Cultural, Religious, and Government Institutions: Imagining the Possibility of their Cooperation in Poverty Alleviation in Uganda

Abstract

The paper wrestles with the question: In what possible ways can cultural institutions, religious leaders, and government cooperate to harmonise foreign cultures to develop an Africanised education curriculum towards alleviation of economic poverty in Uganda? The historical literary analysis method was relied on to investigate records that shed light on the impact of culture on the development and implementation of education curricula. Results show that the Europeanised education curriculum at play lacks Africanised colourings and such an anomaly has slowed poverty alleviation in the country. The post-colonial government launched several job creation programmes aimed at alleviating poverty but the resultant outcomes have been dismal in the recent past. In all the poverty eradication endeavours undertaken, constitutional mechanisms are not traceable that were enacted to involve religious and cultural institutions in the architectural process of scrutinising, curriculum development, and piloting poverty eradication programmes among indigenous communities. Findings reveal that the Europeanised curriculum is theoretical in nature and lacks the ethics intended to equip learners with practical skills. To overcome the anomaly, Uganda adopted an Asian mode of education, projecting the approach as a rightful path that will influence innovativeness among young people. On the contrary, this scholarly article postulates that the fantasized education aspirations intended to alleviate economic poverty using copied cultural knowledge transfer methodology are most likely to hit a rock. Every society is wired with unique knowledge transfer attributes that are strongly rooted in their universe ancestry. It is recommended that the Uganda Ministry of Education needs to think tank with cultural, Christian, and Muslim leaders so that an Africanised education curriculum is developed. Without tripartite relational collective involvement in the development process of an integrated education curriculum that speaks the language of Africans, the current rolled-out competence-building curriculum is most likely to take decades to smoke people out of economic poverty in Uganda.