The American Heritage Dictionary

The American Heritage Dictionary defines federalism as a form of government in which a union of states [or regions] recognizes the sovereignty of a central authority while retaining certain residual powers of government.

William Riker, a federalism scholar defines it as an explicitly two-tiered system with some area of autonomy for each level of government and an explicit guarantee of that autonomy.

The independent authority of the constituent units distinguishes federalism from the unitary system and the current decentralization system in Uganda in which the lower government units are delegated powers by the central government, which can also take them back.

The independent authority of the constituent governance units necessarily means that they have authority to raise a good deal of revenues through major taxes in order to meet their responsibilities. In fact, taxation by the states is such a key feature of federalism that without it you essentially have no federalism.

You will note that the definition of federalism says nothing about monarchism, or feudalism. The confusion about federalism in Uganda arose out of the fact that at independence it was the kingdom areas [especially Buganda] which most insisted on a federal system because they wanted to preserve a certain level of self-determination. But a region does not need to have, or recognize, a king in order to have federal powers.

Further, the European Union (E.U) includes a number of federal countries such as Germany, Switzerland and Belgium [where the E.U capital is located]. Clearly internal federal arrangements within the member countries are not mutually exclusive with larger regional federations; that is, you can have both at the same time.

Moreover, federalism has nothing to do with size. Switzerland, and Belgium which President Museveni is fond of pointing out as having a larger GDP than all of Sub-Saharan Africa, are both much smaller than Uganda, in fact they are both quite a bit smaller than Buganda alone, yet they both have federal systems, and their federal regions are based on ethnicity and language.

Thus African countries' problem is not a lack of size but a rather a lack of internal cohesion due to a failure by Africans to devise political systems that take into account the realities of African peoples' geographical and social organization that preceded the coming of the colonialists

Both the central government and all of Uganda's regions shall win when genuine federalism is granted. The central government's task in ensuring development throughout the