Is Hajji Nadduli's call to give birth and fill the world un patriotic?

Ugandan women in traditional
attire. It is generally agreed that
emphasizing on the education of
girls will greatly decrease fertility
rates in Uganda.


By Hopes N. Kikonyogo

If you thought Uganda's population is high today at 25 million, wait until you hear this. The United Nations released its population growth figures a couple of weeks ago, with a more than telling story. Uganda's annual growth rate has been statistically put at 3.4% by the UN report, making it one of the highest in the world. It is projected that by 2050 our population will be busting at 75 million!

Hajji Nadduli Kibaale, the LC5 Chairman Luweero district must be pleased with these figures. Not long ago, Nadduli called on to all Ugandans to have as many children as they can, arguing that a free and high population growth stimulates economic growth. To him, a high population equates to high production and a high consumption(market) and therefore economic prosperity.

Nadduli's examples to support his argument, takes us to billion population nations like India and China. It is believed that both countries are using their ernomous human resource to strategically position themselves into global political-economic elites. The industrial and developed world is targeting both the cheap production and market in these countries that human rights abuses in China, for instance, have become secondary.

But, in the case of Uganda, does Nadduli's optimism hold water? We know as a fact that both fertility and mortality rates decrease with economic development. It is also true that in both China and India, despite their economic success, their standard of living are still deplorable.

Equally important, Uganda's resources can not sustain such a rapid population growth when they are strained already. Even before i left Uganda 5 years ago, it was evident annual food production was falling further behind the population growth. Areas like Masaka (known for their banana platation farming) could not then sustain the matooke market in Kampala alone. This is probably so because the average family in Masaka numbers 6-7 dependants!

The HIV epidemic has hit hard in Uganda, but despite the toll births still far exceed deaths annually. It was also reported that the high proportion of Uganda's population, infact 51%, is of the young and the energetic youth most of whom are dying of AIDS. This means that the 51% of the population is of dependants and yet the average working force earns $1.00 a day or less, which is holding back economic growth. It should be noted here that at 24 years of age a Ugandan youth is still regarded a dependant student a strain on the house hold savings and propensity to invest.

Nadduli needs to be reminded that poverty has a direct link to numbers. Larger families are more often below poverty line as their expenditure costs increase. Lower wage rates for large pools of unskilled labourers reduces national savings and also hurts national tax base, land holdings divided among more inheritors, classes too crowded for education improvements, and the list goes on. In otherwords, all you Nadduli sympathisers, high fertility rates means that the poor have less capacity to take full advantage of opportunities to lift themselves out of poverty. Thats what economists call the viscious circle of poverty, which later translate to national under-development.

Uganda has tried to curb the ills of irresponsible population growth by investing in universal education, taking steps to the eradication of gender in-equality and empowering women to participate in wider society. What the Ugandan govenment needs to do, among others, is to firmly invest more in a universal health care system and promotion of protected sex and anti pregnant pills, abolishing laws that ban abortion, and encouraging rural parents to educate their daughters.

With more girls going to school, the rate of dependants will decrease in the long run. Girls will be in class more reducing on fertility rates and even when they grow up their propensity to be dependant on society decreases.

Haji Nadduli's rhetoric may seem reasonable but in an capital-less agro based economy lacking technological advancement and unskilled human resource, its hard to see economic growth even in Nadduli's eyes. The truth needs to be told now, population growth is a disaster for Uganda, we stll need fully a capacitated population with abundant resources to meet our needs.







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