Showing posts from category Uganda.
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Supply and Demand, Land and Power in the Global South
›In “Competition over Resources: Drivers of Insecurity and the Global South,” author Hannah Brock examines how an increased demand for non-renewable resources could lead to insecurity and contribute to local and international discord. The first of four papers examining what the Oxford Research Group has identified as the “most important underlying drivers of insecurity,” the paper focuses on competition over resources – specifically energy, water, and food – and argues that “a new way of approaching security is needed, one that addresses the drivers of conflict: ‘curing the disease’ rather than ‘fighting the symptoms.’” Through numerous examples, Brock illustrates the various strategies that nations are currently undertaking to satisfy demand and cautions that “where northern states and corporations buy access to southern resources, regulatory principles may be required to ensure this competition does not impair the human rights and security of local populations.”
A new briefing paper from Oxfam, “Land and Power: The growing scandal surrounding the new wave of investments in land,” heavily criticizes the rising trend of foreign land acquisitions, or “land grabs,” that have occurred since the 2007-08 food prices crisis, calling them an infringement on the rights of more vulnerable populations and decrying their environmental impact. The authors use case studies in Uganda, Indonesia, Guatemala, Honduras, and South Sudan to argue that land grabbing is a type of “development in reverse.” “National governments have a duty to protect the rights and interests of local communities and land rights-holders,” Oxfam writes, “but in the cases presented here, they have failed to do so.” The authors conclude with recommendations to improve transparency and shift power more towards local rights.
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Book Review: ‘Plundered Nations? Successes and Failures in Natural Resource Extraction’
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The principal argument of Plundered Nations? Successes and Failures in Natural Resource Extraction is highlighted by the question mark in the title. In many resource rich countries, natural assets have not led to development. The book advances the hypothesis that “for the depletion of natural assets to be converted into sustained development, a series of decisions has got to be got sufficiently right” (p. 1). That series of decisions is examined in detail through case studies on Cameroon, Chile, Iran, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Russia, and Zambia, produced by a diverse group of academic and practicing economists under the auspices of the Center for the Study of African Economies and the Oxford Center for the Economics of Resource Rich Countries (OxCarre).
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Jotham Musinguzi on Investing in Family Planning for Development in Uganda
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“What we are seeing is not adequate, but we think we are seeing very good positive movement, and we want to build on that,” said Jotham Musinguzi, director of the African regional office for Partners in Population and Development (PPD) in Kampala, Uganda. Musinguzi is a public health physician by training who previously advised the government of Uganda on population and reproductive health issues. “We think that [the government] is now on a firm foundation to continue investing properly in family planning,” he said.
Family Planning for Development
Uganda’s high population growth rate (the country has a total fertility rate of 6.4 children per woman, according to the UN) presents a number of challenges, said Musinguzi, exerting pressure on education and health systems, as well as on basic infrastructure, particularly for housing and transportation. Additionally, high levels of poverty and unemployment can become a source of instability.
Policymakers in Uganda are beginning to recognize the urgency of the issue, however, particularly in regards to young people, said Musinguzi. “They don’t have access to jobs, they don’t have the skills, and therefore the challenges of poverty eradication become even more important.”
Nonetheless, the country’s contraceptive prevalence rate is low, at 24 percent, with 41 percent of married women expressing an unmet need for family planning services, according to the 2006 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) for Uganda. Low levels of investment and lack of government involvement remain the primary obstacles, according to Musinguzi, in addition to socio-cultural and religious barriers.
Uganda historically depended primarily on donor finance, rather than government funding, to support family planning and reproductive health services, Musinguzi said. However, over the past two years, the Ugandan government has increased investment due to concerted efforts by PPD, as well as USAID, the UN Population Fund, and civil society groups. “Our point was that if the government does not fund family planning, then they are going to find that achievement of the Millennium Development Goals…is going to be very challenging,” he said.
“I think the low investment in family planning in Uganda is a thing of the past, and we are now looking forward to really better investment in this field,” Musinguzi said. “I am sure we are going to witness quite a big change [in the 2011 DHS] in terms of access as a result of the proper social investment that the government is trying to do now.”
South-South Collaboration
“I have a keen and strong interest in South-South collaboration in the field of reproductive health, family planning, population, and development,” Musinguzi said. Countries in the South have experience linking programming on population and development, and may face similar challenges, he said. For instance, Bangladesh and Vietnam had successful family planning programs that helped blunt rapid population growth rates.
“Countries, like Uganda, and others which haven’t gotten there yet, could learn from these other countries,” said Musinguzi, by sharing best practices and lesson learned, and replicating applicable solutions.
PPD also has a regional project reaching out to policymakers to increase commitment and accountability for family planning and reproductive health services. For instance, parliamentarians may not realize that they can play a significant role, but they have a unique function in providing government and budget oversight, Musinguzi said. Furthermore, they can create legal and administrative frameworks that prioritize family planning programs.
“We continue to make the case for more investment in family planning and reproductive health, but also making sure we hold leaders accountable, to show more commitment, and make sure they improve on the welfare of the people that they represent,” Musinguzi concluded.
The “Pop Audio” series is also available as podcasts on iTunes.
Sources: MEASURE DHS, UN Population Division. -
How Did We Arrive at 7 Billion – and Where Do We Go From Here? [Part One]
›October 26, 2011 // By Elizabeth Leahy MadsenThe United Nations Population Division has estimated world population will reach seven billion on Monday. Which changes in demographic trends led us to this milestone? What do the past and present tell us about how human numbers will change in the future?
The “Day of Seven Billion” was announced this spring following the release of the latest revision of UN population projections. Although the seven billionth person will not be precisely identified, this estimate is based on careful demographic modeling. Every two years, the UN revises its projections to incorporate the latest trend data and modify its assumptions, as seemingly small changes can make a huge difference demographically.The UN estimates that the seven billionth person alive today will be born on October 31. Demographer Elizabeth Leahy Madsen explains how we got to that number, its significance, and where our demographic path might take us from here. Read part two here.
The United Nations Population Division has estimated world population will reach seven billion on Monday. Which changes in demographic trends led us to this milestone? What do the past and present tell us about how human numbers will change in the future?
The “Day of Seven Billion” was announced this spring following the release of the latest revision of UN population projections. Although the seven billionth person will not be precisely identified, this estimate is based on careful demographic modeling. Every two years, the UN revises its projections to incorporate the latest trend data and modify its assumptions, as seemingly small changes can make a huge difference demographically.
Demography Is Driven by Fertility and Population Momentum
Since world population reached three billion in 1959, the rate of growth has increased, peaked, and begun to slow. Each succeeding milestone was reached more quickly than the last: It took 15 years to reach four billion, 13 years to hit five billion, and only 11 years to get to six billion at the end of 1998. The interval leading to seven billion was slightly longer, at 13 years, as the global rate of population growth has slowed.
Although mortality and migration also affect population trends, the factor with the greatest influence by far is fertility – the average number of children born to each woman. The decline in the global fertility rate from an average of nearly 5 children per woman in the early 1960s to 2.5 children today has in turn slowed the pace of world population growth. However, demographic momentum from previous generations of high fertility can drive population growth for decades to come. Even if Nigeria reached replacement-level fertility today, its population would still grow by one-third by 2050 as the number of births continued to exceed the number of deaths.
Assumptions Matter
Population projections consider: 1) current data about fertility and 2) assumptions about the ways fertility will change in the future. These assumptions vary depending on the source, so how much of a difference do they make? As it turns out, quite a lot.
Projections of world population in 2050 range from 8.1 billion (if fertility rates fall to a global average of 1.7 children per woman) to 10.9 billion (if they remain unchanged). The gap of nearly three billion between those possibilities is greater than the combined populations of China and India today.
Estimates vary even more widely for the end of the century, with the UN projecting that by 2100 world population could total anywhere between 6 billion (if total fertility falls to an average of 1.55 children per woman) and 27 billion (if every country’s fertility rates remain constant at today’s levels).
While demographers parse the details of the projections, policymakers would like to know which of these scenarios is more likely. After all, the economic, environmental, and political consequences of a population of 8 or 11 billion two generations hence are not the same, and a world of 27 billion is difficult for anyone to fathom.
If we simply projected past trends into the future at a steady rate, the population estimates on the low end of the fertility spectrum seem more likely. The global fertility rate has fallen from 4.5 children per woman in the early 1970s to 2.5 today, a decline of 43 percent, so the 14 percent decline projected in the medium-fertility variant between now and 2050 seems reasonable at first glance, perhaps even conservative. The medium-fertility variant assumes that all countries’ fertility rates will begin moving towards replacement level, around 2.1 children per woman, regardless of whether they are currently above or below that number.
However, even a 14 percent decline in fertility assumes that areas where fertility rates remain stalled at high levels will soon begin rapid declines, paralleling the past experience of other regions. As Population Reference Bureau demographer Carl Haub writes, “the assumption that the developing world will necessarily follow the path of the industrialized world…is far from a sure bet.”
In the last 40 years, fertility rates in the Caribbean, northern and southern Africa, Latin America, and all of Asia declined by 50 percent or more. The pace of decline in sub-Saharan Africa, while still notable, was much slower, at 23 percent. In order to meet the UN medium-variant projections, the region’s fertility rate would need to fall by nearly 40 percent by mid-century.
Some of the largest, fastest-growing populations in the developing world would need to experience a major acceleration from recent trends. In Nigeria, fertility edged down by 15 percent between 1970 and 2010, but the medium variant projection depends on a decline of 37 percent over the next four decades; Ethiopia’s fertility rate will need to fall by half.
Gender Matters, Too
The great irony of fertility trends is that gender inequities play an important role at both ends of the scale. In countries with the highest fertility rates, women tend to have less education than men and less autonomy. Their fertility choices may be greatly affected by the preferences of their husbands or other family members. In Niger, which has the highest fertility rate in the world, married men would, on average, like three more children than married women. In Uganda, where women average more than six children each, 60 percent of men report that domestic violence is justified.
By contrast, in countries with the lowest fertility rates, women have achieved equal access to education and the labor market, with more autonomy about how to earn income and what to do with it. Yet cultural expectations that place the burden for child and elder care and housework almost entirely on women can make marriage an unappealing option. In Japan, which is among the 10 lowest fertility countries in the world, more women are choosing to stay single: The marriage rate has fallen by almost half since the 1970s. Japanese women who do marry are waiting until their late 20s and tend not to give birth until they are 30, both of which result in lower average family size.
Even at this end of the demographic spectrum, the assumptions embedded within population projections seem optimistic. Japan’s fertility rate was last above replacement level in the early 1970s; it has fallen steadily to 1.3 children per woman today. The UN projections assume that fertility will immediately reverse track and begin rising to over 1.8 children per woman in 2050, rebounding above two children per woman before the end of the century.
The stalled high fertility rates in much of sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Middle East, together with unprecedented low fertility in Eastern Europe and parts of East Asia, indicate that we are currently in an era of remarkable demographic diversity, despite the UN’s projection of future convergence.
Continue reading part two here.
Elizabeth Leahy Madsen is a consultant on political demography for the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program and former senior research associate at Population Action International.
Sources: Boling (2008), Haub (2011), Japan Statistics Bureau, Measure DHS, UN Population Division, UN Population Fund, Washington Post.
Image Credit: Chart data from UN Population Division, arranged by Elizabeth Leahy Madsen. -
Robert Draper, National Geographic
People and Wildlife Compete in East Africa’s Albertine Rift
›The original version of this article, by Robert Draper, appeared on National Geographic.
The mwami remembers when he was a king of sorts. His judgment was sovereign, his power unassailable. Since 1954 he, like his father and grandfather before him, has been the head of the Bashali chiefdom in the Masisi District, an undulating pastoral region in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Though his name is Sylvestre Bashali Mokoto, the other chiefs address him as simply doyen – seniormost. For much of his adult life, the mwami received newcomers to his district. They brought him livestock or other gifts. He in turn parceled out land as he saw fit.
Today the chief sits on a dirty couch in a squalid hovel in Goma, a Congolese city several hours south of Masisi. His domain is now the epicenter of a humanitarian crisis that has lasted for more than a decade yet has largely eluded the world’s attention. Eastern Congo has been overtaken by thousands of Tutsi and Hutu and Hunde fighting over what they claim is their lawful property, by militias aiming to acquire land by force, by cattlemen searching for less cluttered pastures, by hordes of refugees from all over this fertile and dangerously overpopulated region of East Africa seeking somewhere, anywhere, to eke out a living. Some years ago a member of a rebel army seized the mwami’s 200-acre estate, forcing him, humiliated and fearing for his safety, to retreat to this shack in Goma.
The city is a hornet’s nest. As recently as two decades ago Goma’s population was perhaps 50,000. Now it is at least 20 times that number. Armed males in uniform stalk its raggedy, unlit streets with no one to answer to. Streaming out of the outlying forests and into the city market is a 24/7 procession of people ferrying immense sacks of charcoal on bicycles or wooden, scooter-like chukudus. North of the city limits seethes Nyiragongo volcano, which last erupted in 2002, when its lava roared through town and wiped out Goma’s commercial district. At the city’s southern edge lies the silver cauldron of Lake Kivu – so choked with carbon dioxide and methane that some scientists predict a gas eruption in the lake could one day kill everyone in and around Goma.
The mwami, like so many far less privileged people, has run out of options. His stare is one of regal aloofness. Yet despite his cuff links and trimmed gray beard, he is not a chief here in Goma. He is only Sylvestre Mokoto, a man swept into the hornet’s nest, with no land left for him to parcel out. As his guest, a journalist from the West, I have brought no gifts, only demeaning questions. “Yes, of course my power has been affected greatly,” the mwami snaps at me. “When others back up their claims with guns, there is nothing I can do.”
Continue reading on National Geographic.
Photo Credit: “Aerial View of Goma,” courtesy of UN Photo/Marie Frechon. -
Shape of Things to Come: Uganda’s Demographic Barriers to Democracy
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In March, Uganda’s cultural landmark, the Kasubi Tombs, were destroyed in a suspicious fire. Tensions spilled over when Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni paid a visit to the Bugandan site and found his entrance blocked by an angry crowd. According to an independent newspaper, soldiers accompanying the president opened fire, killing three civilians.
With ethnic-tinged unrest and student protests in Kampala, as well as cross-border conflicts in the north and east, Museveni, who has led Uganda since 1986, is facing a potentially serious test as elections approach early next year. The country’s demographic profile, and in particular the lack of opportunities for growing numbers of young people, will add to the country’s challenges, as I argue in a new case study of Uganda’s demography.
Uganda has the youngest population in the world, with 77 percent of its people younger than age 30. Women in Uganda have an average of 6.7 children each and 41 percent of married women have an unmet need for family planning. The population of Uganda is currently growing by about one million people per year, and given the force of its demographic momentum, Uganda’s population is likely to almost double by 2025 even if fertility declines.
Population Action International has found that countries with age structures like Uganda’s are the most likely to experience internal strife and autocratic governance. Between 1970 and 2007, 80 percent of outbreaks of civil conflict occurred in countries in which 60 percent or more of the population was younger than age 30.During that same period, 90 percent of countries with an age structure like Uganda’s had autocratic or only partially democratic governments.
Demography alone does not cause conflict. Most governments, even those with youthful populations, do not become entrenched in internal violence and upheaval. But age structure affects a country’s vulnerability to conflict, due to the demands a government faces in providing for its growing numbers.
In Uganda, young people face diminishing prospects in agriculture, the primary industry, as plot sizes shrink with each successive generation. At projected population growth rates, land density may increase 350 percent by 2050, from 122 inhabitants per km2 to a possible 551 inhabitants per km.
Only one-quarter of students who enroll in primary school reach the final grade, and even those with university degrees find few jobs. A reported youth unemployment rate of 22 percent is even higher in urban areas.
After 25 years in power, President Museveni will stand for a fourth official term in 2011. Despite growing dissent among his constituents, he appears confident of keeping his seat. Regardless of what happens next year,Uganda’s leaders must firmly commit to addressing their country’s demographic issues.
Age structure can become a window of opportunity if youth are engaged in society and couples can choose the number of children they can support. But in Uganda, that window remains far out of reach.
Three new case studies from Population Action International on Haiti, Yemen and Uganda examine the challenges specific to countries with very young age structures and recommend policy solutions.
Elizabeth Leahy Madsen is a senior research associate at Population Action International (PAI). She is the primary author of the 2007 PAI report The Shape of Things to Come: Why Age Structure Matters to a Safer, More Equitable World.
Photo Credits: “Atanga.pater.uganda,” courtesy of flickr user Kcarls. -
Projecting Population: A Risky Business
›May 6, 2009 // By Sean Peoples
Assumptions about human behavior drive our knowledge of future global population trends. Demographers analyze population and other survey data in order to forecast trends, but uncertainty colors these projections.
In the 2008 Revision of World Population Prospects, the UN Population Division projects that our planet will grow to 9.15 billion people by 2050. Yet this medium-variant projection is just one of several possible scenarios released in this latest round of number crunching. The low- and high-variant projections—7.96 billion and 10.5 billion, respectively—could instead become reality, given slight shifts in fertility rates in developing countries, where growth rates remain higher than in more developed nations. Although both developing and developed nations are susceptible to shifts in fertility rates, uncertainties are greater in the developing world due to factors such as inconsistent data collection, weak health system infrastructure, and low government capacity.
Elizabeth Leahy and I investigate the underlying assumptions behind population projections in an article in the May/June edition of World Watch magazine. By comparing three of the leading population-forecasting institutions, we find that small variations in assumptions can lead to significant differences in projections.
Uganda’s demographic outlook is a prime example. Between 1960 and 2005, Uganda’s population grew by 22 million people, while the country’s fertility rate fell by less than 3 percent. The UN medium-variant population projection assumes the country will buck precedent and experience a 61 percent fertility rate decline between 2005 and 2050, resulting in a population of 91 million people. The U.S. Census Bureau, on the other hand, assumes a less drastic fertility decline and projects a population of 128 million people by 2050. The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), an Austrian institution that projects population on a regional basis, recently revised its population projections to reflect greater growth in sub-Saharan Africa due to stalling fertility decline and stagnant educational-attainment rates.
Fertility rates rarely decline when governments have not made the proper investments in health and education. The UN medium-variant projection is commonly cited as an inevitable scenario; few people know that one of its underlying assumptions is that access to modern contraception will continue to expand. Without real-world development investments to match these assumptions, a very different scenario could easily materialize. By empowering women, bolstering access to education, and providing comprehensive family-planning services to citizens, governments and policymakers can translate these assumptions into reality.
