In 1798, the Rev Thomas Robert Malthus raised a storm of international controversy when he anonymously published an essay on the principle of population and society. Through the essay, he warned that disparity between the rate of population growth and the slower increase in food supply would lead to war, famine, and disease. Malthus’s conclusions were dismissed then, and ever since as un-researched, misleading and illusionary.
More than 200 years later (1972), the “Club of Rome,” an elitist association of scholars, businessmen and politicians published an even more controversial report on “the predicament of mankind.” Their article modelled an ultimate uncontrollable crash of both population and industrial production due to exhaustion of physical resources such as cultivable land, minerals and the earth’s capacity to absorb pollution.
Critics to Malthus and the Club of Rome have found ammunition from the fact that unprecedented population growth over the last couple of centuries has been accompanied by an impressive growth of world economies. The standard of living in developed countries has steadily improved even though the Club of Rome had predicted the world will run out resources within 100 years.
The latest critic to Malthus is our own, President Museveni who has openly expressed his support for large populations. His views are based on what is a grossly misguided view that large populations boost development by enlarging markets. Not when: (1) the population lacks purchasing power, (2) government lacks capacity to fully exploit its resources, (3) government uses ad hoc, cosmetic development formulas, (4) a country glorifies, rather fights peasantry!
In the remote villages of Kigezi, and indeed else where in Uganda, congested families who can still harvest some yams and sweet potato tubers from their rapidly degrading gardens eat them raw because they can’t afford to buy fire wood for cooking. In Soroti, it has been reported that the only time UPE classrooms are full is during the fruiting season for wild mango trees. Only then would children rest assured of scavenging for wild fruits to keep them going throughout the day. Hunger keeps most children away from school during the non-fruiting season.
Latest statistics indicate that Uganda’s maternal mortality ratio is 505 per 100000 live births, implying that 16 women die every day due to pregnancy-related factors. Only 38% of pregnant women deliver in a health unit. Infant and child mortality are on the rise while income poverty is increasing.
With a population growth rate of 3.2% per annum, Uganda’s population could reach 130 million by the year 2050! By all indications, more than three quarters of this will still be living in a peasant household economy denoted by “hand-to-mouth” survival. It is inconceivable that governments which have failed to transform the livelihoods of 30 million people will succeed with 130 million!
Even if government intensifies utilisation of unexploited resources – including protected forests, wetlands and the recently discovered oil, we will at best, end up enabling a minority of Ugandans to become stinkingly wealthy – given the rate of income inequality. On the other hand, Iam tempted to think destitution will reach unprecedented levels, as crammed peasant households exhaust all the possible survival means.
This phenomenon has already unfolded in the dramatically developing countries such as India, China, Brazil and others. In China for instance, with a population of 1.3 billion people, only 400 million have a decent livelihood. Nearly 70% of the population, or 900 million Chinese are destitute. It is estimated that 80% of the Indian population lives precariously on the fringes of life and death – without access to government social services. For the record, India is one of those developing countries where quality of life for its elite population rivals that of Western Europe and North America.
Museveni’s assertion that a bigger population would lead to increased consumption and therefore bigger markets will remain utopian unless a miraculous, divine intervention improves the purchasing power of the destitute peasants.
While I believe Uganda’s economy will thrive, like India and China, only a minority of the population will enjoy the full benefits of economic growth. It would therefore be rational that we preach and reaffirm the importance of family planning to limit the number of households living on raw sweet potato tubers or wild mangoes for their dinner; or pregnant women and children dying for lack of medical care.
No person has been misunderstood like the Rev Thomas Robert Malthus. He simply argued against the widely held view that a nation's resource was determined by the size of its population and that fertility added to national wealth. The core of his reasoning emanated from his humane concern for the sufferings caused by overpopulation and thus recommended moral restraint against large families.
For a country like Uganda where the president’s word becomes national policy, Iam worried that Musevenis’s open campaign for a large population will undermine family planning efforts. If that happens, government will have condemned the lives of millions of Ugandans to eternal destitution and suffering.
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