The Politics of Identity: Assessing the influence of ethnicity, regionalism, religion and gender in Uganda

A literature review

This paper examines the different forms of identity that Ugandans ascribe to - such as ethnicity, political affiliation, class and religion - and how they impose limits on people’s access to resources and opportunities, both individually and collectively. Author Kayiso Fulgencio identifies the civil service, the armed forces and parliament as the institutions where identity plays out most visibly in the recruitment. All of them are closely intertwined with the government of the day and politics has been ethnic based since the inception of the modern state of Uganda. The author offers some first conclusions as to how the concept of pluralism might reconfigure the debate on identity and exclusion.