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Uganda Asians
The 1969 census enumerated about 70,000 people of
Indian or
Pakistani descent--generally referred to as Asians in
Uganda.
They were officially considered foreigners despite the
fact that
more than one-half of Uganda's Asians were born in Uganda.
Many
of their forebears had arrived in Uganda by way of trade
networks
centered on the Indian Ocean island of Zanzibar (united
with
Tanganyika in 1964 to form Tanzania), which brought iron,
cotton,
and other products from India even before the nineteenth
century.
In the late nineteenth century, many indentured laborers
from
India remained in Uganda after their service ended, but
the
government refused to sell them land, and most became
traders.
Wealthy Baganda traders were almost eliminated as their
earliest
rivals when the Buganda Agreement of 1900 made land
ownership
more lucrative than commerce for most Baganda. Indians
gained
control of retail and wholesale trade, cotton ginning,
coffee and
sugar processing, and other segments of commerce. After
independence, and especially when the Obote government
threatened
to nationalize many industries in 1969, Asians exported
much of
their wealth and were accused of large-scale graft and tax
evasion. President Amin deported about 70,000 Asians in
1972, and
only a few returned to Uganda in the 1980s to claim
compensation
for their expropriated land, buildings, factories, and
estates.
In 1989 the Asian population in Uganda was estimated to be
about
10,000.
Data as of December 1990
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