Urbanisation by subtraction: the afterlife of camps in northern Uganda

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Periodical article

Title:	Urbanisation by subtraction: the afterlife of camps in northern Uganda
Editor:	Reynolds Whyte, Susan
Year:	2014
Periodical:	Journal of Modern African Studies (ISSN 0022-278X)
Volume:	52
Issue:	4
Pages:	597-622
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Uganda
Subjects:	displaced persons return migration urban planning urban development urbanization
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/43302118
Abstract:	As peace returns to northern Uganda, a unique arithmetic of development is evident in the former Internally Displaced Persons camps. Small trading centres whose populations multiplied as they became camps now envision futures as Town Boards. Subtraction is necessary: the displaced people and the dead buried in the camps are being returned to their rural villages. Urban planners have produced meticulous drawings that envisage the division of land into plots for development. Donors are making additions in the form of new market buildings and water supplies. Yet this arithmetic must reckon with new problems as time passes. The article is based primarily on fieldwork in Awach, a former IDP camp now slated for status as a Town Board. In analysing material from interviews with landowners, 'remainders' who stayed behind after the camp closed, local leaders and officials, the authors emphasize the paradoxes, tensions and conflicts of this special path to development. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]