Since the early 1990s, Uganda has been one of Africaís fastest growing countries.
However, at the sub-national level, growth has been uneven due to civil conflict in the
northern region. A unique panel data set of about 1,000 households in Uganda from 1991
to 1999 provides a natural experiment to examine the particular role of public security on
growth dynamics. Building on the growth literature, the change in per capita consumption
is modeled as a function of initial conditions and a set of shocks at both individual and
aggregate levels that occurred between the two sample periods. Security is measured as
the civil strife incidence at the community level. For the whole sample, security is the
second most important variable after initial income in explaining the growth patterns and
five types of infrastructure development are jointly significant. Infrastructure
development has played an insignificant role in prompting consumption growth in civil
strife stricken region. In regions where security is already in place, other factors, such as
improvement in infrastructure, become more prominent. The results highlight the order of
importance in economic development. Without security, economic development is hard
to take place. However, economists and policy advisors living in peaceful countries often
prescribe economic policies, such as the famous macro adjustment program in the 1980s,
which hinge on the assumption of good security. In this manner, security, like oxygen, is
taken for granted.