Managing donor perceptions: Contextualizing Uganda's 2007 intervention in Somalia

This article explores Uganda's decision to send peacekeeping troops to Somalia in 2007 as part of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and argues that the intervention has as much to do with Uganda's relationship with its donors as it has with maintaining regional stability – the official justification for intervention. Museveni's decision to intervene in Somalia is the most recent example of his regime's multi-pronged ‘image management’ strategy in which the President has involved Uganda in numerous foreign and domestic activities to ensure that donors perceive his government in a particular way vis-à-vis their interests: as an economic success story, a guarantor of regional stability, or, in relation to Somalia, an ally in the global war on terror. In so doing Museveni's strategy, conceptualized here within a constructivist framework, has been able largely to avoid censure in areas of traditional donor concern such as governance, thereby achieving a considerable degree of agency in a seemingly asymmetric relationship.