Do not force Ugandans into birth control

In the past few months there has been a flurry of meetings in the country and articles in Uganda media about the dangers of Uganda’s population ‘explosion’. All the articles I have read are one-sided. They are directly or indirectly urging the government to coerce Ugandans into defusing a demographic ‘bomb’ through birth control which should be stepped up immediately. If my understanding of what is going on is correct, Ugandans are being treated like a herd of Zebras that have no capacity to adjust to their environment. If you lock them up in an enclosed area and leave them there, Zebras will reproduce to the limit of their biological capacity, eat all the grass and drink all the water and then perish through hunger and thirst. To prevent this catastrophe, Zebras need to be helped to control their fertility to match the available pasture and water. Similarly, Uganda authorities are being urged to act quickly and help or force Ugandans to adjust their fertility through birth control to match the number of mouths to feed with available goods and services. In my view, going down this road will create serious problems.

Why has Museveni survived so long in spite of serious flaws?

A while back I talked with some people who are familiar with Uganda’s political economy situation. We touched, inter alia, on the dangerously deteriorating social and environmental conditions in urban and rural areas which under normal circumstances would have created serious problems for Museveni in cabinet, parliament and the general population. Yet Museveni keeps on getting nominated for re-election. In true democratic terms where the public freely and fairly chooses the party candidate, one participant observed, Museveni would possibly not be re-nominated, much less re-elected. He has managed to stay in power by purchasing loyalty of the Uganda elites in the military and administration, and by aligning himself with western interests in economic, political and security areas.

The difficulty of applying Malthus essay to Uganda’s population

Uganda’s population challenges enter the development discourse when there are serious economic and social problems. Amin condemned population growth when the economy turned sour and ordered doctors to deal with it through contraception which he had banned a few years earlier. Currently (in 2010) Uganda’s population ‘explosion’ is again at the center of the development debate, invoking Malthus’ idea of population racing ahead of food production.

Malthus stated that population was growing geometrically (1,2,4,8,16 etc) while food production was growing arithmetically (1,2,3,4,5 etc), implying that all the food produced would be consumed in the same country. He concluded that if not checked, the least able to procure food would starve to death. Those able would survive – hence the survival of the fittest concept developed by Charles Darwin based on Malthus’ essay. The essay was written for Europe and North America. He used statistics compiled by Benjamin Franklin whose figures had included migration into America where it has had no application. During the 18th century agricultural productivity had doubled which Malthus ignored when he published his essay on population in 1798. One of the principle recommendations to check population growth was delayed marriage.