Although African continent and Uganda in particular experienced the influence of the western economies which
came with exploration, missionary work, and colonialism, and which put the indigenous design creativity to sleep,
communities have continued to show resilience in utilizing indigenous design processes whenever there is a shift in
the cosmetic African-West relationship. This paper describes and assesses how indigenous processes become
fundamental and sustained a fragile economy of Uganda after the military takeover of government by Idi Amin in
1971. It looks at how Ugandan artisans employed their long forgotten skills in designing processes that allowed
communities to function. For example artisans made spare parts for the abandoned factories, made soap, and
processed salt for consumption. The paper takes a pro-vocal approach and traces how this worked, how it is still
working even when the country is presumably peaceful with the majority of the population engaged in agriculture
production. The author carried out an ethnographic study on 90 participants in Kiruhura district in S.W. Uganda to
establish how families integrate indigenous design processes in their daily activities. The author investigated why
families continue to use indigenous material cultural items such as carvings, pottery, baskets, and iron work yet
government policy emphases commercial agriculture. Results indicate that most families still use indigenous design
processes in agriculture, housing, and treatment because of the superficial and unstructured ability by most families
to use western made technologies, and that many of them do not have the necessary resources to acquire the
modern technology.