This article demonstrates how female students in rural Uganda experience education sponsorship in ways that belie international development discourse about girls’ empowerment. Since the 1990s, international development organizations have promoted community‐based programming alongside efforts to empower individual subjects. I examine the intersection of these trends through the lens of an American nongovernmental organization's (NGO) scholarship program in a Ugandan village. Drawing from recent work on the politics of potentiality, I argue three nested points: (1) NGOs and the various groups that interact with them construct the community as a site for intervention; (2) notions of potential are key to these constructions; and (3) the community–potential nexus is gendered in ways that reconfigure young women's networks of support and obligation with kin, local leaders, and NGO staff. This analysis illuminates larger tensions surrounding notions of individual autonomy and community obligation in Uganda and rural sub‐Saharan Africa more broadly.

中文翻译：

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走向光明的未来：乌干达村庄的潜力政治

本文展示了乌干达农村地区的女学生如何以与国际发展有关女孩赋权的论述相隐瞒的方式体验教育赞助。自1990年代以来，国际开发组织一直在推动基于社区的编程，同时努力增强个人能力。我通过一个乌干达村庄的美国非政府组织（NGO）奖学金计划的镜头研究了这些趋势的交叉点。从最近关于潜能政治的研究中，我提出了三个嵌套的观点：（1）非政府组织和与其互动的各种团体将社区建设为干预的场所；（2）潜在概念是这些构造的关键；（3）通过重新配置年轻女性的性别来确定社区-潜在联系的性别 与亲属，地方领导人和非政府组织工作人员的支持和义务网络。该分析揭示了围绕乌干达和撒哈拉以南非洲农村地区的个人自治和社区义务概念的更大紧张关系。