Kampala9 percent of Uganda’s 1.96 million refugees live in the capital, the Office of the Prime Minister counts.
Congolese and South Sudanese entrepreneurs in Makindye pay city taxes and employ Ugandan nationals — a contribution refugee accounting does not measure.
Uganda’s aid framework has no category for urban refugee tax revenue.
Sources: Global Voices
THE OPEN-DOOR POLICY
Uganda's 2006 Refugees Act gives refugees the right to work, move freely, and own businesses — rights most refugee-hosting states deny. The country hosts the largest refugee population in Africa, drawn primarily from the DRC, South Sudan, and Burundi.
THE SETTLEMENT MODEL
Most refugees in Uganda are placed in rural settlements — Bidi Bidi, Nakivale, Kyangwali — where they receive a plot of land to farm. The model assumes refugees are agricultural and temporary. Urban refugees fit neither assumption, which is why the accounting fails to see them.
WHO IS WHERE
The origins of Uganda's refugees track the conflicts on its borders — South Sudan's civil war drives the largest flow, followed by eastern Congo's perpetual instability and Burundi's political crises.
THE FUNDING ARITHMETIC
UNHCR's Uganda operation is chronically underfunded — typically below half of appeal targets. Per-refugee monthly food rations have been cut repeatedly since 2020. The shortfall is part of why urban self-settlement looks attractive to refugees with capital or skills: the city is where you go when the camp ration stops covering survival.
THE INVISIBLE TAX BASE
Kampala City Council Authority collects market dues, trading licenses, and property rates from Makindye and other refugee-dense neighborhoods. None of this revenue is attributed to refugees in either Ugandan fiscal data or international aid frameworks. The contribution exists; the category does not.
THE PRECEDENT
The 1972 expulsion of roughly 80,000 Ugandan Asians by Idi Amin destroyed the country's commercial middle class overnight. The economic collapse that followed shaped the post-Museveni doctrine that refugees with capital and trade networks should be welcomed, not warehoused — a lesson written into how Kampala receives Congolese traders today.