CHAPTER TEN

ALICE NABALAMBA

NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES AND PRIORITIES: 
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF URBANIZATION IN 
UGANDA AND TANZANIA


Background:
        This paper seeks to examine the urbanization transition and its 
relation to population and environment dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa.  
The study will focus on two countries that  have had similar experiences 
in many respects but also offer important differences in their 
ideological approach to  development.  Uganda and Tanzania had very 
similar experiences particularly prior to their independence in early 
1960s.  They were both under British colonialism (Tanzania having become 
a British colony in 1916), had predominantly agricultural economies and 
inherited a common market (The East African Community of which Kenya was 
also a member).  
        Interestingly, after independence, the two countries that had 
experienced a similar past, each took on a very different approach to 
economic development.  In both cases, the focus was on nation building,  
social change and economic independence for the good of the general 
population.  Uganda initially pursued market-based economic policies that 
placed a premium on individual incentives and basically promoted the 
colonial approach to economic development.  In the late 1960s, the state 
adopted mixed economic policies that promoted import and export 
protectionist measures but still with a capitalist approach.
        Tanzania, on the other hand took a different direction of 
intent.  After five years into independence, Julius Nyerere, Tanzania's 
leader, lost faith in the development institutions inherited from 
colonialism.  In 1967, Tanzania adopted the Arusha Declaration on 
Socialism and Self-Reliance, marking a clear retreat from previous 
aid-driven politics characteristic of the other East African nations.   
The declaration entailed the abolition of private enterprise, the 
nationalization of private agricultural and industrial enterprise, and 
the reduction of the countrys dependence on external financing.  
        Development according to Nyerere meant that people and not money 
were the motor force of social transformation.  Development in this case 
meant initiating communal village settlements (Ujamaa Villages) in rural 
areas using local materials and simple technology.  Government support to 
meet basic human needs, notably food, education, water and transportation 
would then be provided within these confines.  This new socialist program 
had no industrialization agenda to speak of, and it was invariably 
anti-urban.  In Nyerere's opinion, it would be unfair to focus 
development programs on urban centers since peasant production was the 
sole genuine source of marketable surpluses and thus national wealth.
        Nyerere's program is the most notable national spatial 
restructuring system in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Originally a voluntary 
resettlement effort, by 1970, financial and technical assistance had been 
added as rewards for moving into the Ujamaa villages.  By this time, only 
9 percent of the population lived in the communal villages , thus by 
1973, the government of Tanzania initiated a policy of forced 
resettlement --namely "Operation Tanzania".  Becker, Hamer and Morrison, 
1994,  have commented that this operation was remarkably successful in 
redistributing population within and between territories.  D. Oluwu 
(1990) adds that the program succeeded to the extent that it brought 
together scattered families into village settlements and enabled the 
government to reach the largest possible number of people.    However, 
the consensus among others that have studied the program is that it was a 
failure from the point of view of agricultural productivity, 
infrastructure allocation and administrative management.  It was also a 
very costly program.  Thus one of  its intended objectives--controlling 
growth of urban areas--was not achieved.
        Uganda, on the other hand, saw urbanization as a fundamental 
prerequisite to modernization and thus national development.  In all the 
country's five year development plans following independence,  there was 
considerable discussion on the costs of urbanization.  The planning 
position was that investing in the rural areas where the population was 
highly dispersed brought with it special costs, particularly in the 
provision of social amenities (educational and health services).   Yet a 
high concentration of population such as in urban areas would permit 
economies of scale in transportation, communication and provision of 
other social services.  To the Uganda government, the debate over 
allocation of resources for urban or rural programs was a budgetary 
concern rather than one of  humanistic reasoning.
        In addition, Uganda envisioned market oriented economic policies 
as the means of facilitating Africans to enter the urban business sector 
(that had been previously dominated by Asians and Europeans), and a means 
to redistribute income and wealth.  Tanzania saw equitable income 
distribution, particularly in favor of the rural peasantry as more 
important than economic growth within the inherited colonial economic 
structures.  Tanzania focused on rural based development to counter 
urbanization.  With this same socialist agenda, Tanzania introduced 
another difference among her East African counterparts (Kenya and 
Uganda).  Tanzania moved fast and far ahead of them in terms of arresting 
potentially volatile ethnic tensions that would otherwise result from 
regional inequalities.  The Ujamaa village program allowed interaction 
among the various ethnic groupings from various regions.  In addition, 
the introduction of Swahili as the national language,  helped to down 
play all previous ethnic and language differences.  Yet Ugandas failure 
to develop a program geared toward regional development to encompass 
regional differences triggered ethnic tensions of the magnitude we saw in 
the country throughout the 1970s and 1980s. 
        These comparisons are important because they provide a starting 
point for understanding the urbanization transition, which for the 
purposes of this discussion can be traced back to the time of 
independence (1960s).   Since the 1960s, a significant amount of 
literature has been generated on urbanization trends in Sub-Saharan 
Africa.  Many authors have attributed the problems related to 
urbanization to Africa's obsession with "urban bias" policies.  Michael 
Lipton (1977) in Why Poor People Stay Poor,  critiques development 
theories and practice, by  charging that their authors are responsible 
for problems related to urban biased development in many Third World 
countries.   What Lipton really meant was that those that are informed by 
these theories in their practice, for instance international advisors on 
national planning, have stressed the importance of investment and 
production in export-oriented sectors (that are urban based for the most 
part) and industrialization and have encouraged heavy capital 
expenditures for urban infrastructure, such as ports and airport 
facilities, highways, communication systems, urban hospitals and 
educational institutions.  
        Nevertheless, the debate on the implications of urbanization 
continues.  There those that believe, especially amongst political 
economists that urbanization in and of itself is a positive sign of 
economic growth.  There are also political consequences in that it has 
been proven to create a middle class in societies such as Uganda and 
Tanzania where there was none prior to independence.  Perhaps what is 
still not clear is the causal  correlation between levels of urbanization 
and economic development.  In other words, does increased urbanization 
lead to high per capita incomes or does increased economic growth lead to 
urbanization?  It would seem from Lipton's argument that economic growth 
particularly if national government policies are targeted for urban 
areas, occurs first and once the conditions in the urban areas become 
attractive, they then encourage rural-urban migration.  In the meantime, 
because national budgets particularly in Africa can only be stretched so 
far,  rural areas are neglected.  Indeed, proposals for rural development 
by national advisors have focused on a limited number of projects such as 
large scale irrigation and other land questions which in some instances 
have rendered large populations landless.  The focus on export-oriented 
sectors invariably implies that the emphasis in many countries is on 
national economic performance with no consideration for the human capital 
that is responsible for economic growth.  This urban focus translates 
into rural underdevelopment.  Again, because the chances of survival seem 
some how better in the city, mass emigration from rural areas becomes 
everywhere the norm.

Demographic Transition:
        Now that we have established the background to the factors that 
influenced modern urbanization transition in Uganda and Tanzania, we need 
to put the concept in the context of population and environment 
dynamics.  In addition to tracing the urbanization transition in these 
two countries, it is also the intent of this paper to identify symptoms 
of a deteriorating urban environment and to see if there is a direct link 
between these problems and the process of urbanization.  In order to 
completely grasp these phenomena, there is need to look at urbanization 
in Uganda and Tanzania in the context of the larger demographic framework 
of the two countries.  
        E. Kalipeni, 1994,  informs us that the high population growth 
rates currently witnessed in Africa are primarily due to Africa's 
position in the second stage of the demographic transition.  In this 
stage,  crude death rates have suddenly decreased while birth rates have 
stubbornly remained high and sometimes experience an increase. 
Technological advancement in the medical area as well as economic growth 
are the reasons for this shift.  We can safely say that both Uganda and 
Tanzania have experienced a dramatic decline in crude death rates 
including infant mortality rates particularly since the turn of the 20th 
century.  These changes have had significant influence on population 
growth in both rural and urban areas in Tanzania and Uganda as well as 
other Sub-Saharan African states. (see fig 1 and appendix I).   For many 
countries, the population has more than tripled in the last forty years 
and in a few cases, it has quadrupled.
FIGURE 1
             
Source of Data: World Resource Database, 1994/95, New York, NY, 1994.
        
        There have been two schools of thought on the subject of high 
population growth rates both of which have had some impact on public 
policy in Uganda and Tanzania.  The neo-Malthusian tradition,  deeply 
rooted in the Western development thinking argues that population growth 
is detrimental to development, in that it will outrun world resources and 
finally lead to misery.  The Worldwatch Institute under the directorship 
of Lester Brown have notably paid significant attention to hunger in 
Africa.  In their series On the State of the World (1990-95), they point 
out that the food shortages so prevalent in Africa are an indication of 
the consequences  that the world will be faced with unless nation states 
take immediate action in terms of regulating population growth.     This 
argument also implies that population growth rate is currently far 
greater than the potential increases in food production.  
        The second school of thought comes from a contrary tradition, 
largely anti-Malthusian.  The debate in this case has been led by Third 
World structuralists who argue that population growth can in fact make 
positive contribution to economic growth and development.  Population 
growth, they contend, can have beneficial  effects on stimulating demand 
and encouraging technological innovation to accommodate the new growth.  
It is this tradition that has greatly influenced African leadership in 
the recent past.  For many decades, African leaders generally encouraged 
population growth.  The reasons have ranged from population and people 
being a development asset to a way of replacing populations lost during 
the various catastrophes experienced in the late 19th century and early 
20th century.  The anti-Malthusian tradition thus explains why neither 
Uganda or Tanzania has had a population control program until recently.  

Uganda :
        Up until 1992, the Uganda government did not have an explicit 
population policy and as such lags behind many Sub-Saharan African 
countries in national debate on issues of population growth.  In fact in 
the 1966-1971 second five year development plan, the nation was less 
concerned with population pressure as a potential problem .  Apart from 
the mountain regions of the eastern part of the country, elsewhere, 
population density was low.  But the 1980 population census and the Atlas 
of African Affairs, 1980, both indicated an uneven pattern of population 
growth and concentration around the Lake Victoria region.  The Lake 
Victoria region occupies the three largest urban conglomerations of the 
country (Kampala, Jinja and Masaka--see map 1) including the most 
productive agricultural region of the country.  Today, however, there 
seems to be heightened concern in many African nations about the region's 
growing food deficits,  increased external dependency (apparent in the 
size of Africa's foreign debt),   growing poverty, low GNP per capita 
incomes and growing urban problems.  These concerns are all directly 
related to the population question thus require a systematic  program to 
deal with them.
        According to the World Bank country study, 1993,  Uganda's 
population growth rate was estimated at 3.10% between 1990-1995 and if 
the current total fertility rate of 7.3 children per woman were held 
constant, then the country would experience an increased growth rate of  
up to 3.8% annually between 2010 -2015.  A United Nations projection for 
1988 places it at 3.58 percent while the World Resource Database - 
1994/95 (WRD) places it at 3.00%  in the same period (see fig. 2). 

FIGURE 2
 
Source of Data: World Bank, 1988, United Nations, 1989, World Resource 
Database, 1994.

The UN and WRD data sources, however, also predict a slight drop in the 
growth rate between 1995-2000 or after 2000 to 3.51% and 2.68% 
respectively, and a relatively higher drop after 2015 indicating that 
Uganda is entering the last demographic transition state.  The estimated 
fertility rate of 7.3 per woman, places Uganda among countries with the 
highest fertility rates in both Sub-Saharan Africa and among Third World 
nations in general.  Increasing crude birth rate between 1970 and 1995 is 
equally worrisome. (see Fig 4)  

FIGURE 3

Source of Data: World Resource Database, 1994/95: New York, NY, 1994

FIGURE 4
                 
Source of Data: World Resource Database, 1994/95, New York, NY, 1994.


Tanzania:   
        Tanzania, like Uganda has had no official population policy.  
However, the countrys second five year plan which initiated the Ujamaa 
program had implicit demographic and redistribution effects. By 1979, 
"Operation Tanzania" had successfully redistributed 79 percent of 
Tanzania's mainland population into Ujamaa villages.   Other aspects of 
the development programs that had specific population content are those 
that related to health (including maternal and child health), education , 
rural development and spatial redistribution because at independence, the 
main obstacles to national development were seen as poverty, ignorance 
and disease.   
        However, the Ujamaa program, failed as a rural development policy 
and in 1977, it was officially ended.  The program failed partly because 
it became apparent after a few  years that the economy  could not support 
the plan objectives.  In addition, the program failed to redistribute 
population evenly countrywide.  Most of the resettlement  took place in 
the northern and western (lake regions) and in the central (mountain 
region).  Secondly, the  program failed to control population movement 
between rural and urban areas as was intended.  Prior to 1967, Tanzania's 
annual rural-urban migration rate stood at 7.05 percent.  During the 
"operation Tanzania" program,--1970-1978, the rate dropped only slightly 
to 7.01 percent indicating that the program did not significantly improve 
rural conditions nor did it have a major impact on urbanization trends.  
During the same period, there is evidence of only 1 percent annual rate 
of out migration from urban areas to  the countryside. 

Urbanization Trends: 
        Although Uganda and Tanzania embarked on deliberate policies that 
initially affected urbanization trends, both countries are still highly 
rural societies (see Fig. 5).  This fact would seem to indicate that 
there were other variables that accounted for urbanization trends that we 
are witnessing in both countries besides the specific programs each 
adopted.  In Tanzania, as previously noted, the Ujamaa program failed as 
a rural development policy and invariably led to an increase in movement 
of population from rural to urban areas.  In Uganda on the other hand, 
urbanization did not occur as quickly as the government intended.  By 
1995, less than 20% of Uganda's population resided in urban areas while 
close to 30% of Tanzania's lived in cities.  Nevertheless, the 
urbanization transition in Africa as a whole is only recently emerging 
from its early stages.
FIGURE 5
.                
Source of Data: World Resource Database, 1994/95, New York, NY, 1994

It has been suggested that the region is experiencing runaway 
urbanization.  But there is no indication that the urbanization trend is 
any different from what other regions experienced during their 
urbanization transitions.  The forces driving urbanization are 
identical.  The difference, is that these forces are stronger in Africa 
than in most other places.  In particular these forces (that can be 
traced back to the time of independence) include increased fertility 
rates, population movements, deteriorating agricultural productivity and 
growth in government labor force.  In addition, urban growth in Uganda 
and Tanzania has disproportionately concentrated in capital cities and 
the principle industrial centers.  
        In Tanzania, based on the 1978 population census, a significant 
proportion of net-migration into the country's urban centers is recorded 
in Dar-es-Salaam, the national capital.  Like in most other African 
states, growth in Dar-es-Salaam is five times greater than in the next 
largest city and 50 percent of Tanzanias urban population is concentrated 
here.  There is even evidence of negative growth in some of the smaller 
towns perhaps due to  migration to larger cities such as Dar-es-Salaam or 
back to rural areas (during the Ujamaa program).  
        Natural population growth in Tanzania's urban centers is also an 
intriguing phenomenon.  The general assumption that fertility rates are 
lower in urban areas and generally higher in rural areas has been proven 
otherwise in Tanzania, particularly in Dar-es-Salaam.  Data provided by 
the 1989 United Nations case study on population policy for Tanzania 
suggests that fertility increased between 1967 and 1978, with the total 
fertility rate rising from 6.6 percent to 6.9 percent and that crude 
birth rates rose from 47 per 1000 to 49 per 1000 in the same period.  In 
urban areas such as Dar-es-Salaam, fertility rate increased from 4.3 
percent in 1967 to 5.7 percent in 1978.  This is also true for other 
towns such as Dodoma and Arusha (see table 1) 

TABLE 1

Urban Growth in Tanzania:

Estimated Total Fertility Rates (TFR)and Crude Birth Rates (CBR)/1000
 for selected towns: 
based on National censuses of 1967 and 1978.

City/Town                               1967                                    1978

                                TFR             CBR                     TFR             CBR

Dodoma                          6.9             48                      7.4             52
Arusha                          7.1             51                      7.6             48
Tanga                           6.9             46                      7.1             47
Dar-es-Salaam                   4.9             33                      5.7             48
Tabora                          5.5             40                      6.2             45
Kigoma                          5.9             43                      7.1             52
   Mwanza                          6.9             49                      7.4             51              
Source of Data: United Nations: Population Policy Paper Number 22, New York, NY, 1989
an indication that perhaps rural norms had been transferred to urban 
areas as rural-urban migration occured.  Life expectancy in urban areas 
was also much higher than in rural areas during the same period 
        In Uganda, prior to 1971, the country's social indicators were 
comparable, if not better than, most countries in Africa.  The country's 
economy was 90% agricultural based.  The various regimes that governed 
the country between 1971-1985 radically reversed the economic and social 
progress the country had attained since independence.  The civil strife 
that ensued following the first military take over in 1971,  and the 
civil war that broke out following the elections of 1980, were largely 
based in the most productive part of the countryside--the region 
surrounding the country's capital (see map 1).  This led to a decline in 
agricultural contribution to national Gross Domestic Product.  Industrial 
productivity did not increase eitherand the country increasingly depended 
more on foreign assistance .  
        With the deteriorated agricultural productivity, particularly in 
the 1970s and 1980s Uganda's urban population growth rate began to surge 
resulting primarily from rural-urban migration but also from population 
natural increase in urban areas.  In addition, the military regimes of 
the 1970s and 1980s were characterized by large armies, which could be 
seen in the size of military barracks many of which were built during 
this period around the capital.  Every regime recruited large numbers of 
military cadets from the countryside (particularly northern Uganda) who 
made the city their permanent home.  These regimes were also 
characterised by large civil service bureacracies all in an attempt to 
legitimize the regimes.  Inevitably, these policies are directly 
responsible for the rapid increase in urban population particularly in 
the Lake Victoria region.  The growth, however, concentrated in the 
country's capital, Kampala as was the case in Dar-es-Salaam.  Kampala's 
share of national urban population increased from 38% to 52 percent 
during this period.  At the same time, as the countrys economic fabric 
deteriorated due to mismanagement, there was a decline in urban social 
services leading to a destruction of the urban infrastructure.  It is 
estimated that during this period, GDP declined by 25 percent, exports 
(primarily agricultural products) declined by 60 percent, and imports 
except for military hardware declined by 50 percent.  The large increases 
in defense expenditures led to further increase in foreign capital 
borrowing.  Priorities of the 1960s decade that focused on providing for 
urban growth became insignificant as expenditures on important sectors 
such as education, healthcare, urban services were being reduced in favor 
of defence expenditures to maintain the 1970s and 1980s military regimes. 

Impact of Population Growth on the Urban Environment:
        The impact of population growth on the urban environment is still 
debatable in some circles.  For instance the Ugandan government initially 
perceived population growth in urban centers as a prerequisite to 
modernization and eventually national development.  Some economists have 
argued that urbanization in and of itself is not a negative indicator.  
It is in fact a positive sign on economic growth.  Recently, however, 
there is growing indication that too much urbanization may not 
necessarily produce desired results of economic growth.  In fact the 
situation in Uganda and Tanzania as will be seen later,  indicates that 
economies of these two countries are incapable of supporting large 
numbers of urban population, let alone rural populations.  The rate of 
urbanization assumes an equivalent level of job creation, housing supply, 
health care, educational and transportation facilities.  Many African 
governments have not been able to reproduce economies with these 
qualities as was the case in the industrialized and industrializing 
nations.  Thus the question of the role of population growth on urban 
environmental degradation has to be seen in light of state ability to 
provide the necessary infrastructure to support its urban populations.  

Uganda:
        The World Resource Database (1994/95) as well as the 1993 World 
Bank study on Ugandas  social sectors provide a very dismal picture of 
the changing urban environment.  The problems are two fold--increased 
urban population growth that is concentrated in the largest city, 
Kampala, and structural neglect.  Ugandas urban population nearly doubled 
in the past thirty years,  yet growth in the national economy has not 
kept the same pace.   As previously noted, the countrys economic 
performance took a downward spiral during the 1970s and 1980s.  
Government resources to support population growth shrank as export 
earnings declined.  National budgetary figures show that fewer resources 
have been devoted to providing and improving existing social or physical 
infrastructure in the last 20 years.   The most visibly affected areas 
are access to clean water, garbage collection, sanitary and sewage 
facilities, and housing shortages (see table 2).  These are very serious 
problems that can no longer be ignored as they have come to define urban 
centers of Uganda. 
TABLE 2

Access to Safe Water and Sanitary Facilities in Urban Areas
                         Safe Water                 Sanitary Facilities
                        1980    1990                    1980    1990

Uganda                  45%     60%                     40%     32%
Tanzania                X       75%                     X       76%
Source of Data: World Resource Database, 1994/95: New York, NY.
 
        The problems are more pronounced in the countrys capital, Kampala 
where 52 percent of the urban population resides, and the industrial hub 
of Jinja, where no major infrastructure improvement has taken place in 
the recent past. (see figure 6)  The authors of the 1993 World Bank 
country report write that although the country is well endowed with fresh 
water and its resources, increased human activities both in city and 
countryside --deforestation, poor farming practices, industrial pollution 
and demographic pressures--have disturbed the equilibrium of the water 
cycle through increased run-off with minimal recharge to the underground 
and surface water reserves, thus impairing water quality.  As a result it 
is estimated that only 60% of the countrys urban population has access to 
safe water supply, a situation made worse during the civil upheaval 
period.  In the rural areas the percentage of population that has access  
to clean water within reasonable distance is even lower (because there 
are no water treatment plants).  The World Resource Database (1994/95) 
also indicates that access to sanitary services has declined in Ugandas 
urban centers from an estimated 40 percent in 1980 to 32 percent in 1990. 
(see table 1)  These numbers indicate an alarming condition of urban 
areas in Uganda, particularly in the larger cities.
FIGURE 6
                        
Source of Data: United Nations, 1988, New York, New York

Tanzania:
        As the case in Uganda, the declining urban environment in 
Tanzania is a combination of rapid population growth rate as well as 
government declining expenditures on new infrastructure and or 
maintenance of  existing ones.  The pervasive deterioration of urban 
infrastructure rose out of national policies that had been paved with the 
best intentions: the goal was to create a conflict free society (with 
equitable income distribution, avoiding exploitation of the rural sector 
by investing heavily in urban centers, and by avoiding the big city 
phenomenon).  Even when the 1970s rural policies failed, and it was clear 
that urbanization was inevitable and on the rise, the government did not 
invest in new infrastructure beyond that the colonial government left 
behind.  In 1980s, Tanzanias urban centers were characterized by 
shortages of basic necessities, rising poverty, and massive inflation.   
The WRD 1994/95 report does not provide data on access to safe water and 
sanitation facilities for 1980, but the figures for 1990 indicate that 
there is still a serious problem in many of Tanzanias urban centers.  In 
the last two decades, Tanzania has become increasingly dependent on 
foreign financing for its development projects implying poor economic 
performance.  The country's priorities are now being made based on the 
overall needs of the country as opposed to specific needs of a city or 
region.  In other words, resources are spread thinly across the various 
national social sectors.  One indicator of Tanzania's dismal economic 
situation is that once a net exporter of food in the 1960s, the country 
now spends a significant amount of its resources importing food items.  
        Perhaps the most alarming problem in Tanzania is the growing 
concentration of the population in very few areas.  According to the 
United Nations Population policy study of 1989,  60 percent of Tanzanias 
population is concentrated on 20 percent of the land. 

Conclusion:
        Unfortunately, in most African states, the urban environment is 
in a state of crisis.  The problems are clearly related to infrastructure 
deficiencies as noted in Uganda and Tanzania but most importantly to 
population growth that cannot be absorbed by national economies.  These 
problems are noticeably high outside the core areas of the cities 
(Central Business District) and are not only affecting the urban 
environment, but also productivity of urban areas.  It is estimated that 
by 1980, at least 50 percent of Africas urban population lived in slums 
with no basic services (water, sanitation, healthcare, etc.)    The city 
size inherited at the time of independence has grown many fold as new 
immigrants arrive and natural population growth expands, and yet, no 
accompanying infrastructure investments have been made in the same 
proportions for most countries. 
        This paper has attempted to explain  these problems in relation 
to the urbanization transition in two countries--Uganda and Tanzania.  We 
began with a background of national policies that both countries adopted 
immediately after independence and their impact on population growth and 
urbanization trends.  We discussed the theories that influenced national 
leadership in their effort to formulate population programs.  We have 
also discussed urban population growth in the two countries as well as 
the impact of urbanization on the urban environment.
        The paper has tried to show that there is a relationship between 
population growth and environmental degradation.  In both Uganda and 
Tanzania, the data indicated that there is a causal relationship between 
concentration of population densities in a few urban areas and the 
environment.  Yet the two countries have made no major attempts to 
integrate a population policy in national economic planning.  Today,  all 
demographic indicators point to a continued high population growth rate 
with prospects of rise in urban areas and certain other regions of both 
countries.  The possibility of decline in population growth as well as 
the improvement of the urban environment will occur only if there is a 
deliberate government commitment to reducing population growth.  
Likewise,  urbanization growth will have to be dealt with in terms of the 
overall national population structure.  

Policy Implications:
Local Programs:
        In 1992,  the Uganda government in its rehabilitation and 
development plan stated that a national population policy would be 
formulated.  The document states that:
        ....Government is keenly aware of the importance of population factors in 
        socio-economic development.  Of particularly concern is the effect 
        of population increases on the health status and welfare of the people, 
        especially amongst the most vulnerable groups such as mothers 
        and children.  In this regard, Governments long term objective 
        is to promote the health and welfare of the population by reducing 
        the prevailing high levels of morbidity, mortality, and fertility 
        to ensure a balance between population growth, socio-economic 
        development and the quality of life of the people. 
        However, the discussion of a national population policy has been 
made in very broad terms with no specificity.  At the present time, the 
country lacks an organized family planning program along the lines of 
some leading African countries such as Zimbabwe.  In view of the urgency 
to reduce the countrys high birth rates which are directly responsible 
for the high population growth rate, there would be need to address the 
crisis with a strategy with a long term effect that targets the 
reproductive sector of society.  With this  strategy  the country will be 
able to deal with several  other problems  including poverty at both 
individual and household level,  reproductive choice,  reduction in the 
number of children born to HIV infected parents (who would die and leave 
behind orphans), maternal and child health,  and rapid population 
growth.  Attempts do deal with population problems with economic measures 
have only partially been successful and they have been very short term 
strategies.
        In Tanzania, we have seen that coercive measures to control 
growth in urban areas were not successful.  There were no counter 
measures to control growth in rural areas.  Several years later, the 
Tanzanian government attempted to relocate the capital--Dar es Salaam to 
Dodoma (in the center of the country) in the hope of diversifying 
development and relocating business and therefore people.  Strategies 
such as this, however, are very expensive for countries that have many 
other pressing priorities.  In addition, they only resolve the high urban 
density question, but not the root cause of the problem--natural 
population increase.

External Programs:
        It is expected that urban growth rate will begin to stabilize 
around the year 2000 in both countries. (see Fig. 8) 

 
FIGURE 7
                         

FIGURE 8
                                 
Source of Data: World Resource Database, 1994/95, New York, NY, 1994 and 
United Nations, 1988, New York.
Several reasons can be identified as contributing to the decline in the 
urbanization trend.  First, WRD and UN data indicate that as we move into 
the Twenty-first century, overall population growth rate for Tanzania and 
Uganda will begin to decline (see Fig 1, 2, 7).  This will have an impact 
on urban population growth resulting from natural increase.  Secondly 
national economies of both countries are shifting into directions that 
are beginning to have an impact on the urban population.  Since the early 
1980s, upon the advisement of the World Bank and the International 
Monetary Fund both Uganda and Tanzania governments  adopted Structural 
Adjustment economic programs (SAPs) that were designed to restore 
economic structures of countries that were experiencing poor micro and 
macro economic performance (depictable in their large external debts as 
well as large deficits).   The SAPs have had several effects.  They have 
forced governments to shrink their large bureaucracies, encouraged 
decentralization of government and other business functions from capital 
cities to secondary centers and have resulted in reduced government role 
in parastatal bodies (state owned corporations).  Besides the large 
bureacracies, parastals were another major strain on national governments 
in terms of their large resource consumption in form of surplus 
workforce, marketing and distribution expenditures. 
        The SAPs were also designed to resucitate Africa's declining 
agricultural sector in order to absorb those populations that the public 
sector would have eliminated.  It is expected that as a result of the 
decentralization effort, more jobs will open up in other towns thereby 
attracting unemployed populations from capital cities. While migration 
behavior cannot be precisely predicted, the long term expectation 
resulting from the SAPs is a reduction in rural-urban migration as people 
find more remunerative activities in the agricultural and rural sectors.  

Monitoring and Evaluation: Towards Comprehensive Planning:
        In order to reduce birth and fertility rates, there are several 
areas that must be tackled at the same time.  For instance, developing 
literacy programs that would  target women and at the same time increase 
their employability in productive sectors could be a starting point.  
When women are employed in market productive sectors, it is expected that 
they will begin to view reliance on their off springs as sources of 
household labor in a different vein.  The people of Uganda and Tanzania 
have long been  aware of the increasing cost of maintaining a large 
family, but the economy has not been able to provide an alternative.  
        National programs that promote equal opportunity to education 
need to be developed.  The Uganda government has been working on such a 
program for the last five years and it is expected that by 2005, all 
children in Uganda will have access to primary school education.  Not 
only does society need basic education, there is also need to target 
those areas that have a direct link to peoples lives, such as 
environmental education.  Even in this area, a national policy needs to 
include women at the forefront.  African women are in direct contact with 
the natural environment on a daily basis,  such that understanding the 
causes of degradation is very important to safe guarding it.  In many 
communities, they find themselves with the responsibility of passing on 
new knowledge to their children and to society as a whole.  Thus farming 
techniques and other ways of reproducing life in ways that would sustain 
the ecosystem would have to be introduced to women.   
        There are no easy solutions to population and environmental 
questions.  Local and external intervention programs discussed above are 
merely experiments for which concrete effects may never be realized.  
Many domestic and foreign entities would have to be involved in 
determining long lasting solutions to the problems created by the 
interaction of population and the environment.  At the same time, the 
various entities would have to integrate their  determinations  in order 
to develop comprehensive plans that would have sustainable effects.  In 
addition, the programs developed need to have the capacity to be 
monitored on a regular basis so that ideas can be sythensized, failed 
ideas rejected and new ones added.  The national economies of both Uganda 
and Tanzania are incapable of managing the complex nature of population 
and environment dynamics, thus the international community needs to 
intervene from time to time.  Intervention needs to be constructive and 
not coersive as has been the case in many places.  Constructive 
intervention would, for instance, constitute technological expertise to 
monitor progress of and improve specific population and environmental 
programs. 



 APPENDIX I

                                                        
                                                        
                    Population in                   Average Annual          
                    Millions                        Population Change               
                                                        
                    1950    1990    1995            1980-85 1990-95 2000-05
                                                        
Angola              4.13    9.19    11.07           2.63    3.72    3.05
Benin               2.05    4.62    5.40            2.82    3.11    2.91
Botswana            0.39    1.24    1.43            3.40    2.92    2.69
Burkina Faso        3.65    8.99    10.35           2.50    2.81    2.69
Burundi             2.46    5.49    6.34            2.80    2.88    2.53
Cameroon            4.47    11.52   13.28           2.83    2.83    2.84
Central Afr. Rep.   1.31    3.01    3.43            2.58    2.62    2.31
Chad                2.66    5.55    6.36            2.28    2.72    2.47
Congo               0.81    2.23    2.59            2.82    3.00    2.67
Cote d'Ivoire       2.78    11.98   14.4            3.86    3.68    3.28
Djibouti            0.06    0.44    0.51            4.46    3.01    2.88
Equatorial Guinea   0.23    0.35    0.40            7.22    2.55    2.41
Ethiopia            19.57   49.83   58.04           2.12    3.05    2.84
Gabon               0.47    1.16    1.37            4.01    3.31    2.64
Gambia, The         0.29    0.86    0.98            3.01    2.60    2.34
Ghana               4.90    15.02   17.45           3.58    3.00    2.81
Guinea              2.55    5.76    6.70            2.23    3.04    2.86
Guinea-Bissau       0.51    0.96    1.07            1.87    2.14    2.12
Kenya               6.27    23.59   27.89           3.56    3.35    3.12
Lesotho             0.73    1.75    1.98            2.78    2.47    2.39
Liberia             0.82    2.58    3.04            3.17    3.32    3.08
Madagascar          4.23    12.01   14.16           3.06    3.29    3.06
Malawi              2.88    9.58    11.3            3.42    3.31    2.42
Mali                3.52    9.21    10.8            2.85    3.17    2.91
Mauritius           0.49    1.08    2.34            1.09    1.00    2.68
Mozambique          6.20    14.20   16.36           2.27    2.83    2.87
Namibia             0.51    1.44    1.69            2.94    3.18    2.91
Niger               2.40    7.73    9.10            3.36    3.26    3.02
Nigeria             32.94   108.54  126.9           3.20    3.13    2.95
Rwanda              2.12    7.03    8.33            2.87    3.40    3.09
Senegal             2.50    7.33    8.39            2.81    2.70    2.59
Sierra Leone        1.94    4.15    4.73            2.32    2.66    2.54
Somalia             3.07    8.68    10.17           3.2     3.18    2.99
South Africa        13.68   37.96   42.74           2.58    2.37    2.07
Sudan               9.19    25.2    28.96           3.11    2.78    2.65
Swaziland           0.26    0.75    0.86            3.07    2.68    2.64
Tanzania            7.89    25.99   30.74           3.28    3.36    2.99
Togo                1.33    3.53    4.14            2.93    3.18    2.93
Uganda              4.76    17.56   20.41           2.72    3.00    2.68
Zaire               12.18   37.39   43.81           3.18    3.17    2.98
Zambia              2.44    8.14    9.38            3.58    2.84    2.56
Zimbabwe            2.73    9.95    11.54           3.22    2.97    2.48
                                                        
Source of Data: World Resource Database, 1994/95, New York, NY, 1994
APPENDIX II

Map 1:  Urbanization in Uganda:  Major Cities

Map 2:  Urbanization in Tanzania:  Major Cities



REFERENCES

Apter, David E. and Carl Rosberg (eds.): Political Development and the 
New Realism in Sub-Saharan Africa, University Press of Virginia, 
Charlottesville, VA, 1994.

Becker, Charles, Andrew Hamer and Andrew Morrison: Beyond Urban Bias in 
Africa: Urbanization in an Era of Structural Adjustment, Heinemann, 
Portsmouth, NH, 1994.

Boesen, Jannik, Kjell J. Havnevik, Juhani Koponen and Rie Odgaard 
(eds.):  Tanzania: Crisis and Struggle for Survival, Scandinavian 
Institute of African Studies, Uppsala, 1986.

Friedmann, John: Life Space and Economic Space: Essays in Third World 
Planning, Transaction Books, New Brunswick,  NJ, 1988.

Group de Demographie Africaine: Population Size in African Countries: An 
Evaluation, Volume II, Paris, 1988.

Hansen, Holger B. and Michael Twaddle (eds.): Changing Uganda: The 
Dilemmas of Structural Adjustment and Revolutionary Change, Ohio 
University Press, Athens, OH, 1991.

Kalipeni, Ezekiel (ed.) Population Growth and Environmental Degradation 
in Southern Africa, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, CO, 1994.

Lipton, Michael: Why Poor People Stay Poor: Urban Bias in World 
Development, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1977.

World Bank: Uganda: Growing Out of Poverty: Country  Study,  1993, 
Washington D.C.

__________: Uganda: Social Sectors: Country Study, 1993, Washington D.C.

Uganda of Government: 1961-1965, 1966-1971 Five Year Development Plans,  
Entebbe, Uganda.

United Nations: Case Studies in Population Policy: United Republic of 
Tanzania,  1989, Population Policy Paper Number 22, New York, NY, 
Department of International Economic and Social Affairs, 1989.



NOTES