This book discusses the economic miracle of Uganda during the 1990s. Following decades of mismanagement by Idi Amin and Milton Obote that virtually crippled Uganda's (formal) economy, in the years after Yoweri Museveni's rise to power real GDP soared, inflation returned to acceptable rates, and poverty declined. Uganda's miracle has been discussed before, but Uganda's Economic Reforms makes two distinct contributions. First, it offers an insider's perspective on the contentious issue of economic policy making in Africa. It represents a collection of discussions from twenty-one leading civil servants and economic advisors responsible for the planning and implementation of reforms (pp. xxii–xxv). Second, it contradicts the stereotype of government agents and institutions as self-interested, predatory actors. The detailed discussions of this book convey a real concern with Uganda's economic progress by those in charge.

Uganda's economic policies during the 1980s and 1990s comprised measures in three different domains. First, rather than seeking to control the value of its currency, the government allowed it to float freely which, combined with greater spending discipline (pp. 41–4) and a coffee boom in the mid 1990s that boosted foreign capital inflows (pp. 64–5), enabled the government to control inflation. Second, the government abandoned trade licensing and liberalised forex. As a result, the private sector, which had in previous decades gone underground in response to overregulation, came to life (pp. 40–2). Marketing boards were dismantled, giving smallholder farmers an incentive to produce (p. 243), although a similar attempt with parastatals was less successful; although the parastatal sector ceased to be such a burden on the economy, the reforms failed to generate broad ownership among Ugandan businessmen (p. 370). Finally, the Ugandan government tried to broaden its tax base (and hence secure legitimacy) by introducing VAT and income tax, and by founding an independent revenue authority to facilitate tax collection. Significantly, although each of these measures met with fierce popular opposition, even leading to several strikes, the revenue percentage of GDP almost doubled during the 1990s (p. 111).

In conclusion, the general message that the authors of this book convey is one of hope. They claim that economic reforms driven by administrators with sincere motives have structurally transformed Uganda's economy, pushing it back on track. However, there is a growing consensus among observers of Uganda's political economy that after the golden years of the 1990s it is now waning. Such commentators identify the introduction of policies associated with a previous era: the dissipation of productive resources into political networks, dirigiste measures that have no popular support, and a failure to focus on the fulfilment of broader social goals. The question therefore remains whether the 1990s indeed marked a structural transformation of the economy, as the authors of Uganda's Economic Reforms claim, or whether there has in reality been a continuation of earlier political practices under the guise of economic transformation. To appreciate this more fully, students of economic reforms in Uganda, and indeed elsewhere on the continent, should keep this insightful book close at hand.