Landslides and flash floods, made more likely by climate change, and deforestation have made some areas of Uganda permanently risky to live in.
Over many years, regional conflicts in eastern and central Africa have driven a steady influx of refugees into Uganda, to the extent the county now hosts the largest refugee population in Africa and the fifth biggest in the world. As the climate crisis deepens, however, the nation's focus has shifted to a different type of displacement: internal migrants forced to move due to landslides and floods.
Across the fertile highlands of Mount Elgon, an extinct volcano straddling Uganda's eastern border, residents are increasingly vulnerable to landslides that have killed over 1,000 people in the past decade. In western Uganda, communities have been unable to access their inundated homes and farmlands around the foothills of Mount Rwenzori for three years as the Nyamwamba river overflows each year.
In Uganda, floods are estimated to affect around 50,000 people and cost $62 million annually, with these figures projected to double by 2032. This has created large, displaced populations many of whom have sought refuge in under-resourced camps.
Rehma Namale, 56, was lucky to survive the devastating floods in 2020 that killed eight of her neighbours and swept away her home in Kasese, near the banks of the Nyanwamba river. She now lives in a makeshift home with her nine children in Muhokya camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs). Along with hundreds of others, she has been waiting in limbo to be resettled for four years now.
"Life here has been hard - I have no work and no means to live," she says. "We cannot till the land here and are depending on food donations by government and well-wishers."
James Ndama, another survivor of the 2020 floods, lives in Muhokya with his seven children. He lost not just his home but his livelihood when his five-acre banana and coffee farm was ruined.
"Here we share drinking water from the river with cows and pigs," he says. "My children are always sick and I don't have money to take them to hospital".
In 2018, the government of Uganda formulated a plan to resettle large populations living around Mount Elgon and Rwenzori to the nearby districts of Bulambuli and Kiryandongo respectively. The programme identified 100,000 people for relocation from Mount Elgon, though officials say nearly a third of the region's approximately 1 million residents are at risk.
The first round of relocations started last year. They were partly financed by a $7.2 million grant from GiveDirectly, a US charity that provided one-off payment of around 7 million Ugandan shillings ($1,900) to 4,000 families to help them lay the foundations for their new lives. The government topped this up with 10 million Ugandan shillings (about $2,800) for each household. These sums are intended to be sufficient to purchase a one-acre piece of land and build a two-bedroom house in an area of the recipient's choice.
"We want to ensure that these people relocate to safer areas especially those on cliffs and on top of the dangerous places to avoid a re-occurrence of the past incidents where we lost innocent lives," said Prime Minister Robina Nabbanja in televised remarks earlier this year.
The plan, however, has hit some early roadblocks. Many communities around Mount Elgon are reportedly reluctant to leave the area's fertile volcanic soils that are ideal for growing arabica coffee, the region's major cash crop.
"We are still negotiating with some households who complain that the money given by the government is too little compared to what they earn from their vast coffee plantations," says Ronald Wanambwa, Secretary for Natural Resources and Production, a unit that tracks outbreaks of disasters around the Mount Elgon region. "Others have a cultural attachment to the land passed down from their forefathers."
A similar attempt to resettle communities to Kiryandongo district in 2010 struggled as many people found the new conditions unfavourable. Local officials told African Arguments that more than 50% of the 3,000 relocated households have since returned to Mount Elgon.
"The area where people were being relocated was previously reserved to host refugees. It's not very suitable for farming," says Wanambwa. "It became a challenge for people to stay permanently."
According to the World Bank, Uganda's average temperatures have increased by about 1.3°C since the 1960s. Heavy precipitation events are anticipated to become more frequent, leading to higher chances of landslides and floods. Experts say that rapid population growth around Mount Elgon has also added to this vulnerability through deforestation.
"The fast-growing population in the region is a very significant driver to landslide occurrences and it also increases the risk as many people settle on the steep slopes with high landslide hazard," says Revocatus Twinomuhangi, a researcher at the Centre for Climate Change Research and Innovation at Uganda's Makerere University. "People need to be educated about the dangers of deforestation, they need to be taught sustainable farming methods such as agroforestry."
Alongside the resettlement plans, the government started a ten-year forest restoration programme in 2019. It plans to reforest vacated lands and said it will forcefully evict those in high risk areas who reject the compensation of 17 million Ugandan shillings. According to Sarah Bisikwa, the Environment Officer for Bududa district, which suffered fatal landslides in 2010, officials around Mount Elgon have distributed free tree seedlings and increased efforts to prevent encroachments of forests.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
"The slopes which still have trees did not suffer from landslides, an indication that tree planting has a lot to do with preventing landslide occurrences," she says.
As one of the countries most vulnerable to - but least responsible for - climate change, Uganda is appealing for international support to adapt and compensate for loss and damage. The question of climate finance for the Global South will take centre stage at the upcoming COP29 climate talks in Azerbaijan where discussions around the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) will come to a head. Adequate climate finance will be especially crucial for countries in sub-Saharan Africa, where 86 million people could be internally displaced by climate change related events by 2050 according to the World Bank.
"We must address the climate-induced migrations, especially among poor nations like Uganda," Beatrice Anywar, Uganda's environment minister, said at a meeting last year . "As a country with an open refugee policy, it's a shame that we don't have enough funds to look after our own people."
Diana Taremwa Karakire is a freelance journalist based in Uganda.
