Go Slow on Population Growth Discourse

The Observer (Kampala)

David K. Mafabi

18 May 2011

opinion

In an editorial, the New Vision of Wednesday, May 11, 2011 warned: “Uganda will have a population of 94 million people in the next 40 years, according to the World Population Prospects by the United Nations.”

After quoting Dr Jotham Musinguzi, the Regional Director of Partners in Population and Development, on the effects of population growth in the urban areas, the editorial goes on to talk about this “frightening prospect given inadequate infrastructure for employment …” Subsequently, I have heard my friend Dr Augustus Nuwagaba of Makerere University, wading in along similar lines.

Now, what would the New Vision editors and our experts say if they read a recent report by the Washington-based Population Research Bureau “research and advocacy group” – which projects Uganda’s population growth over the same period to a mind-boggling 130 million people? Probably have heart attacks!

The Washington group adds that the “problem” in Uganda is attributable to the “Uganda government’s lack of action to encourage family planning”!

We shall leave it to our demographers, population studies consultants, statisticians, etc, to sort out the precise figures. What is obvious is that we have a very high fertility rate at almost seven children per woman, when contrasted with say, the United Kingdom where the rate is about 1.94 children per woman. Our question is, what is so disastrous about that?

We shall stay with the United Kingdom. During and after the Industrial Revolution, particularly during the 18th Century, there was a dramatic drop in the infant mortality rate of children per 1,000 live births, coupled with an exponential growth in overall population. Over the centuries, the population of the United Kingdom (currently at almost 63 million people as opposed to six million or so before the Industrial Revolution), has peaked and has grown at an average of two to three million every decade over the last century.

The United Kingdom trajectory is what has given rise to theories (not forgetting the political economist Rev. T.R. Malthus at the other end!) like that of “Demographic Transition” which holds that as the standard of living and life expectancy increase, family size and birth rates decline.

Our concern here is the overall ideological and philosophical mindset which we bring to the discussion, so that while dealing with important aspects of the problem, we do not go off at a tangent in policy terms!

I beg to present a very slight extract from a piece I had published in September 2006, to help us make our point in this new and yet old, debate.

“Family planning could by all means be encouraged and promoted at the family level, i.e., left to individual families to make the informed decisions that they must. The point, however, is you do not plan to cut population growth to fit low economic growth figures. That will be suicidal for our economy. You, instead, plan qualitative leaps in economic growth to outstrip various indices, including demographic pressures.

“It is understandable, if China and India work at macro level to seriously slow down their rates of population growth, and fertility. There, for instance, single-child families are encouraged, as well as vasectomies, abortions, etc. In China, a legal regime with both incentives and punitive measures to back up the population policy is in place.

These drastic measures cannot and should not be the population policy and reproductive health priorities of countries like Uganda, at least not yet.

“In other words, we are back at our debate. How do we achieve economic growth rates of at least 10% per annum, and sustain them for the next 20 years?

“In that debate, we cannot avoid looking at what President Yoweri Museveni has described as the strategic bottlenecks to Africa’s development. These must include small and fragmented populations, balkanized into the sub-optimal states created by colonialism.

“What we have just outlined above are problems essentially related to the production of material wealth and sustenance in the economy. These are not problems of consumption.

“In all this, we are making one point. That a little population growth never harmed any people, state or country. Large populations have generally spurred economic growth and development, their residual and inevitable problems notwithstanding. We also needed to study the experiences of various countries in Western and Eastern Europe from the mid 1980s, who suddenly found themselves with serious problems related to sub-optimal populations.”

The author is Private Secretary/Political Affairs, State House.

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