A labour market definition of underdeveloped countries is that these are the countries where a large part of the labour force does not engage in formal wage employment (Weeks, 1991). This definition fits Uganda's situation where 90% of the population live in rural areas and engage in subsistence farming. This characteristic is in addition to the prevalence of undifferentiated activities where people regularly combine individual with exchange labour and combining work across geographical areas (Standing, 1991). These characteristics have long puzzled and frustrated employers who,during the colonial period, referred to Africans as "target" workers (see Ogunbameru, 1984 for a good summary of this problem). Today's African employer faces a similar problem when workers including senior executives regularly take off for their "village homes" on Thursdays only to report for work the following Tuesday ( Munene, in press).
The Ugandan labour market is neither homogenous nor dichotomous as the neo-classic theory underlying SAPs would assume. The prevalence of undifferentiated activities cited above means that such characteristics as formal and informal sectors, and rural and urban markets break down and lose their descriptive and analytic powers when applied to Uganda and to most of SSA.
The Ugandan labour market, like markets in most SSA, is a complex mixture of personal linkages developed for the purpose of survival (Franks, 1989; Hyden, 1983). It is very unlike the impersonal labour market of the West where the employment relationship is limited to wage payment in return for productive services (Weeks, 1991). It is organised along different principles where the narrow economic base of the West is only peripheral. Instead you have a shopping list of employment relations operating on different perhaps conflicting principles (Onyemelukwe, 1973). These relations have been referred to collectively as the "economy of affection" defined as 'a network of support, communications and interaction among structurally defined groups connected by blood, kin, community or other activities' (Hyden: 1983: p. 9). Within this income- earning system people still pursue personal interests. However, the factors that come into play may require a different adjustive mechanism which is not always economic (Weeks, 1991).
Throughout most of SSA including Uganda,wage differences particulary within the public sector contracted providing a more equal distribution between the highest and lowest paid from 1975 through to the present. The phenomenon of the accelerating unskilled/minimum wage was the result of a policy that advocated linking minimum unskilled wages to the average standard in rural areas and reducing differentials within the formal sector. The policy, though, simply served to make urban employment more attractive to the unskilled while demoralizing the skilled and the educated. The bias however, was never quite felt while the exchange rate that subsidized imports was still kept at the nominal level. This helped to subsidize imports and enhance the value of real wages in Uganda (Bibangabah, 1992). The IMF-World Bank conditionality coming with SAPs removed the subsidy and exposed the skilled and the educated to the full force of the wage policy (Colclough, 1991). This was immediately followed by absenteeism, moonlighting, and corruption particulary within the established posts occupied by the more educated (Uganda Civil Service Review Commission, 1989).
