The public service is one of the most critical institutions of government. It offers regulatory and service functions and implements essential government policies and programmes. The search for public service competencies has been an enduring concern since African nations emerged from colonialism in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Today, as African nations make a challenging transition from a predominantly narrow bureaucratic mindset toward a more broad-based governance approach to public service, an important consideration is the quality of institutional knowledge, values, and norms required to create the capacity to effectively promote the public interest. This capacity is important to deliver an ever-expanding range of public services to an increasing citizenry in a dynamic and complex environment that is filled with new challenges.

The Ugandan public service, which entails numerous ministries, departments, and independent entities and agencies, just like many on the African continent, is rooted in the colonial institutional knowledge base and has for long operated mainly within the confines of the command, control, and compliance approach first introduced by the British colonial administrators. Where reforms have been initiated, they have fallen short of detaching institutional functioning from colonial precedent or they have been foreign, dictated by structural adjustment programmes and neoliberal values. This chapter is normative; I prescribe how the Ugandan public service ought to best serve the public interest by providing insight into how the production of institutional knowledge may be reimagined and reoriented to create a decolonial, more indigenous-values-based orientation to public service.

The indigenous values I propose are enshrined in the precolonial customary rules and conventions through which society reached consensus and regulated itself. For instance, whether it was a property dispute debated and adjudicated by community elders or a crisis that needed intervention of the council of elders, the African community palaver offered a mechanism through which community engagement, discourse, and participation were utilised in decision making. Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba, observed that ‘the palaver is an appropriate community method and practice to resolve contradictions among the people and to strengthen organic mutual links of solidarity among all the members of the community’. It can therefore be asserted that when applied properly, critical and reflective dialogue about what constitutes the public interest can enhance collaboration and achieve agreement between the public service and the people it is supposed to serve.