
Oil ....................................................................................................... 25
Risk ..................................................................................................... 33
Uncertainty .......................................................................................... 39
Profiting from Risk and Uncertainty .................................................... 42
2.2 Waiting for the Oil: Research at the Interstices ..................................... 46
Research Sites ....................................................................................... 47
Research Methodology ......................................................................... 52
Reflections on Positionality .................................................................. 56
Accessing the Oil Region: Researchers as Risks ..................................... 58
2.3 Chapter Conclusion ............................................................................. 61
3 The Risks and Uncertainties of Exploring for Oil ............................. 63
3.1 History of Oil in Uganda ..................................................................... 64
The Early Phase: Uganda, a Wildcat ..................................................... 64
Making First Discoveries – De-Risking the Wildcat ............................. 67
Setting the Legislative Framework ........................................................ 71
Busts and Other Recent Activities ........................................................ 74
3.2 Risky Delays ........................................................................................ 77
The Risk of a Bad Investment Climate ................................................. 79
The Argument for Fast Development ................................................... 80
Negotiating a Memorandum of Understanding .................................... 82
3.3 Corruption Scandals ............................................................................ 85
3.4 Chapter Conclusion ............................................................................. 89
6 Annika Witte: An Uncertain Future – Anticipating Oil in Uganda
4 Oil as Risk: Anticipating the Resource Curse .................................... 91
4.1 Civil Society in Uganda ....................................................................... 92
Civil Society and Oil Matters ............................................................... 96
“Sensitisation” Events on Oil ............................................................... 99
4.2 The Resource Curse: A Risk as Travelling Model .................................. 102
The “Original” Resource Curse ............................................................ 103
The “Translated” Resource Curse ......................................................... 107
A Successful Risk Narrative .................................................................. 117
4.3 Crude Brokering: Profiting from the Resource Curse ........................... 124
Creating Space for Brokerage ............................................................... 125
Manoeuvring within Oil Coalitions ..................................................... 127
4.4 Chapter Conclusion ............................................................................. 130
5 Living with Uncertainty in the Oil Region ........................................ 133
5.1 Uncertain Past ...................................................................................... 135
5.2 Expectations and Changes in the Oil Region ....................................... 137
Reflecting the Resource Curse .............................................................. 138
Employment Opportunities ................................................................. 141
Rising Immorality ................................................................................ 144
Security Concerns ................................................................................ 146
5.3 Uncertain Grounds .............................................................................. 148
The Uncertainty of a Refinery .............................................................. 151
Land Grabbing ..................................................................................... 153
Road Construction and Vampires ........................................................ 156
Relations of Mistrust ............................................................................ 159
5.4 The Cultural Sites Controversy ............................................................ 166
Cultural Sites as Risks .......................................................................... 166
Reactions from Oil Companies and Government ................................. 171
Negotiating with Cultural Sites and Risks ............................................ 173
Epilogue to the Controversy ................................................................. 175
5.5 Chapter Conclusion ............................................................................. 176
Contents 7
6 Challenging Standards: The Intricacies of National Content ........... 179
6.1 National Participation and CSR ........................................................... 181
6.2 National Content in Uganda ................................................................ 183
Government’s National Content Policy ................................................ 183
National Content Initiatives of the Oil Industry .................................. 186
6.3 A Conference on National Content ..................................................... 189
The Position of the Government .......................................................... 193
The Position of the Oil Companies ...................................................... 195
The Position of Ugandan Companies ................................................... 206
Positions from the Extractive Communities ......................................... 211
Analysis: Establishing a Technological Zone ......................................... 215
6.4 Chapter Conclusion ............................................................................. 220
7 Conclusion ......................................................................................... 223
8 References ........................................................................................... 229
9 Appendix ............................................................................................ 259
9.1 Table on History of Oil in Uganda ....................................................... 260
9.2 Transcript of the Documentary “Blessing or Curse?” ............................ 265
9.3 Acronyms ............................................................................................. 273
9.4 List of Figures ...................................................................................... 275