Population Expansion and Urbanisation...

Africa is expected to witness some of the highest rates of population growth in the world, especially in the years leading up to 2030-2050. Uganda, one of East Africa's larger economies, is said to have an annual population growth rate of 3.1-3.2%; one of the highest in the world. In 2007, Uganda is estimated to have a population of in excess of 30million people, where at independence in 1962 the country had fewer than 10million citizens. By 2025 Uganda could have witnessed its population almost double to very near 60million people, and amazingly, by mid century (2050), the country could have become the world's 12th largest nation by population with 130million citizens.

To put these statistics into some form of context, Uganda is a nation of just under 240,000 sq.km, as compared to nations such as Japan (378,000 sq.km), Russia (17million sq.km), and Nigeria (924,000 sq.km). On the basis of the prior statistics, Uganda will have a population density of around 542 people/sq km by 2050. This is well above the 2007 figures for countries such as Japan, The Netherlands, South Korea and India.

As a result of these, and in-line with what the UN and various other organisations state, urban migration is set to take hold in a big way on the Continent. With such facts, it is clearly likely that there will be great pressures placed on both Uganda's and Africa's urban population centers.

Urban migration within nations with such high rates of natural population growth, is near-on certain to create a significant bulge in the growth-rates of the major cities of such nations. Taking Uganda as an example, the major cities of Kampala, Jinja, Mbale, Masaka, and Gulu, with only Kampala sized above a million residents (at c.1.3m people), could very quickly see a draastic change in this situation.

Being a landlocked country, Uganda relies heavily on international transportation infrastructure which deals with a great proportion of the country's exports. This being so, the inevitable push toward industrialisation coupled with the growing urbanisation process seems to be creating an environment perfect for the rapid expansion of three distinct categories of Ugandan urban areas. The first category would be the 'coastal cities' on the coast of Lake Victoria, spearheaded by Kampala (aided by Port Bell), Entebbe and Jinja. The second category of urban areas are the 'Victoria Nile cities' which line said river system, these being Gulu, Soroti and Lira. The third category would be 'transition cities' which border Uganda's neighbours and which act as key parts of Uganda's export trade market, these being Arua, Moroto, Mbale, Mbarara, and Fort Portal.

These factors, albeit projected in their actual effect, could see a conservative amount of 35% of the Ugandan population living in one of just four major urban areas in the country. If this is achieved by 2025, these four urban areas could account for 21million of Uganda's citizens; from under 2million in 2007. To provide some context, this figure would be just 6.5-7million people lower than the total population figure for the whole of Uganda in 2007 at year-end.

All these factors demonstrate how far the debate needs to shift, as well as how fundamental and paradigm-changing these future patterns could turn-out to be.