Development and Resilience Initiatives as Embedded Neoliberalism: The Case of the Batwa
Trail
The goal of this essay is to illustrate how discourses of development and resilience
targeting marginalized communities in the third world are embedded with neoliberal overtones.
The case study for this paper is the Batwa Trail, an indigenous cultural tourism performance
activity and development initiative that was initiated to support the livelihood of the Batwa, a
people who have been dramatically affected by forced eviction from their ancestral forestland for
the creation of Mgahinga and Bwingi National Parks. I contextualize the Batwa Trail as part of the
discourse of resilience because the trail was initiated to empower marginalized Batwa communities
to overcome the obstacles they face because of their landlessness, unemployment, and
marginalization. Through the example of the Batwa Trail as a developmental initiative aimed at
fostering resilience among the Batwa, I argue that resilience can be a tool that extends hegemonic
neoliberal discourses.
The Batwa: A Brief History
The Batwa are one of the oldest surviving indigenous tribes in the Great Lakes Region of
Central and Eastern Africa. In Uganda, they occupy the Ecuya, Bwindi, and Mgahinga forest areas.
For centuries, the Batwa peoples have lived as hunter-gatherers and depended on their ancestral
rain forests for food, clothing, shelter, and medicinal herbs.
In 1991, the Government of Uganda evicted the Batwa from their ancestral forestland. This
eviction was aimed at establishing Mgahinga and Bwindi National Parks, which would become a
tourist attraction, and thus, boost the country’s economy through tourist revenue. While this
development was crucial to boosting the country’s revenue, it has left the Batwa people
marginalized and landless for the past three decades. They survive through “bonded labor
arrangements with their local neighbors, and [to] exist as a despised and marginalized group”
(Kidd, 2008, p. 2).
Because of the forced eviction of the Batwa, numerous governmental, Non-Governmental
Organizations, and international development aid partners have been involved in Southwestern
Uganda, aiding Batwa communities and individuals who have been affected by this forced
eviction. These organizations engage in development activities that seek to address the quality of
life for Batwa people affected by forced eviction. The Batwa Trail, which is the case study for this
paper, is one of the development projects which were initiated for the purpose of improving the
human condition of the Batwa.
The Batwa Trail
The Batwa Trail is a touristic attraction in which the Batwa perform aspects of their huntergatherer livelihood for tourists in Mgahinga and Bwindi National Parks. The trail, which involves
a five-hour hike into Mgahinga National Park, opens with the Batwa performers reciting a prayer
to Biheko (God of the forest) at the entrance of the park. They then narrate the Batwa creation
narrative, a narrative aimed at affirming their place as custodians of the forest. For the next five
hours, the Batwa take tourists on a walk into the forest, showcasing and performing their
knowledge about the forest. They identify different plant and tree species demonstrating their
significance to a hunter-gatherer livelihood, showcase different traditional Batwa housing styles,
perform songs, games, and dances, and take the tourists to significant places and sites in the forest.
Notable among these is the Garama Cave, a 340-meter-long cave that served as the Batwa armory
and kings palace before their eviction in 1991.
The Batwa Trail was initiated through a collaborative initiative by three development
partner institutions namely, the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), Kisoro District Local
Government (KDLG), and the United Organization for Batwa Development in Uganda (UOBDU).
The Uganda Wildlife Authority is the government agency responsible for the management and
protection of Wildlife and protected areas. The authority was responsible for the eviction of the
Batwa from Mgahinga and Bwindi forests in 1991. The Kisoro District Local Government is the
local government authority responsible for Kisoro, the district in which Mgahinga and Bwindi
National Parks are located. UOBDU is a non-profit organization initiated in 2000 to spearhead
development of the Batwa. The mission of the organization is to “support Batwa in southwest
Uganda to address their land problems and help them develop sustainable alternative
livelihoods”1.These three development agents got financial support from several other
international development organizations namely: the International Gorilla Conservation Program
(IGCP), the Greater Virunga Transboundary Core Secretariat, USAID-STAR, and the Royal
Netherlands Embassy2.
The Batwa Trail was initiated for three major reasons: economic development of the Batwa,
preservation of Batwa heritage, and sustainability of the natural resources in Mgahinga and Bwindi
forests. As part of the economic development plan for the Batwa, the trail was initiated as a form
of employment for the marginalized and landless Batwa communities. Due to the creation of
Mgahinga and Bwindi National Parks, the area has become a beehive of touristic activity. Numbers
The number of tourists visiting the area for gorilla trekking has skyrocketed from an average of
1300 per annum in 1993, to around 30,000 in 2019. This has led to other infrastructural
developments in the region such as improved road and telecommunication systems, and touristic
1
2
http://www.forestpeoples.org/partners/united-organisation-batwa-development-uganda-uobdu
For a more detailed description about the Batwa Trail
http://www.ugandawildlife.org/news-a-updates-2/uwa-news/item/3-batwa-trail-tourism-product-of-the-decadelaunched
lodges. The thriving of tourism in the region has had other economic consequences for example
general inflation caused by increases in aggregate demand for goods and services due to the
additional foreign currency that tourists bring in the region. Despite these economic developments
in the region, the Batwa have continued to survive as conservation refugees, living on the margins
of Mgahinga forest with very limited social or economic opportunities. It is in this context that the
three development partners initiated the Batwa Trail as a development project to improve the
human condition of the Batwa.
In promoting the Batwa Trail as a source of employment for the Batwa, the development
partners also had another goal of sustainability of natural resources in the area. It was envisioned
that the trail would serve as a community conservation model since it aims at promoting Batwa
cultural performances as a tourism-related activity that would provide revenue to the Batwa
performers. This would help reduce the pressure exerted on the national parks through extraction
of the park resources since the Batwa communities would have a sustainable source of revenue,
thus an income to buy basic needs such as food, clothing, and medicine. The trail was also initiated
as part of the need to preserve endangered Batwa culture and heritage because of eviction from
their ancestral land. It was envisioned that the trail would present the Batwa with a unique
opportunity to keep ties with their ancestral forest land and through the touristic performance, pass
on their knowledge of the forest to younger generations who have grown up outside the forestland.
In this paper, I contextualize the Batwa Trail as part of the discourse of development. I use
the notion of development as applied by social anthropologists to refer to initiatives directed at
“social and economic change in a contemporary context, especially in the ‘third world’” (Grillo,
1997, p….) In this sense, I have discussed how the Batwa Trail was initiated to improve the
Batwa’s economic, social, and cultural conditions. To state it another way, the Batwa Trail is a
developmental project that was initiated to transform Batwa into a resilient people.
Resilience has become a buzzword in development discourse, used by governments,
international finance organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), community
groups, and activists all over the globe. In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, resilience is defined
as the “ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change” (…) This definition is
not far from how the term is used in development discourse in which resilience is always
presented as an integral part of empowerment initiatives. Development agencies often seek to
empower communities to “successfully respond and adapt to disruptions outside of the status
quo” (Cretney, 2014, p. 627). In the case of the Batwa, the Batwa Trail was initiated as an
empowerment project to help the Batwa adapt to their new conditions of landlessness and
unemployment caused by the disruption of forced eviction from their ancestral forest land. The
trail was also initiated to help the Batwa cope with the effects caused by the fast-growing tourism
economy in southwestern Uganda.
However, the conceptualization of resilience in the discourse of development seems
uncontested and tends to project resilience as inherently positive. In this paper, I seek to
problematize the notion of resilience. I aim to illustrate how questioning these long-held
assumptions about development and resilience may have the potential to open new knowledge in
our understanding of the complex nature of lives and transformative practices such as the Batwa
Trail which target marginalized groups in the global South. Through exploring the Batwa Trail
as a developmental initiative, I illustrate how resilience can be a tool to extend hegemonic
neoliberal discourses.
Neoliberalism and Resilience
Neoliberalism is used in this paper to refer to “a set of economic and political policies
based on a strong faith in the beneficent effects of free markets” (Ogachi, 2012, p. 27). The
origins of the neoliberal era can be traced to the 1970s, set apart by advancements in computer
and communication technology, limited government intervention, free movement of international
capital, free trade policies, the circulation of media, and “the expansion of capitalism and
consumerist ideology into all aspects of daily life around the world” (Manuel, 2019: 56).
Neoliberalism emphasizes that “human well-being can be advanced by liberating individual
entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework, characterized by strong
private rights, free markets, and free trades” (Ogachi 2012: 27). With neoliberalism, world
financial markets became hooked up into a system of 24-hour non-stop trading. Technological
advancements made it easier for take-over specialists and multinational corporations to buy and
sell enterprises all over the world. In this context, the role of the state is limited to “preserving an
institutional framework appropriate to such practices” (Harvey: 2).
The effects of neoliberalism are already being experienced by Batwa communities in
southwestern Uganda. With tourism as the face of globalization and neoliberalism, the region is
experiencing increasing numbers of tourists jetting into the country from various parts of the
world for mountain gorilla trekking. Because of the thriving tourism industry in the region, there
is an increased flow of international capital into the region. This has taken the form of
investments in five-star hotels and lodges to provide accommodation to the increasing number of
tourists in the region. Part if this foreign capital has gone to development projects like the Batwa
Trail.
The Batwa Trail was established on neoliberal grounds with a goal to transform Batwa
people into wage earning individuals, equipping them with employable skills that they need to
overcome the challenges they face in the new tourist neoliberal economy in which they find
themselves. Through the case of the Batwa Trail as a development initiative aimed at
transforming the Batwa into a resilient people, it is thus evident that the discourse of resilience is
connected to that of neoliberalism. As implied in the definition, resilience discourse emphasizes
the importance of improving individuals' capacities to overcome any obstacles and limitations
that they may encounter. In a similar manner, neoliberal rationality “holds the individual morally
accountable for achieving ‘psychological fitness’ and ‘being agentive’ in the face of diminishing
state welfare provisioning” (Park, Crath & Jeffery, 2020, p. 154; See also Garrett, 2015).
The discourse of empowerment and resilience has become established in development
initiatives targeting marginalized communities such as the Batwa Trail to the extent that it is
often taken for granted as inherently positive. In this paper, I seek to problematize the notion of
resilience as a contested one. My purpose is not to downplay the significance of projects like the
Batwa Trail, but rather, in a Foucauldian sense, to call into question the “type of assumptions, of
familiar notions, of established and unexamined ways of thinking [on which] accepted practices
are based” (Foucault, 2001, p. 456).
Firstly, the emphasis on transforming individuals as the major point of intervention which
characterizes resilience discourse and neoliberalism has the tendency to drive attention away
from the systemic social structures and forces which led to the adversities encountered by the
individuals in the first instance. A similar point is made by Ben Davis in his critique of social
practice art. Davis questions whether projects aimed at fostering development and resilience of
marginalized communities like the Project Row Houses are the starting point to social
transformation, and whether they are addressing social problems in a realistic manner, or
whether they are a distraction that masks us from seeing the magnitude and true extent of these
social problems. Civil rights attorney, Tracie Washington, sums up this point with the following
poem:
Stop calling me resilient
Because every time you say,
Oh, they’re resilient, that means you can
Do something else to me
I am not resilient (Tracie Washington, Louisiana Justice Institute)
This poem was displayed on protest posters in New Orleans, Louisiana, in response to the British
Petroleum Company’s oil spillage off the Gulf Coast. Washington’s poem uncovers the systemic
racism that characterizes resilience discourse. To restate Washington’s point in line with
neoliberal developmentalist discourse, the focus on empowering and transforming more resilient
individuals to overcome their adversities tends to emphasize that these individuals can continue
to take in more mistreatment and suffering. Resilience interventions are therefore often accused
of being “actor centered, ignoring any structural forces” (Mohaupt, 2009, p. 67).
The discourse of resilience has also been criticized for its heavy reliance on unquestioned
value judgements and assumptions (Garrett, 2015). Bottrell (2009) has argued that in resilience
discourse, the yardstick for “assessment of positive or mal-adaptation is embedded in sociocultural assumptions and historically specific societal expectations” (Bottrell, 2009, p. 324).
Bottrell is mainly concerned with how resilience interventions are often loaded with normative
and value judgement attributes, since the major goal is to (re)orient into ‘normal’ those
individuals who do not match the pre-defined attributes of what is acceptable as normal or
resilient behavior.
The close relationship between resilience discourse and neoliberalism also warrants
critiquing. In his critique of social practice art, Ben Davis accuses the Project Row Houses of its
reproduction of neoliberal values. He notes that the project “actually dovetails quite nicely with
an overtly neoliberal agenda of replacing government-run social services with well-meaning
volunteers offering creative entrepreneurial solutions” (p…). Davis is highlighting a major
dilemma associated with neoliberalism- the weakening of state influence over critical domains of
life such as health and education, and increased responsibility on the individual and corporate
agencies. In line with Davis’s critique above, through the initiation of the Batwa Trail as a
resilience project, the Government of Uganda through the Uganda Wildlife Authority is
equipping and indirectly mandating Batwa communities to become increasingly flexible,
adaptable, and open to change caused by the disruptions of the growing tourism industry. In a
related line of thought, Raven Cretney has argued that “ideologically, resilient nations, cities and
individuals are increasingly attractive as facets of capitalist society as they provide readily
adaptable individuals, places, economies and communities that can shift with the demands of
market-driven global economy” (p. 633). In what follows, I explore how the Batwa Trail as a
development initiative aimed to build resilience among the Batwa, has impacted on the people
for whom the project was intended.
The Batwa Trail as a Tool for Extending Hegemonic Neoliberal Discourses
With the establishment of the Batwa Trail, Batwa culture and heritage can now be seen as
an economic resource to be relied on in the wake of increasingly difficult economic times in
which the Batwa find themselves. Consequently, Batwa cultural expressions have been
transformed and repackaged into marketable products to be consumed by the tourist market.
Most tours and travel companies that take tourists to southwestern Uganda have an increased
awareness of the commercial opportunities that the Batwa Trail holds and are continuously
marketing the program as part of the products that they offer to their clients. This whole process
of repackaging indigenous cultures for touristic consumption has been referred to as
commodification (Cohen, 1988; Frow, 1997).
Commodification means that “cultural expressions that used to have a particular meaning
in a certain social and cultural context are transformed to something that is valorized and
governed by market standards”. In the case of the Batwa Trail, activities such as food gathering
have taken on a new meaning to be performed for tourists. In addition, some Batwa traditional
artefacts such as baskets have become aestheticized for purposes of being sold as souvenirs.
There is a considerable amount of literature that discusses the negative side of the process of
commoditization and how it “not only destroys the meaning of cultural products for the locals,
but paradoxically, also for the tourists” (Cohen 1984:373; see also Errington and Gewertz
1989:43, Goddmann, 1971; Torogovnich 1990). One limitation of the argument above is that it
characterizes communities such as the Batwa as passive agents in the neoliberal tourism
economy. Yet in fact most indigenous communities prefer to be part of the modern world,
tourism being the face of this modern world and a pathway for development. This, however, is
not to downplay the dilemmas associated with commodification of indigenous people’s cultures
as illustrate in the proceeding paragraphs.
Tours and travel companies seeking to attract clients to southwestern Uganda have
adopted the image of the ‘authentic’ bushman as part of their marketing strategy for the Batwa
Trail and the other touristic products that they seek to offer to their clients. The image of the
‘authentic’ bushman has become financial asset for these tour companies because its usage is
aimed at increasing demand for their products, thus increasing their financial revenue. The image
of the ‘authentic’ bushman can therefore be considered a brand in the economic sense of the
term. Rob Walker refers to branding as “a process of attaching an idea to a product” (Walker
2006). This is exactly what tours and travel companies in southwestern Uganda are doing with
the image of the bushman. Turning it into a product with romanticized ideas about living in
harmony with nature. The tourist neoliberal political economy thus thrives on such static
representations of indigenous identities based on authentic images. In the case of southwestern
Uganda, the image of the Mutwa bushman is commodified within the free market system as a
product with financial value.
. CELEBRATES A CULTURE THAT WAS THE MAJOR CAUSE OF
EVICTION…ALSO A CULTURE THAT IS THE MAJOR CAUSE OF BATWA
MARGINALIZATION…
A major dilemma associated with commodification of Batwa cultural expressions and
heritage is the externalization of the Batwa performers’ labor, coupled with alienation and the
dehumanization of the performers. In the Marxist sense of the term, externalization refers to a
process in which the laborer’s work becomes and external object that exists independently and
alien to them. The externalization and alienation of Batwa performers can be seen through the
following brief narrative of my encounter with the Batwa performers as part of their preparations
for the trail.
On a sunny Wednesday afternoon, I arrived at the Volcanoes Safari Lodge to attend a
rehearsal of the Batwa guides. I had earlier sought permission from Steven Asuma their head,
who had informed me that the rehearsals normally start at 3 pm on Wednesday afternoons.
Steven arrived on time to meet me there, but it took about an hour for the next member to arrive.
The rehearsal which was supposed to start at 3 pm started around 6 pm. During this long wait,
Steven explained to me the challenging circumstances under which they live and work. He told
me that most members come late for the rehearsal because they spend the biggest part of their
day looking for work and laboring on farms owned by members of the agricultural Bakiga
communities. When they labor on these farms, they are not paid in monetary terms, but get some
food in exchange of their labor. To Be able to attend the rehearsal, they must therefore first find a
garden to labor in order to be able to feed themselves and their families. He further explained
that it is possible that some of the members come to the rehearsal without having had a meal for
the day. He further explained that they do not get any compensation for the time they spend
rehearsing.
From Steven’s comments above, we can draw some insights about how the process of
commodification of Batwa culture and heritage leads to externalization and alienation of the
performers’ labor. When tourists attend the Batwa Trail, they pay a monetary price fixed by the
Uganda Wildlife Authority in exchange for the Batwa’s performances of their culture. In the
process of this transaction, all the social relations that led to the performed product that the
Batwa sell are hidden from the tourists. As the tourists watch the performances as part of the
Batwa Trail, they never get to know the conditions under which the Batwa performers prepared
the performance that they are putting on. The Batwa performances are therefore treated as if their
value was inherent in the cultural artefacts themselves, rather than the labor expended to produce
them. This separation between the Batwa as commodity producers and the tourists as consumers,
where the latter cannot see what is contained in the labor of the commodities they purchase,
dehumanizes the Batwa as laborers, obscures the social conditions for the production of the
Batwa Trail, and falsely positions monetary exchange as the arbiter of value.
For every session of the Batwa Trail, each of the Batwa guides who participate in the trail
receives a payment of 6000 Ugandan Shillings, approximately 1.7 US Dollars, while each of the
dancers and other performers receives 5000 Ugandan Shillings which is equal to 1.48 US Dollars.
Like any other touristic activities, the Batwa Trail depends on availability of tourists. Yet unlike
other tourist activities such as mountain gorilla tracking famous in Mgahinga area for receiving a
large influx of clients on a regular basis, the Batwa Trail receives a minimal number of tourists.
On average, the trail is only performed around 5 times every two months. This means that within
a period of two months, each of the guides receives an amount of about 30,000 Uganda Shillings
(Approximately 8.86 US Dollars). On average therefore, this income is far below the established
poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day for an individual. Yet, many (if not all) of the guides have families
and are supposed to use this revenue to cater for their families. It is evident that the income that
the Batwa generate from the trail is insufficient to cater for their basic needs, especially in an
environment polluted by high rates of inflation, Mgahinga being a touristic area.
Perhaps, a solution to the abovementioned problem would be to involve the Batwa peoples
in other full time employment activities. However, this is quite difficult given high levels of
illiteracy among the Batwa coupled with the fact that many of the Batwa communities are landless.
Besides, being the major part of the Batwa Trail restricts many of the participants from finding
fulltime employment since they are always required to be on standby, ready to perform for visitors
who might sign up for the tour. To use Alfonso Baptista’s words, the Batwa Trail as a development
project “play(s) an increasing role in constituting subjects according to how they [the Batwa] make
their lives” (Baptista, 2012:641). By introducing new limitations on the Batwa’s possibility of
attaining alternative employment elsewhere, the Batwa Trail “produces new spatial and
sociological realities”. (Baptista, 2012:641), what Foccault refers to as “structuring the possible
fields of actions of others” (Foccault, 2004:221) In a way therefore, the Batwa trail creates a form
of dependency that is unsustainable for the target population.
I have so far illustrated how a development project aimed at achieving economic
development ironically extends the disempowered position of its target population by failing to
provide a sustainable income. I now attempt to illustrate the limitations of achieving community
development as another envisioned goal of the Batwa trail.
While a part of the revenue from the Batwa trail is geared towards the development of
community infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and roads, I argue that such development is
more beneficial to the more dominant and landed communities and less so to the Batwa. For
example, as reported in the 2004 Report of the African Commission on Indigenous Populations,
there were only five Batwa children in secondary school in the three districts of Kabale, Kanungu
and Kisoro, where an estimated 70 percent of the Batwa population in Uganda resides. In Kisoro
only 30 percent of Batwa children attended primary school. Compelled by the statistics above, I
was interested in finding out what could be the cause of the above low figures of school attendance
yet the Government of Uganda established a free primary schooling policy in 1996. According to
the report, the main reasons for non-attendance and abandonment of school by Batwa children
include (a) long distances of the schools from their homes (b) harassment from other students (c)
lack of funds to buy uniforms and food (d) lack of land and housing and (e) the need to support
their families in meeting urgent basic needs such as food.
The details of the report above above illustrate a number of conditions about the reality of
current Batwa livelihood. First, the schools to which part of the revenue from the Batwa trail goes
are located in distant places from where the Batwa live. Secondly, the landlessness of the Batwa
affects the children’s performance in school. As a consequence of their landlessness, the Batwa
lack the means of production to cultivate food for their consumption or to provide them with an
alternative income that would help provide basic necessities such as food. It is because of this lack
of a means of production that parents are not able to provide the basic schooling necessities for
their children. Perhaps another major challenge that needs to be further researched and
problematized is the harassment and discrimination of Batwa even in the use of public facilities
such as schools and hospitals. From the above discussion, I have attempted to emphasize that while
part of the revenue collected in the Batwa trail is devoted to the development of community
infrastructure such as schools and hospitals, the Batwa do not fully benefit from such a project to
which they contribute.
http://neolib.uga.edu/commodification.php
[1] Tracie Washington is an advocate and activist associated with the Louisiana Justice Institute.
The poem was displayed on protest posters in New Orleans, Louisiana, in response to the British
Petroleum Company’s oil spillage off the Gulf Coast.