On May 6, 2010 Sylvia Juuko reported in the New Vision (Uganda) that the World Bank effective July this year will focus its assistance on the oil sector, urban development and governance. While these are no doubt important areas one wonders what criteria were used in selecting them over rural development and agriculture – which is Uganda’s economic mainstay and the World Bank’s recent announcement that it would direct more resources to agriculture which had been neglected – unemployment, nutrition, health, education, school feeding program, industrialization and environment.
Kundhavi Kadiresan, World Bank representative, reported that Uganda is one of the largest recipients of soft loans from the World Bank, noting that Uganda’s portfolio of International Development Assistance (IDA) financed operations stood at $1.3 billion. Instead of reporting dollar figures, it would have been more helpful if Kadiresan had presented outcomes of these investments and the extent to which they have helped to reduce poverty. It is known that much of World Bank resources go to pay high salaries, allowances and travel costs of foreign advisers and consultants who then deposit the money in their home bank accounts.
Countries that are developed, industrialized and urbanized led by Britain began with agricultural revolution leading into industrialization and urbanization. In Latin America where urbanization has taken place without industrialization, urban poverty has become a major challenge and has risen to 9 million according to a report presented at the United Nations General Assembly last week which had met to discuss progress in the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
In Uganda, some 90 percent of the population depends on agriculture or agro-related activities (there are areas designated as part of townships where people are still growing crops, grazing livestock and collecting fuel wood for cooking on a full time basis). Any policy that focuses on urban growth at the expense of rural modernization is going to attract more people from rural into urban areas and create more problems as Latin America has demonstrated. There needs to be a balanced approach to rural and urban development.
The assertion that urban development will transform Uganda into a middle income country raises some doubts. Ugandans were told in 1986 and thereafter that within 15 years the country would become an industrialized middle income economy and society. Seventy percent of Uganda’s GDP is now concentrated in the capital city of Kampala and yet poverty is getting worse if we go by the incidence of the diseases of poverty that is spreading in rural and urban areas. What made the World Bank conclude that the future of Uganda’s development and poverty eradication is in urban development? The World Bank and government need to rethink this approach. Uganda’s urban areas have become problematic because they were left to the invisible hand of market forces and laissez faire capitalism. Adam Smith had warned that the invisible hand of the market was not enough and needed a guiding hand of society. The NRM government and development partners including the World Bank ignored the second part and we are all paying a heavy price. If the president’s foreword to the National Development Plan is any guide, Uganda has no plans to shift from the invisible hand of market forces. Under this scenario, urban problems are likely to get worse.
The World Bank representative addressed Uganda’s ‘alarming’ rapid population growth at an average of 3.2 percent per annum. It has become a habit that whenever Uganda’s economy is in trouble, an escape goat or an act of God beyond human control has to be found. When Amin’s ‘economic war’ did not work and Ugandans began to lose confidence in his leadership, he blamed rapid population growth for the economic difficulties and ordered family planning clinics – which he had closed at the start of his military administration – reopened. When that did not work, he invaded a neighboring country to divert attention from domestic troubles. What happened after is too well known to be repeated here.
After many years’ of boasting that Uganda was an ‘economic success story’, the embarrassment caused to the government and the donor community by the spreading diseases of poverty that cannot be swept under the carpet, has forced them to come up with an escape goat – again population explosion. When the economy was believed to be doing well the official line was that Uganda had not yet reached an optimal population level, implying that more people were still needed. Suddenly people from all walks of life – lawyers, journalists, foreign advisers and politicians etc – have joined a chorus in calling for birth control.
With too many wars, epidemics (e.g. malaria in Kabale) and AIDS pandemic an ordinary person from Luwero, Luakai, Northern and Eastern Uganda etc is going to be difficult to convince that he or she should reduce family size.
Second, Uganda is a country that has attracted more in-migrants than out-migrants. We need to know their contribution to the so-called population bomb.
Third, we need to know which group or groups in Uganda are contributing to the alarming demographic dynamics. Unless this information is available, it would be unwise to jump to birth control especially if the people targeted discover that some governments are encouraging their people to have more children or when they see that in Uganda tribes with more people are getting more districts and therefore more central government resources. There are reports that Bahutu in Rwanda are complaining that government’s birth control is designed to reduce their numbers. Uganda should avoid such developments.
Fourth, at the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development, it was decided that focus should shift from numbers to people, meaning that the education of girls beyond primary education and empowerment of women economically would in the long-term facilitate decisions regarding the number of children and when to have them and bring fertility rates down which is already happening albeit slowly.