Bright Prospects or an Omnious Future: Anticipating Oil in Uganda

Analysing competing visions of Uganda’s future with oil, this article off ers a new perspective on the resource curse as a risk discourse. Political and civil society actors in Uganda create and negotiate visions of the future that are framed by the resource curse thesis: oil could be a blessing or a curse. Connecting this discourse to prevalent notions of uncertainty in Uganda’s oil region, I argue that for the people, knowledge of the resource curse increases their uncertainty about the future.