Terms to know


●● *Primate city: a city that contains more than twice the population of any other city in the same country.


●● Terms of trade: the ratio between the prices of imports and exports.


●● International Monetary Fund (IMF): an international organisation set up in 1944 to promote world trade by reducing trading barriers between countries. IMF policies tend to be decided mainly by its richer member states such as the USA. The IMF has its headquarters in Washington.


Kampala – Uganda’s capital and primate city. The rapid growth of Kampala has been a symptom of uneven development in Uganda. How does this photograph suggest that uneven development also exists within Kampala itself?


ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY 2 Uneven development


Uganda was unevenly developed even before the era of British colonialism. Fertile and well-watered lands in the south, for example, were agriculturally more productive than the arid (dry) northern regions. Uneven development became much more pronounced, however, throughout colonial rule. Most development was then concentrated in southern Uganda and particularly in the region of Buganda, which was given favoured status by the colonial rulers: ● Schools, colonial administration offi ces and other forms of colonial development began in Buganda and only later spread outwards to other parts of Uganda.


● In the early 1900s Kampala was connected by rail with the Kenyan port of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean. This drew southern Uganda into the British imperial economy. The south became a producer of cotton and other cash crops for Britain and a receiver of British colonial goods. Northern Uganda, on the other hand, developed into little more than a supplier of migrant labour to the south.


● Britain did not encourage the development of manufacturing industry in colonies such as Uganda. What little industry did exist was located mainly between the Bugandan towns of Jinja and Masaka and particularly in and around the city of Kampala.


● Kampala was developed as the colonial capital and dominant urban centre of Uganda. It is now the country’s primate city* and capital.


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