Aspects of urban unemployment in Uganda.

Abstract

From the early years of this century, a periodic problem besetting development in Uganda has been shortage of labour, a shortage which was shared by the Baganda farmers who came to depend on hired labour. From the 1920s this shortage was met by increasing immigration of labour from countries bordering on Uganda, notably Ruanda-Urundi, by revruiting agencies and by a growing flow of' immigrants from West Nile, Kigezi and Ankole and later from other areas of Uganda (Powesland 1954). From the middle 1950s the annual reports of the Labour Department begin to mention periodic surpluses of the unskilled labour in towns, co-existing with shortages of labour elsewhere. The last reports of 1959 and 1960 speak of general surplus of all labour in towns, except the most highly skilled, and or growing numbers of school leavers coming onto the labour market with inadequate qualifications for the rising standards expected by employers. The reports qualify this by adding the unemployment was not a serious urban problem because the unemployed were able to return to their homes when they failed to find work.