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Scramble for Africa: Asian inroads into East Africa
BY MRINALINI REDDY, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE
[to the lead story, "Indian return to Uganda"]
Mridula Patel, raised in Baroda, India,
came to Uganda during the 1960s
when she married her husband Praful Patel.
They left in 1972 and returned about
ten years later when their properties
including their present home in Kololo Road
were returned.
Asian immigration to Africa came about when the late nineteenth century "Scramble for Africa" began. The territories that Britain conquered in the late 19th century in Africa had all pre-capitalist economies with no market for labor. Commerce was secondary and peripheral, and the people lived and worked on the land.
In the initial phase, when only nominal control had been established over the colonies, the inability to extract forced labor from the "natives" meant that labor had to be brought in from outside.
Jaffar Bandali, the proprietor of
Fairway Hotel, returned to
Kampala leaving a successful
business in Vancouver.
He reclaimed his properties in 1992.
For the colonizing British, India, its primary and most populous colony, was the solution. So the first wave of Indians arriving in East Africa worked on the Kenya-Uganda railway. The second wave came about with the spontaneous migration that was motivated by the transport developments in East Africa that provided a greater possibility for such migrants to economically better themselves on African soil. This was enough reason for Asians to settle and capitalize on the lack of a trade establishment.
Their phenomenal success made them a powerful minority and an easy target for Idi Amin's idiosyncratic behavior, explained Sherali Jaffer, chairman of Kampala's venerable Fairway Hotel.
Upon their expulsion in 1972, the economy fell into shambles and a large part of this was believed to be the loss of entrepreneurship and management that this immigrant community excelled at, he said.
"I have not forgotten," said Jaffer, who helped coordinate relief efforts for Asian refugees when they fled to Britain. "The same thing was going to happen in Kenya and Tanzania, but when they saw what happened here, they let the Asians there stay."
Eventually, it was when President Yoweri Museveni came to power in 1986, that there was interest in bringing the Asians back. Some like Jaffer returned to reclaim properties and resurrect their businesses, but only a few stayed.
Instead, a new generation began to arrive. Today, Asians make up less than one percent of Uganda's population, but control about 40 percent of the economy, according to Sanjiv Patel of the Indian Association of Uganda.
November 2007
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