Immigrants and refugees in Uganda’s political economy
Radio Munansi English program February 3, 2013
This is Eric Kashambuzi communicating from New York.
Greetings: Fellow Ugandans at home and abroad, friends and well wishers. Welcome to the program. We look forward to your active participation.
In our discussion on population growth in Uganda, we observed that in preparing the 2010 State of population vital information on people entering and leaving Uganda was scarce and therefore not analyzed in terms of migrant and refugee contribution to Uganda’s population growth and impact on land, business, jobs, social services and environmental degradation etc. Migrants and refugees have been part of Uganda’s political economy since the early 1920s and the early 1960s respectively.
Let us begin with migration.
A combination of push factors in neighboring countries especially in Rwanda and Burundi and pull factors in Uganda led to huge labor migration into Uganda.