(re)framing the narrative

Storytelling otherwise for a just forest economy in Kampala's city region

Master thesis (2023)

Authors

S.A. Wasswa Architecture and the Built Environment

Contributors

C.E.L. Newton Spatial Planning and Strategy - Architecture and the Built Environment (supervisor 1)
V. Muñoz Sanz Urban Design - Architecture and the Built Environment (supervisor 1)
Faculty
Architecture and the Built Environment
Copyright: © 2023 Shinnosuke Wasswa
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Published Date

22-06-2023

Language

English

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Faculty

Architecture and the Built Environment

Abstract

Kampala is the heartbeat of Uganda’s economy and has driven rural-urban migration over the years as people travel in search of better opportunities (Namwanje, 2022). This has led to rapid urbanisation and unprecedented growth of the informal sector that extends beyond the geographical confines of the city.

Rural areas, acting as spatial extensions of the city, have served as productive landscapes, supporting Kampala’s bustling informal economy and the livelihoods of city dwellers. Over the years, large expanses of uncultivated land in rural areas and natural forests in some cases, have been replaced with monocultural commercial forests causing socio-ecological degradation in Kampala’s city region.

While studying past and current trends in Uganda’s forest governance, as well as the socio-cultural relations between people and forests, the study brings to light the social and epistemic injustices of past and current exclusionary forestry policies and practices. Storytelling is used not only as an investigative tool to understand the lives of the Batwa indigenous forest peoples, but also as an approach to document local knowledges and envision an alternative future outside the realm of western technocratic approaches. Counter-storytelling operates as activism, transcending oppression while fostering emanicipation and transformation of the Batwa people. In so doing, the project seeks to achieve self-determination for a just forest economy in Kampala’s city region.