Indian Diaspora in East Africa - Expulsion From Uganda

Expulsion From Uganda

In 1972, Idi Amin, gave the nearly 75,000 Ugandans of Asian descent 90 days to pack their bags and leave the country. These descendants of the dukanwallas and Indian coolies then comprised about 2 percent of the population. Their businesses were "Africanized" and given to Amin's cohorts, who plundered and ruined them. The country lost a valuable class of professionals, sliding into a chaos that would eventually claim up to 750,000 Ugandan lives.

Some 27,000 Ugandan Indians moved to Britain, another 6,100 to Canada, 1,100 to the United States, while the rest scattered to other Asian and European countries.

Today, however, many of these same ethnic Indians have returned. In 1992, under pressure from aid donors and Western governments, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni simplified a then 10-year-old law letting Asians reacquire lost property.

While many black Ugandans have learned the art of business during the Indians' absence, Indians today still run many shops, hotels, and factories in Kampala, the capital, as they do in Kenya and Tanzania. Sikh and Hindu temples figure prominently in the urban East African urban landscape, as do Mosques, particularly those built by the large Ismaili Muslim community, which immigrated from Gujarat. Some extended families — the backbone of the Indian ethnic group — are prospering under Uganda's new openness. Two families, the Mehtas and Madhvanis, have built multimillion dollar empires in Uganda since the 1980s.

Still, the Indian communities remain concerned about their position in East Africa. Continued fighting in western Uganda between hundreds of rebels and troops in June, 2000, and politically motivated ethnic violence in Mombasa that claimed more than 40 lives in August, gave credence to these concerns.