Tag Archives: population

Population growth is scapegoat for Uganda’s damaged environment

Radio Munansi English program Sunday February 10, 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 this interactive conversation.

Since Amin time, population growth has been blamed for Uganda’s problems including environmental degradation in rural and urban areas. There is a rumor that NRM government is about to introduce to parliament a bill limiting family size to three children. This is a blatant violation of human right of couples to decide how many children they wish to have when to have them and how to space them. What the government can do is to facilitate and create conditions to enable Ugandans take informed decisions but not to force them especially by some leaders who have more than three children. It doesn’t make sense to force Ugandans to limit their family size when the government wants to eliminate Uganda borders so that other people from East Africa and beyond come is as they like. These are contradictions and one wonders what the overall goal is as far as Uganda population is concerned. Many countries are protecting their borders to eliminate or limit immigrants but in Uganda and Rwanda they want to abolish national borders. Uganda isn’t going to solve other people’s problems to its detriment. Uganda hasn’t benefited from the East African community in terms of trade, labor and population mobility as we discussed yesterday.

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What causes population to increase or decrease?

Demographers – population specialists – have concluded that the total population of the whole world will reach 7 billion on October 30, 2011 and will continue to increase thereafter.

There has been confusion about why the global population is increasing. What is causing an increase is not a rise in fertility but a fall in mortality. In other words, mortality is falling faster than fertility.

There is worry that if the global population continues to grow sooner or later the demand for goods and services will exceed their supply, causing all sorts of problems including famines and war over scarce resources. The relatively easy solution is to stop or reduce drastically population increase. This can be achieved in two ways – increase mortality and/or reduce fertility. Since it is morally wrong to recommend mortality increase, the only alternative is fertility reduction to 2.1 children per couple.

At continental, regional or national levels population increase or decrease is due to the difference between fertility and mortality (natural increase or decrease) and the difference between in-migrants and out-migrants (positive or negative migration). For example, when fertility exceeds mortality and in-migrants exceed out-migrants the population will increase. On the other hand when fertility is lower than mortality and in-migrants are fewer than out-migrants the population will decrease.

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Uganda voters should not sell their birthright for a kilo of salt

This 2011 election will save or destroy Uganda. Re-electing Museveni will change Uganda as we have known it – make no mistake about it. The trajectory is very clear. Museveni is already negotiating with foreigners to sell Uganda’s land – the deal with Egypt is in final stages of finalization.

When Roman food crop producing peasants were forced to sell their land to large scale farmers, the latter switched from food crops for peasant consumption to grazing cattle and sheep or growing grapes and olives for rich families. Rome’s population declined in part from high mortality rate of impoverished, hungry and sick peasants. The weakened Rome was invaded and conquered by barbarians.

Similarly, through the sale of Uganda’s land to foreigners who will then grow foodstuffs to feed their own people, Uganda peasants will dwindle and be replaced by ‘invaders’ through East African economic integration and political federation. This is not a joke. The brilliant, dynamic and jovial children that Uganda has known will be gone as education standards decline and child malnutrition and associated diseases take its toll.

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Highlights of the population debate

1. The population debate has been with us for a very long time dating as far back as classical Greece and Rome. It has evolved overtime and now includes population explosion and implosion as well as women’s reproductive health and rights.

2. At the global level population dynamics is a function of changes in births and deaths. However, at the national level (e.g. Uganda) total population is a function of births – deaths + in-migrants – out-migrants.

3. The world population change has gone through three phases: the first phase occurred in the Neolithic Revolution caused by shifts from nomadic hunter/gatherer communities to crop production and animal domestication making more food available to feed more mouths in settled communities and reduced deaths; the second phase from the Industrial Revolution that started around 1750. Improved transport systems and cold storage facilities connected food surplus to deficit regions and public health including general hygiene, safe drinking water and sanitation that lowered mortality; the third phase began in the late 1950s and is characterized by medical and technological advances that too lowered death rate. Thus, all these phases from the first through the third have one thing in common: they saved lives and increased life expectancy. Thus, during these three phases the increase in population was not because couples were having more babies. It is because people were living longer due to a reduction in mortality.

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Impact of refugees on Uganda’s population and political explosion

The job of researchers and reporters is to collect and present facts as background information for policy makers. Right now Uganda is experiencing tremendous demographic and political tremors whose causes need analysis, sorting and appropriate action before the tremors develop into full-blown earthquakes.

It would be naïve and unwise to ignore emerging emotional and controversial debates on the role of refugees and illegal immigrants in Uganda’s politics and demography, hoping time alone will solve them. The case of Cote d’Ivore where natives have had a devastating civil war with foreign-born immigrants for control of the country should serve as a useful lesson for Uganda since Uganda’s economic and political troubles have involved foreigners for about one hundred years.

Since colonial days Uganda has pursued, developed and maintained a liberal labor immigration and refugee policy which has complicated its political economy and demography. The role of refugees, foreign workers and illegal immigrants should not be underestimated in Uganda’s population and political dynamics.

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NRM ‘revolution’ has reversed Uganda’s 90 years achievements

When the National Resistance Movement (NRM) came to power in 1986, it promised fundamental changes in Uganda’s political economy and society. Ugandans assumed fundamental change meant a quick recovery from the political, economic and social difficulties they had experienced since 1971 to a path of sustained growth, sustainable and transformational development. The launch of the ten-point program gave Ugandans hope. Unfortunately the ten point program never materialized. Instead, since 1990, Uganda has experienced a reversal of its earlier achievements including land ownership, economic transformation, ecological conservation and human capital formation. No one imagined that NRM’s fundamental change meant reversal of achievements Uganda had realized in the 90 years between 1894 and 1985. The reversal has affected the following areas:

The British colonial authorities left Uganda’s land firmly in the hands of Uganda peasants. This decision was taken after intensive discussions between London and Entebbe. British authorities further realized that adequate food and nutrition security was a human right that must be observed. They developed fisheries to provide affordable source of protein for low income families.

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Immigrants and population growth in Buganda

Uganda’s ‘explosive’ population growth has become the single most important development challenge to date. It has been reported in major newspapers in Uganda and at international conferences. Seminars have been conducted on the subject and more are planned. The population topic has attracted people from many disciplines, many of them with insufficient knowledge, experience or data to handle the subject professionally.

The causes of Uganda’s problems – poverty, unemployment, environmental degradation, crime, violence, food insecurity, urban congestion and slums, poor quality education and health care, lack of adequate savings and investments etc – are being blamed largely on Uganda’s high fertility rate. Development partners and experts are increasingly concerned about the future of Uganda if the fertility rate is not checked. One reporter in Observer magazine (Uganda) of August 8, 2010 suggested that “Uganda must start aggressively [using force] promoting and funding family planning services” reminiscent of what happened in India and China. Some readers have supported the suggestion without indicating how it should be done and on what groups.

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The high population growth rate in Uganda

In its report on Uganda dated January 2009, the African Peer Review Forum included a section on population growth (pages 283 through 285). The report noted that “Historically, high fertility rates strongly correlate with poverty and high child mortality rates…). The report further noted that “Recovering from civil war and an HIV prevalence rate that peaked at 30 percent in the 1990s, Uganda now has the third highest population growth rate in the world, estimated at 3.2 percent… The high population growth rate is driven by the country’s high average total fertility rate of 6.9 children, one of the highest in the world”. The report did not mention the influence of migration on Uganda’s population growth. Uganda has a very liberal policy on migration and refugees. This dimension must be factored into Uganda’s demographic equation. The report also did not mention that fertility has begun to decline albeit slowly.

The report covered some causes of the high fertility rate. They include socio-cultural factors like early marriage, low educational levels, especially among females, pervasive poverty, low contraceptive use, general low socio-economic status of women and political statements that encourage large families in part because Uganda has low population density with negative political economy consequences.

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Ugandans need to understand the causes of population growth first

Of late there has been a resurgence of writing and debate about Uganda’s population ‘explosion’ or ‘bomb’ that will destroy development efforts because savings are going into feeding unproductive mouths of children instead of investing in productive enterprises. Increasingly we are witnessing people who are not trained in population much less experienced in this complex subject writing and commenting with confidence like they know more than any other Ugandan or for that matter any other expert. Some of these may have had one day or one week’s seminar in population matters and begin to talk with authority.

Population dynamics are very complex in time and space. We have seen the regrettable results of countries that rushed into reducing population growth rapidly by force or couples that did not want children or just one or two. These countries and their governments are now rushing to reverse the trend. Have you heard of “Conception Day” in one of the developed countries where a national holiday has been declared so that the citizens can stay at home and increase their population? Have you heard of a wide range of incentives that are being offered in developed countries so that their populations can have many children? What I am saying is that rushing into curbing population growth can be costly in the long term.

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Population dimension in development planning

The population dimension has featured prominently in the reviews of Uganda’s five-year development plan which was launched on Monday April 19, 2010. In considering this issue let us remember that:

First, individuals and couples have a human right to determine freely the number of children they need, when to start having them and how to space them. This is in line with the 1994 Cairo conference on population and development and the recently concluded 43rd session of the UN commission on population and development. Authorities should provide information and facilities to enable individuals and couples full fill their rights voluntarily.

Second, according to Article II (iv) of the Convention on Genocide (1948), imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group [e.g. of poor people] constitutes an act of genocide.

Third, population growth in a country is largely a result of poverty and migration. Poor people as we have in Uganda tend to produce many children because mortality rate in that group is still high, poor parents depend on children in old age, and a subsistence economy requires more hands than a modern one. Children of poor people drop out of school early and get married in their teens and begin to produce children right away. Reducing poverty and keeping girls at school beyond primary education and empowering women reduce fertility rates without controversy.

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