Uganda’s fertility rate has maintained the pre-pandemic pattern of declining, with the latest statistics from the World Bank putting it at 4.4 births per woman.
From the early 1990s, right through to the early 2000s, Uganda developed a reputation of being a population renegade as its fertility rate continued to threaten the 7.0 births per woman mark. This was amidst messages from President Museveni that made clear that a big population translated into a big workforce and market.
Since 2006, the fertility rate has kept declining. Statistics show that it has dropped from 6.48 births per woman in 2006 to 4.4 births per woman in 2022. The country, however, remains a population renegade in eastern Africa.
In 1984, Uganda (7.00 births per woman) and Kenya (7.12 births per woman) were more or less at par on the fertility rate index. Since then, Kenya’s fertility rate has dropped to 3.4 on the back of a steady uptake of modern contraceptives.
Family Planning 2030 (FP2030), a global initiative that advances rights-based family planning, says the Ugandan government has committed to increasing the modern contraceptive rate for all women from 30.4 percent in 2020 to 39.6 percent by 2025. This as the country looks to reduce the unmet need for contraceptives from 17 percent in 2020 to 15 percent by 2025.
Last week, Dr Mary Otieno, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) representative said besides “saving and improving lives”, reproductive health services “can enhance the efficiency and impact for change” at state level.
Dr Herbert Luswata, the Uganda Medical Association’s secretary general, said Uganda should strive to decrease her fertility rate to 4.0 births per woman.
“It is recommended that people in Uganda should not have more than 4 children,” he said, adding that having more than four children predisposes woman to health problems such as “gestational diabetes, which is when a woman’s blood sugar levels become too high during pregnancy or placenta previa, which is when the placenta [which provides the baby with nutrients and oxygen] covers the cervix, making vaginal birth difficult or impossible.”
The World Bank considers a fertility rate of 2.1 as a critical threshold. According to recent data from the United Nations, all but one (Afghanistan) of the top 30 countries with the highest fertility rates in the world are located in Africa. Predictions indicate that Africa’s population will continue to grow significantly, adding an estimated 2.5 billion people by 2100. This as population growth in other continents either slows down or even declines.
It has also been projected that Uganda may as well fall short of the World Bank’s critical threshold by 2100, with a population density of more than 80 million people.
