Is Uganda ready for the population challenge? 

In 1948, 25 Ugandans shared a square kilometre of land on average. That number has been rising steadily, to 48 in 1969, 85 in 1991 and 124 in 2002.

The upcoming census will provide a more accurate picture, but going by the current projections, which show that Uganda has 35.4m people, the average population per square kilometre of land stands at 150.

The rising population density – having increasingly more people per square kilometre of land – has serious implications for the ability of the population to sustain itself, especially since a big majority still relies on tilling the land using the hand hoe.

The State of Uganda’s Population Report 2013, released last week by the Population Secretariat, shows that an overwhelming majority of Ugandans – 88 percent – still live in rural areas, many of them facing abject poverty, poor service delivery, poor infrastructure, and famine in some areas.

The report adds that if the population continues to grow at the current rate – with the less educated or uneducated women having an average of seven children and elites having almost four – Uganda will have 65 mouths to feed by 2020, and the majority of these will still live in rural areas.

Demographic bonus or burden?

The key concern then is whether Uganda’s transformation efforts will be helped by the fast growing population.

There is a view that has been gaining currency that a large population can catalyse, rather than impede, economic growth and transformation.

Two examples usually cited in this regard are China and India, which some say have grown rapidly in recent years because of the pressure from their huge populations to improve the economies and provide what the people demand.

Conversely, some argue that Africa was slow to transform into a developed society because it was sparsely populated, meaning that its people were not always challenged to compete with one another since the resources at their disposal were relatively more abundantly available compared to other continents.

President Museveni is one of the proponents of this view, which he pushed in one of the speeches he made in the late 1980s, compiled in his book, What Is Africa’s Problem. He still maintains this view.

Another ardent supporter of this line is Hajj Abdul Nadduli, the ruling party vice chairman for Buganda region and Luweero District chairperson, who years back offered to donate a heifer to every family in Luweero into which twins were born.

Often, Mr Museveni and bureaucrats in his government have spoken at cross purposes as regards the matter of population growth, with the technical people saying that rapid population growth is likely to present serious challenges.

Prof. Kazenga Tibenderana, a retired Makerere University academic who now works at Kampala International University, moves to demonstrate the challenges of rapid population growth rates in poor countries like Uganda:

“With population growth rates in poor countries more than double what it is in developed countries, poor countries’ economies must grow more than twice as fast as those of the rich countries just to keep from falling farther behind.”

But, of course, Uganda does not just want to retain its current position vis-a-vis the developed countries; it wants to catch up, and if possible, surpass them. And population growth could either be a springboard or a deal breaker.

“Uganda will, sooner than later, enter a demographic window of opportunity often called the demographic gift or demographic bonus,” the Population Report says in part, “Such an era occurs when a population witnesses a combination of factors like a declining fertility and mortality.”

If less people are born and less die, the population growth will still remain high. In the case of a young population like Uganda’s, it would not make much of a difference in the short and medium term, because the young people will have to reproduce when they reach child-bearing years.

As a result, the report says: “The revised Population Policy indicates that even if fertility rates were to drop drastically to replacement levels of around 2 children per woman, the population of Uganda will still continue to grow by at least 2 per cent for the next 50 years or so.”

The report goes on about the “demographic window of opportunity”:  “An increased labour force leads to a reduced dependency ratio. If such a labour force is healthy, educated, skilled and with increased employment opportunities, it will save, invest and spur economic growth of a nation. This is the demographic gift.”

But then comes the caveat: “This window of opportunity, if not planned for, can end up resulting into a demographic burden.”

So what options are available?

The above caveat, particularly the need for planning for the growing population, seems even more pertinent given one important statistic in the population report.

Uganda has the youngest population in the world, with 78 percent of its people below the age of 30 and 52 percent below 15 years. The report further reaffirms a World Bank finding that “at least 83 percent of the youth have no formal employment.”

The lack of jobs is attributed to the slow rate of economic growth, the small labour market, high population growth rate, the rigid and largely theoretical education system, rural-urban migration and limited access to capital.

As a result, many of the younger people earn their livelihood from odd jobs like bodaboda riding, brick laying, petty trade, vending, and casual labour.

These activities, according to Mr Anold Musoke, a researcher into population issues, cannot usher Uganda into the “demographic bonus”. What is needed, he says, is for the country to develop “ground-breaking” technology to address the situation.

Mr Musoke says that Uganda, for example, is ill-prepared to produce the food needed to sustain the population.

 “What you find in many villages is that the youth have left agriculture to be employed in the informal sector, like riding bodaboda, leaving the women, the elderly and children to grow the food,” Mr Musoke says.

These people, Mr Musoke adds, cannot grow enough food to sustain themselves and spare some for the market, meaning that many households have no sustainable sources of income.

“An intervention in agricultural technology is long overdue,” Mr Musoke says, “to produce an affordable technology that will enable the people to till the land and stop using human power.”

Mr Musoke says that the rate of growth of food production can “at best only match” the rate of growth of population growth, “meaning that there is no net improvement over the years.”

Mr Musoke adds that lack of improvements in formal employment and industrial technology has meant that most people have been locked in agriculture and other extractive activities like fishing, partly explaining the rising tensions over land.

‘Government needs to come up with a programme for including the youth in mainstream development programmes to reduce the growing dependency syndrome,” the report notes in part.

Numbers:

34,000,000 – estimated number of Ugandans

84% - people living in rural areas

78% - Ugandans below age 30

50.1% - female Ugandans

Source: State of Uganda Population Report 2013