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Home Ownership and Rural-Urban Links in Uganda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

John Odongo  and
John P. Lea
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Extract

In recent years the housing problems of Africa's burgeoning cities have become a primary concern of governments, international agencies, and scholars, but there appears to be a marked distinction between the approach contained in many national development plans and the focus of much academic research. A central feature of plan documents is the assessment of accommodation needs and the elimination of established deficits which are based, in the main, on conventional demographic data from the national census together with various cost estimates.1

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 1977 , pp. 59 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

Page 59 note 1 See, for example, Republic of Uganda, Uganda's Third Five-Tear Development Plan:1971/2–1975/6 (Entebbe, 1971), pp. 355–66Google Scholar; Republic of Kenya, Development Plan: 1974–1978, Part I (Nairobi, 1974), pp. 469–80Google Scholar; and Republic of Zambia, Second National Development Plan, January, 1972-December, 1976 (Lusaka, 1971), pp. 145–9.Google Scholar

Page 59 note 2 Cf. Gutkind, P. C. W., ‘African Responses to Urban Wage Employment’, in International Labour Review (Geneva), 97, 01–06 1968, pp. 135–66Google Scholar; Caldwell, J. C., African Rural- Urban Migration: the movement to Ghana's towns (Canberra, 1969)Google Scholar; and Hutton, J. (ed.), Urban Challenge in East Africa (Nairobi, 1972).Google Scholar

Page 59 note 3 The concept of home is equated here with that of house, and both terms are used interchangeably in the ensuing text.

Page 60 note 1 Three important studies are: Gulliver, P. H., Labour Migration in a Rural Economy: a study of the Ngoni and Ndendeuli of Southern Tanganyika (Kampala, 1955)Google Scholar; Elkan, Walter, Migrants and Proletarians: urban labour in the economic development of Uganda (London, 1960)Google Scholar; and Caldwell, op. cit.

Page 60 note 2 Grilo, R. D., African Railwaymen: solidarity and opposition in an East African labour force (Cambridge, 1973), p. 181.Google Scholar

Page 60 note 3 Ibid. p. 49.

Page 60 note 4 This characteristic has been identified by several authors but it is probable, as Caldwell - op. cit. p. 194-points out, that the likelihood of an eventual return to the village will decrease as urban living becomes an accepted way of life.

Page 61 note 1 Cf. Adepoju, A., ‘Migration and Socio-Economic Links Between Urban Migrants and their Home Communities in Nigeria’, in Africa (London), XLIV, 4, 1974, pp. 383–95.Google Scholar

Page 61 note 2 See Caldwell, op. cit. chs. 6 and 9; and Lea, J. P., ‘The Geographic Determinants of Housing Policy in Swaziland’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 1974, pp. 205–55.Google Scholar

Page 61 note 3 Crooke, P., ‘Rural Settlement and Housing Trends in a Developing Country: an: txaniple in Nigeria’, in International Labour Review, 93, 3, 09 1967, pp. 280–91.Google Scholar

Page 61 note 4 Gutkind, op. cit. p. 164.

Page 61 note 5 Caldwell, op. cit. p. 170.

Page 62 note 1 A comment by Gutkind on the article by Epstein, A. L., ‘Urbanization and Social Change in Africa’, in Current Anthropology (Chicago), VIII, 4, 1967, p. 285.Google Scholar

Page 62 note 2 This freedom of choice to retain or break links with the rural areas is noted by Mayer, Philip, ‘Migrancy and the Study of Africans in Towns’, in American Anthropologist (New York), LXIV, 3 Pt. 1, 1962, PP. 576–92.Google Scholar

Page 63 note 1 Uganda's Third Five-Tear Development Plan, pp. 99–100.

Page 63 note 2 The data used in this article were collected in December 1974 by students of Makerere University under the direction of John Odongo.

Page 63 note 3 The presence of a core region and periphery in Uganda has been examined by Bakwesegha, C. J., ‘Patterns, Causes and Consequences of Polarized Development in Uganda’, in El-Shaks, Salah and Obudho, Robert (eds.), Urbanization,. National Development and Regional Planning in Africa (New York, 1974), pp. 47–66.Google Scholar

Page 64 note 1 This use of the term ‘informal sector’ relates to those who are self-employed. See Hart, Keith, ‘Informal Income Opportunities and Urban Employment in Ghana’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), XI, 1, 03 1973, pp. 61–89.Google Scholar

Page 64 note 2 An analysis of female responses to the questionnaire did not reveal any consistent pattern of home ownership preferences. The few rural house-building activities which were stated all tended to suggest that the influence of city life is breaking down some traditional attitudes and offers new opportunities for women to acquire property.

Page 64 note 3 The length of urban residence was derived from an aggregation of all periods spent by the migrant in various urban areas in Uganda. The employment history of each respondent was recorded, and periods of unemployment and employment were both used to calculate length of residence.

Page 67 note 1 John, William and Hanna, Judith Lynne, Urban Dynamics in Black Africa: an interdisciplinary approach (Chicago, 1971), pp. 46–7.Google Scholar

Page 67 note 2 Information from the survey indicates that those opting for permanent urban residence are predominantly from Buganda, together with a small number of landless migrants from Rwanda and Burundi.

Page 69 note 1 It is recognised that the small number of respondents in the older residence categories make the statistical interpretation of trends open to question, although it can be seen from the Soroti survey that the majority of responses fall into one or two major groupings.

Page 69 note 2 Some effects of educational attainment are explored in Lea, John P., ‘Population Mobility in Rural Swaziland: a research note’, in The Journal of Modem African Studies, XII, 4, 12 1974, pp. 673–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 70 note 1 Two studies show that the urban informal sector appears to provide rather lucrative economic opportunities to the migrant. See Southall, A. W. and Gutkind, P. C. W., Townsmen in the Making: Kampala and its suburbs (Kampala, 1957), pp. 51–63 and 136–52Google Scholar; and Hart, loc. cit.

Page 71 note 1 See Kabwegere, T. B., ‘Land and the Growth of Social Stratification in Uganda’, in The Journal of Eastern African Research and Development (Nairobi), V, I, 1975, pp. 5–17.Google Scholar

Page 71 note 2 Mafeje, Archie, ‘Large-Scale Farming in Buganda’, in Brokensha, D. and Pearsall, M. (eds.), The Anthropology of Development in Sub-Saharan Africa (Kentucky, 1969), pp. 27–8Google Scholar; and Richards, Audrey I. (ed.), Economic Development and Tribal Change (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 359–40 and 161–223.Google Scholar

Page 71 note 3 It is suggested by both Richards and Mafeje that a fair number of these immigrants settle in the region as tenants to mailo landowners. Further quantitative evidence is contained in Masser, I. and Gould, W. T. S., Inter-Regional Migration in Tropical Africa (London, 1975), pp. 45–73.Google Scholar

Page 72 note 1 See, for example, Swaziland Government, Second National Development Plan, 1973–77 (Mbabane, 1973), pp. 15–28.Google Scholar

Page 73 note 1 Cf. Little, Kenneth, Urbanization as a Social Process: an essay on movement and change in contemporary Africa (London, 1974).Google Scholar