By Joel Ogwang                                                                     

To some, it is a facet of urbanisation. Yet, to many, it is largely a symptom of urban poverty. Whichever way one looks at it, however, slums manifest a big social and governance problem for not just developing, but also the developed countries.

“Slums can be related to a child suffering from Kwashiorkor,” says Samuel Mabala Shibuta, the commissioner of urban development at the lands ministry.

“The swollen stomach and grey hair are a symptom of a bigger problem. Slums show a serious planning and governance problem.”

But, also, this presents a development paradox; urbanisation manifests in emergency of slums, says Dr. Mary Ssonko Nabacwa, a development studies lecturer at the Uganda Christian University.

“If urbanisation is taking place, then development is also taking place,” she says. “However, this (slums) also shows underdevelopment and lack of planning.”

But, what is a slum?

There is no exclusive definition of a slum; it has as many meanings as development scholars, studies technocrats, bureaucrats, and institutions variously explain it.

Nonetheless, during its meeting in 2002, the UN-HABITAT defined a slum as a “contiguous settlement where the inhabitants are characterized as having inadequate housing and basic services.”

Simply put, a slum is a run-down area of a city characterised by substandard housing, squalor and lacking in tenure security.

A section of unplanned mud and wattle housings at the Banda B3 slum along the Jinja- Kampala highway. The new housing plicy targets improving dwellings of all Ugandans.

Usually inhabited by the poor or socially disadvantaged, slums are often neglected, not recognized, unplanned and unbudgeted for by the public authorities since they are not considered an integral part of the city or town, explaining why little data on slum dwellers can be found.

How slums emerge in Uganda

Uganda is one of Africa’s most rapidly urbanizing countries, with a population base estimated at about 33 million, a high population growth rate of 3.2% and a high rate of urban growth estimated at over 5% per annum.

This has played catalyst to the development of slums, largely attributed to unbalanced rural and urban growth divide, forcing the former to seek better social services in the latter.

The migrators also seek employment opportunities, spouses, better standard of living and services and security, while others migrate due to the loss of their “bread winners”, peer influence and loss of land in rural areas, according to Living in Kampala slum, a study conducted by the John Paul II Justice and Peace Centre, 2011.

“Slums are an indicator that people want better services everywhere they are,” says Nabacwa. “It is a strong message to planners and, indeed, the Government; who doesn’t want better services?”

However, these rural folks who flock urban areas are often unbudgeted and or unplanned for by the local government and city authorities in terms of housing and accommodation, as well as other social amenities.

“As a result, the migrators find a high cost of living in the city, ending up living in slums and informal settlements. Over 50% of Ugandan slum dwellers live in tenements, locally called muzigo,” says Mabala. “They are also illiterate and lack technical skills that the urban job market requires.” 

Livelihood

To sustain themselves and their families, the slum dwellers engage in informal jobs like security guards, operating retail shops and kiosks, supermarket attendants,  pump attendants, Boda boda riding, fruit and food vending, car washing and prostitution.

From their sweat, slum dwellers’ meagre salary hardly meet their basic needs, considering that Uganda has no minimum wage legislations. This ensures they are permanently help hostage to slums.

A boy walks past a section of unplanned mud and wattle housings at the Banda B3 slum along the Jinja- Kampala highway. The new housing plicy targets improving dwellings of all Ugandans.

These poorly facilitated muzigo rented at a fee as low as sh5, 000, often lack toilets or latrines, contrary to the Public Health Act of 1964, making slums worse than rural areas.

Life in the slums is not any cheap, though. While water coverage in Kampala, for example, is estimated at 65%, it costs three times more to buy water in a city slum than it does in the planned areas such as Kololo and Nakasero, a Kampala Integrated Environmental Planning Management Project (KIEMP), 2010, report says.  

In Uganda, the bigger the district, the bigger the slum. Kampala leads with prominent slums including; Makerere Kivulu, Kamwokya Kifumbira Zone, Banda,  Wabigalo, Namuwongo, Katanga, Kalerwe, Nsambya and Bwaise. Other districts include; Jinja, Mbale and Gulu.

Slums, a global problem

Currently, the UN-HABITAT estimates that between 49% to 64% of the total world urban population dwell in slums.

According to the National Slum Upgrading Strategy and Action Plan, 2008, the urban population comprisedfive million people as of 2009, with 60% living in slums.

This means three million Ugandans lived in slums. But, considering that Uganda’s population growth rate stands at 3.2% per annum, the urban population stands at 5.5m as of 2012, with 3.3 m slum dwellers.

However, a UN-habitat observatory report, 2007, ranked Uganda among developing countries with fast annual slum growth rate, averaging 5.32%, implying there are about 3.5 million Ugandans living in slums today, estimated to reach eight millions by 2020, up from three million in 2009.

Action Aid International, a charity, estimates that over one million people in Kampala live in slums.  

Globally, one-sixth of humanity or one billion people live in slums, a figure projected to rise to 1.5 billion by 2020.

MDGs developed

Reflecting on the growing development paradox presented by global poverty and its effects on people’s lives, heads of over 50 states met during a Millennium Summit in 2000 and adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of eight targets designed to improve human livelihood.

For environmental sustainability and slum upgrading, MDG 7, target 11 articulates the commitment of member states to improve the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by the year 2020.

And, in her quest to curtail the slum problem, Uganda developed the National Slum Upgrading Strategy and Action Plan (2008) to provide a framework, direction and plan to all stakeholders on how to improve slums.

This would fast-track Uganda’s target of uplifting the lives of at least one million people by 2020.

Early interventions

The plan, however, came against a backdrop of earlier interventions like the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP), the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADs), Rural Water and Sanitation (RUWASA) and rural electrification, to mention but a few, that proved unsuccessful in bridging the urban- rural development divide.

These interventions met many stumbling blocks, especially inadequate funding, corruption and sustenance, alienating and suffocating urban areas that, for its 20% population, contribute 60% to GDP.

In allocating its resources, the Government considers population size, poverty head count and land area which means more resources are allotted to rural areas that are home to 80% of the country’s population, that the urban areas that lead development surge.

But, the underfunding of local governments, with only $2 per capita invested in infrastructure development as opposed to the international threshold of $25, has galvanised slum development.

“As a result, urban local governments have plans to fix roads, drainages, electrification and housings but lack resources,” says Mabala.

Interventions

Apparently, Uganda has an accumulation of 1.6 million substandard houses that are inappropriate for human life.

Of these, 211, 000 units are in urban areas and 1.2 million in rural areas, says lands minister, Daudi Migereko.

“In order to improve conditions in slums, the Government is negotiating with land owners, tenants and developers as to as to reduce the development of sums,” says Migereo.

“This venture will include land sharing, selling, leasing and cost-sharing for development.” Uganda also has a housing deficit of 600, 000 units, of which Kampala alone has 100, 000.

To address the housing deficit, the Government undertook slum upgrading project in Namuwongo but was not sustainable over a 10-year period as only 1, 000 homesteads benefitted.

Currently, the Government is reviewing the housing policy to streamline the sector and ensure formation of housing cooperatives where people can save money to build houses as well as improve land access to encourage owners engage in joint ventures with investors to better utilise their land.

“The Government is operationalizing the condominium property law to ensure optimal usage of land by encouraging high-rise construction in the spirit of saving land due to the high population growth rate,” says Migereko.

The Transforming Settlements of Urban Poor in Uganda (TSUPU) program has also been developed to mobilise slum dwellers in Kampala, Jinja, Mbale, Arua, Mbarara and Kabaale into forming savings groups through slum dwellers federations.

TSUPU, funded partly from a World Bank-based Cities Alliance grant, seeks to guide balanced urbanisation by creating regional cities, says Mabala, adding that through the Community Upgrading Fund, the Government plans to give small grants of between sh10- sh30m to help improve infrastructure services.

The three-year (2011-13) sh637m scheme will ensure Arua, Jinja, Mbale, Mbarara and Kabaale get sh200m to improve their infrastructures, especially drainages, annually.

Amidst these interventions, the creation of new districts, with 25 new ones to be added to the existing 111, more social problems abound, says Mabala.

“This destroys the potential of towns to develop into cities,” he says. “This also increases the cost of public administration as many civil servants will be paid yet this very money could be used from development.”