Public attitudes towards oil resources management in Uganda

Since the discovery of oil reserves was confirmed in Uganda in 2009, public optimism has been high that Uganda has finally found a resource with genuine potential too change people's lives for the better. While the depth, potential and management plan of Uganda's oil reserves is still under scrutiny, many warning voices abound to remind Ugandans and the country of the resource-Curse, a cycle of unfulfilled promises common with (African) countries that are blessed with natural resources.

Commissioned in 2014, the study of public attitudes towards oil resource management was aimed at understanding the extent to which Ugandans cared about oil revenue in contrast to tax and foreign aid revenue, as well as understanding how communities in the Albertine oil-rich region compared with folks in the rest of the country with regards to these views.

The study was conducted on behalf of principal investigators Guy Grossman (University of Pennsylvania), Laura Paler (University of Pittsburg), Jan Pierkalla (German Institute of Global and Area Studies), and Gabriella Sacramome-Lutz (Columbia University), employing a quantitative cross-sectional experimental design. The study posed up to seven experiments to tease out attitudes to different scenarios, and as well registered respondents who wished to enroll into a longitudinal study of public attitudes to resource management.

Data collection was completed in 2015, and a country report, book and public disseminations are being finalized.