Existential Dread and Resilience in Uganda’s Civil Service

Abstract

The civil service in modern Uganda operated within a complex socio-political and economic landscape marked with corruption, inefficiency, and societal pressure, creating an environment of chronic uncertainty for public employees. The study aimed to explore existential dread and resilience among Ugandan civil servants, focusing on how systemic dysfunction and personal meaning-making intersect. Using a qualitative design, it employed in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 20 civil servants selected across gender, age, and administrative levels. The findings revealed pervasive feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, and purposelessness rooted in corruption, job insecurity, and limited career advancement. Participants described existential dread as a struggle between professional responsibility, cultural duty, and personal aspiration. Coping responses ranged from adaptive strategies such as prayer, family support, and positive reframing to maladaptive behaviours like emotional withdrawal and substance use. The analysis, grounded in existential psychology and social identity theory, demonstrated how cultural, spiritual, and bureaucratic structures shaped resilience in a non-Western context. The study contributed to theory by contextualising existential psychology within African collectivist frameworks and to practice through implications for policy and institutional reform. It underscored the need for culturally sensitive wellness programmes, organisational transparency, and ethical accountability. These findings emphasised that sustainable resilience required simultaneous structural and psychosocial interventions to restore meaning, integrity, and motivation among Uganda’s civil servants, advancing understanding of mental well-being within fragile governance systems.