Tag Archives: districts

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.

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Rural electrification in Rukungiri raises questions

Ronald Kalyango reported in New Vision on June 17, 2010 that government plans to provide rural electricity to Bushenyi and Rukungiri districts to boost agriculture and eradicate poverty. The reporter added that the electricity will cost money and users will be trained on how to use it efficiently. He added that installation will destroy land, crops and trees. The announcement was made by candidates running for re-election in Rukungiri district. The areas to be covered include Kyatoko, Kagunga and Kyaruyenje. These are areas that parliament voted to include in Rukungiri municipality two or so weeks ago.

In conversation with a senior official in Rukungiri Town Council a year or so ago, I was informed very clearly that once the area is incorporated into the municipality, the authority will divide it up into plots for sale to the highest bidder to generate resources with which to develop the area, meaning that peasants will have to be dispossessed.

The decision by Rukungiri district council to upgrade Rukungiri town into a municipality was taken in an emergency session without consulting the people involved. The entire Kagunga sub-county where some of the poorest people in Rukungiri district live has been incorporated into the municipality. The moment the municipality comes into force land will automatically be owned by the Municipal Council and former owners will become tenants on terms and conditions set by the municipality.

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Why Uganda is implementing a different kind of revolution

The political wing of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) crafted its propaganda message targeting different communities during the bush war. NRM propagandists spoke and wrote about what Baganda and Catholics wanted to hear. They painted the ruling Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) Party led by Obote as a ‘thief’ that had robbed Buganda of its districts during the referendum on the ‘Lost Counties’ and handed them over to Bunyoro. UPC added an injury to Baganda wounds by overthrowing their kingdom. For Catholics who support the Democratic Party (DP) they focused on the ‘rigged’ 1980 elections that robbed DP of its victory.

To bring to NRM camp a large chunk of UPC supporters, the NRM strategists blamed the suffering of Ugandans, during the Obote II regime in the first half of the 1980s, on the government’s adoption of structural adjustment with its harmful economic and social conditionality and maintenance of a colonial economic structure that condemned Uganda to the production and export of cheap raw materials and import of expensive manufactured products which could be easily produced in Uganda, create jobs and increase incomes.

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