Common stand on Uganda's population policy still a far cry

While countries historically have taken advantage of a population spike- to grow economies and expand- it is also true that large populations can suffocate economic development by putting pressure on resources.

Uganda’s official population agency has supported the view that the lack of electricity, especially in the rural countryside, is powering the record-breaking population growth rate- that has politicians and western-backed technocrats divided.

“The poor are reproducing themselves. A poor woman has eight children while the rich are producing 3-4,” said Isaiah Mbuga, the national programme officer at the Population Secretariat.

The view that the absence of modernity – in the form of access to electricity, education and dispositions against certain religious and cultural perspectives - is the reason for Uganda’s roaring baby boom has create a different thinking between politicians like President Museveni who supports a large population and the Mbuga’s who do not.

It is also a policy black hole. On the one hand politicians say a large population is important to growth while technocrats argue that growth is determined not by the size but by quality of population. The problem, observers point out, is a classic chicken and egg situation.

Suffocate development
While countries historically have taken advantage of a population spike- to grow economies and expand- it is also true that large populations can suffocate economic development by putting pressure on resources. The difference either way is determined by the type of investment a country makes in its population to improve its quality and output.

Officially Uganda, through the Secretariat, proposes containment in the form of better sexual practices and family planning.

Mbuga argues, for example, that 78 per cent of Ugandan women have unplanned for babies allegedly because the lack of electricity in part narrows their choices of entertainment after dark to sex.
He points out that condom use - associated more with prevention of HIV/Aids than birth control - is low.

“There is a marked difference in the fertility rates between primary school drop-outs and girls who study up to university,” he said explaining the socio-economic distance in birth rates between the modern and less modern sections of the community.

And the momentum thus far is by the poor who are churning out more children than can be planned for by the government, Mbuga argues.

“Everyday 2,800 babies are born but we don’t see classrooms increasing,” he said. This view is shared by Mr Urban Tibamanya, the Minister for Urban Planning.
According to Mr Tibamanya, urbanisation or the movement of the rural poor to towns including the conscious efforts by them to better their standards speaks to the positive things about development.

“When people leave the village for university education, after three years they start homes. Secondly, there are people who come as unskilled labourers like brick layers, porters and so forth and they do this all their lives. They marry and produce children and because of the good health facilities, their children don’t die,” he said in an interview.

He adds that the aggregate effect of thousands relocating for better opportunities is the “squalid conditions” that people live in as the collective strain on housing and other services takes its toll.

This is the future that the United Nations Population Fund said in a report that is likely to eventually overwhelm the government.

In its report, it notes that Uganda leaped from a population of five million in 1948 to 31 million in 2009 posting the highest fertility rates in Africa. Today, about 78 per cent of the population is aged below 25.

What has changed less slowly or even stagnated, say observe experts, are the social services, schools, jobs and opportunities.