Growing masses: A snapshot of Uganda’s rising population

Matayo Karuru, far left, sits next to his wife Beatrice Tumuhaise and their children at their home in Katamba Biharwe, Mbarara. They have seven children, two of whom, a 15 year old and an eight year old are not in the picture. The first born Amon Mujuni (3rd L) is 18 and the youngest is one and a half, whom Tumuhaise is carrying. The couple is unable to send their children to school and sometimes send them to their grandparents home to ease on the pressure of feeding them. PHOTO BY Alfred Tumushabe

What you need to know:

Did you know that there were 27 million Ugandans in the country in 2005, and that a triple-digit growth - 130 million - is expected by 2050? In this series, Alfred Tumushabe, Catherine Ageno, Al-Mahdi Ssenkabirwa, Dominic Bukenya and Flora Aduk look at what a fast growing population means for the country. Today’s story gives an outlook of what the population consists of.

Ms Beatrice Tumuhaise and her husband Matayo Karuru live with their seven children off a three acre piece of land in Katamba village, Nyakinengo Parish in Biharwe Sub-county, Mbarara District.

A quick look at their house and surroundings clearly shows a family struggling to survive. The couple also owns a hen and a goat. They grow food crops on their patch of land, but currently, banana trees, beans, maize, fruits and cassava which are intercropped look miserable and have withered due to over cultivation of the soil as well as the harsh climate.

Besides not having adequate food, they have no reliable source of income to purchase clothes, medicine and other necessities which is the reason the children and parents are dirty, scantily dressed and emaciated.

Walls of their “two bedroom house” have cracks all over, harbouring disease transmitting organisms – mosquitoes and fleas. What were designed as window spaces are stuffed with banana fibre. A musty odour pervades the homestead.

Neither Tumuhaise, 47, nor Karuru, 55, went to school. They say they learnt to write their names while undertaking religious studies as they were being prepared for confirmation into the Christian faith in Kabale where they were born and raised.
Although five of their children – four boys and a girl – are of school-going age, they are always wandering about at home, doing menial work in the village and playing from the village pathways. The parents can’t raise Shs25,000 for each child that is required as a co-fund at the nearby Karutakimbari Primary School.
“The children do not go to school; we can’t afford money they charge and costs of other necessities,” says Ms Tumuhaise, who is breastfeeding her seventh child.

Their oldest son Amon Mujuni dropped out in Primary Two. Like his parents, he is a casual worker in the village. Ms Tumuhaise says sometimes they send the children to go and stay with their grandmother in Maziba, Ndorwa, Kabale District for some time, in order to ease on the pressure.
“He (Mujuni) works in the villages around. We earn some money and get food by working in people’s gardens. We sometimes hire land to grow crops for food and sale because our land is very small,” Ms Tumuhaise says.

The social-economic trials this family is going through typify the nature of life in the majority rural homes where 85 per cent of Ugandans live. Majority poor and uneducated couples in rural areas produce as many as 10 children yet they cannot provide for them.

The reasons range from lack of access to family planning services to backward cultural beliefs and ignorance. Many people in the rural areas are not oriented to produce children they can adequately cater for.

Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) will soon carry out a census to collect socio demographic data. According to Mr Ben Mungyereza, the Executive Director UBOS, census data will “support a wide range of government and private sector decisions such as determining how to appropriately allocate the scarce resources, making investment decisions, establish policy and monitor service delivery.”

But as the government waits for the August census data, recent surveys on population growth trend done by UBOS (Uganda National Household Survey -UNHS) 2005/6 and 2009/10 show that the population increases by slightly over a million people every year. Uganda currently has 36 million people. They were 27 million in 2005 and 30.7 million people in 2009. The National Population Policy (NPP) Action Plan (2008) document highlights that at the current high population growth rate of 3.2 per cent per annum Uganda’s population increases by about 1.2 million people per year. The number of people in 2025 and 2050 is projected to be 55 million and 130 million respectively, if this rate continues to prevail.

Total fertility rate remains high at an average of seven children per woman. Also, population density in the country has increased over time from 64 persons per square km in 1980 to 123 persons per square kilometre in 2002.

The share of the population aged below 18 years constitutes about 57 per cent of the total population and this has not changed since 2006. The dependency ratio is rather high. For every 100 persons in the working age group (15–64 years), there are 117 dependent persons.

Eighty two per cent of the household population is composed of nuclear family members (parents and biological children). NPP underscores the need to check high fertility rate because families with many children like Mr Karuru’s find it extremely difficult to provide for them.

From the statistics above, it is clear that something needs to be done to control the population growth rate. As the NPP document states, “The family is the basic unit of reproduction and production in the community. The individual family’s reproductive behaviour largely influences the growth of the population, its productive capacity and determines the nation’s wealth.
Karuru’s family is one of many that faces poverty, partly because they have too many children to take care of. And unless people are educated on how to produce to a family they can be able to take care of, the trend will continue.