More about Namuwongo

Namuwongo is an area of Kampala located southeast of the city centre. Here, there is an informal urban settlement that is home to between seven and ten thousand people. Many of these people are internally displaced persons (IDPs) from zones of violence in Uganda or are refugees who fled from neighbouring countries such as DR Congo and Sudan.

In Namuwongo, 90% of households live below the absolute poverty line, based on food and non-food items - the highest percentage of the slums in Kampala. Out of this 90%, the average household is below the food poverty line by 39.1%, meaning that the average household of six in Namuwongo spends less than 100,000 UGX (£31.70) on food per month.

Generally, people have to pay for waste management, rent, water and toilet services. Families rely on cheap food staffs (such as Matooke, cassava, beans and maize) while meat, fish, eggs and fruit are food for the rich. Even then, families may skip some meals to be able to pay their rent. The rent is usually overpriced, considering the state of the shelter, and most households consist of six family members sharing a one-room home.

Female-headed households tend to have less income than their male counterparts, as many jobs in the community are not open to women, for physical or traditional reasons. In Namuwongo, every female-headed household surveyed in 2009 by JPIIJPC was below the absolute poverty line of 399,291 UGX (£127) per month.

Education is a means to better standards of living and is a fundamental human right. However, over 60% of the population in Namuwongo did not complete primary school, making employment opportunities extremely rare. Their level of poverty makes it extremely difficult to develop any savings. School fees may cost 40,000 UGX (£12) per term, while the minimum monthly food expenditure per capita in Namuwongo is as low as 11,800 UGX (£3.75). This is to say that in the worst case, school fees for one term can cost 3 - 4 months of food allowance. Because Namuwongo has no government schools and no primary schools - government or private - families sending a child to school must also pay for transport costs or the child must walk long, and often unsafe, distances.

Furthermore, although water is generally available and accessible in Namuwongo, its safety and cleanliness is questionable. On average, there is one toilet for every 25 households (150 individuals). Poor sanitation, garbage management and drainage systems account for outbreaks of cholera and dysentery, to add to the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, other STDs, Malaria, malnutrition and Tuberculosis.

Because health care is expensive and often inadequate, residents often seek medical help only for treatment of serious problems, rather than prevention. Although the local population does have access to private clinics or traditional healers, there are no hospitals in Namuwongo.

All of this create serious problems, namely high unemployment, low quality shelter, high crime rates, drug abuse, poor and insufficient infrastructures and low literacy levels.

To view more photos of Namuwongo, please visit our gallery.

• Sources:
• UN-Habitat, 2001, 2003
• JPIIJPC, 2009
• UN - Declaration of Human Rights