Colonial Economic Interests Fuelled Uganda’s Deadliest Epidemics, Reveals IUIU History Scholar.
A new study by an IUIU scholar has revealed that colonial economic interests fuelled Uganda's deadliest epidemics. The study argues that the devastating epidemics of the colonial era were not merely natural disasters but were direct consequences of the British desire to protect their political stability and sustain their imperial economic productivity.
This ground-breaking research, titled "African Ecology and Imperial Power: Politics of Disease Control in Colonial Uganda, 1894–1962," was conducted by Ms. Aiseta Aisha, a history scholar from the Islamic University in Uganda (IUIU).
Ms. Aisha presented her findings at the International Conference on Renewing Economic History in East Africa, held at Makerere University in early May 2026.
Ms. Aisha’s study challenges the traditional view that Africa was naturally a "white man’s grave" due to its climate. She highlights how these policies gave priority to cash-crop production, taxation, and infrastructure expansion over the health needs of local populations in order to secure revenue, ensure self-sufficiency, and sustain the imperial economy. In turn, these disrupted subsistence systems, intensified ecological exposure, accelerated mobility and urbanization, and altered social structures, conditions that heightened vulnerability to infectious diseases, thus leading to their widespread and emergency.
In the Eastern Province, a region central to the IUIU community, the research identifies a dark link between the cotton industry and the Bubonic Plague: The study recalls that the British prioritized cotton production but neglected safe storage facilities, which forced farmers to store raw cotton in their huts, attracting plague-infected rats directly into living quarters. These conditions led to devastating outbreaks in the Bukedi, Buganda, and Busoga regions, requiring massive rat-extermination campaigns. She notes that the first cotton ginner was only established in 1906 by the Uganda company, and initially the Kenyan Kisumu ginnery was used, where local producers used human porters to carry their cotton to Jinja port to load their produce on steam boats to the Kisumu ginnery. The human porters moved through areas with fragile ecological systems, from which they came into contact with pathogens that infested them with diseases. Such movement of cotton also indirectly led to the movement of the rat, which spread the plague disease further throughout the protectorate.
The study asserts that colonial fiscal policies were often as dangerous as the diseases themselves. The introduction of the Hut Tax caused families to live in congested, single-hut dwellings to save money, which accelerated the spread of contagious diseases like smallpox.
Furthermore, the system of forced labor (kasanvu) compelled thousands to travel long distances through disease-infested ecological setups while suffering from exhaustion and malnutrition. Ms. Aisha describes this as a confused administrative approach that prioritized the treasury's balance sheet over the biological survival of the Ugandan population.
When epidemics eventually threatened colonial economic interests and administrative stability, the British imperialists quickly reacted using, at first, coercive but later peaceful approaches to curb them. The study narrates that communities in Southern Busoga and the Lake Victoria islands were forcibly moved from their ancestral lands to create "fly-free zones", and sanitization campaigns were used. It added that colonial authorities frequently burnt the huts and farms of those who attempted to return to prohibited zones, bushes cleared, and danger zones disinfected.
The study also revealed that Syphilis outbreaks were blamed on "native immorality," leading to laws like the 1907 Crewe Circular that targeted and shamed women through compulsory medical checks. The 1909 Dangerous Ordinance and the 1913 Venereal Disease Ordinance, which made it compulsory to attain treatment for anyone suffering from VD and illegal for them to engage in sexual relations. Later, Topics of hygiene and morality were included in the school curriculum, films and exhibitions on venereal diseases, like the famous ‘Mr Wise and Mr Foolish’, were shown to the locals. Mulago Hospital was opened for treatment of other diseases rather than venereal diseases to remove the stigma and encourage more natives to visit the facility, and new health centers were built like the Nsambya Health Care Unit, and natives were continuously vaccinated against diseases like the plague and the smallpox by issuing ordinances like the Public Health Ordinance of 1935.
