Driving change for Kampala’s urban refugee population

According to UNHCR (the United Nations refugees agency), my home country Uganda hosts over 1,741,000 refugees and asylum seekers. More than 150,600 (9%) of them are in the capital, Kampala. 

These, however, are conservative figures: the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) further estimates that the Kampala Metropolitan area hosts over 340,000 undocumented refugees.

The situation facing these refugees is challenging. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic led to an unprecedented reduction in funding for humanitarian response, affecting refugees’ livelihoods, safety nets and the quality of services in refugee settlements. This compelled many refugees to move from the designated refugee settlements into Uganda’s cities and urban areas, including Kampala.

While a majority settled in the outskirts of Kampala in search of better services, opportunities and jobs, others have been trafficked to work in the construction and sex industries, or they do domestic work in the homes of more affluent refugees and citizens.

The informal settlement of Kisenyi in Kampala district has the highest concentration of refugees in Uganda: the majority being Somali, Congolese, Rwandese and Eritrean. Over recent months my organisation, the African Youth Action Network (AYAN), has worked with IIED to ensure these refugees have a chance to speak out about their situations.

Socio-economic inequalities

Having visited Kisenyi many times, I have observed that urban refugees there are a distinctive population. Their lifestyles and economies are not profoundly documented, and they congregate in tightly knit networks based on proximity and shared identities, to improve their wellbeing, economic opportunities, access to markets and collective problem solving.

Refugees in Kisenyi have a fluid and flexible leadership structure based on nationality, religion and cultural identity. This has continually limited their capacity to advocate and solve intercommunal challenges and socioeconomic inequalities, including unaffordable housing and limited access to basic services and amenities such as clean water, sanitation, energy, security, healthcare and education. 

Meanwhile, various factors have propelled landlords in Kisenyi to sublease their land to middlemen. These include: the informal settlement’s proximity to the central business district and resultant high land value; the high mobility of its residents (with no permanent residence); insecure tenure and income sources; and uncertain land rights due to rapid infrastructural development. 

The middlemen who take these leases then convert the land into a labyrinth of hostels and dormitories made of mud and wattle houses, wood, iron sheets or unbaked brick-block rooms. Many of the structures have visible mould and water marks due to past flooding.

Precarious conditions for refugees

Like most informal settlements, the structures in Kisenyi are unplanned, featuring a maze of slippery footpaths, trenches and drainage channels piled with heaps of rubbish. The majority of refugees live in dormitories and hostels, in square rooms with 4-8 triple-decker beds crammed together.

Landlords offer ‘pay-per-bed’ accommodation to both refugees and nationals, who can rent a bed space one night at a time; this means landlords earn more by squeezing around 20 people into an overcrowded, run-down room. The key distinction, however, is that refugees live in these hostels as families and stay longer due to their high mobility and constant threat of eviction by the landlords, developers and city authorities.

While refugees have no other choice but to live in these precarious conditions every day, locals lodging in ‘pay-per-bed’ accommodation tend to be traders who need a bed for just one night and can simply move on at the break of day. For most residents, these hostels are a 'no-go' area, due to the 'stranger danger' and limited privacy.

Each bed costs between 2,000 and 5,000 Uganda shillings (US$0.5-1.3). According to Adam Kyazze, chairperson of Kisenyi II’s local council, most refugees prefer to “move from bed to bed” as an adaptive resilience mechanism to absorb economic hardships, counter social marginalisation and reduce the impact of the harsh realities of Kampala’s high cost of living.

While this seems like a good strategy, it comes with a myriad of challenges. Refugees constantly live under the threat of overcrowding, disease outbreaks, pollution, physical and sexual abuse, conflict, rape and all manner of violence. Most are also vulnerable to disillusionment, low economic margins, sporadic intercommunal violence, marginalisation and xenophobic treatment. 

In order to cope, most refugees rarely leave their hostels in a bid to protect their families. They only come out when absolutely necessary – such as to work, purchase food, access public toilets and water points, buy medication or visit their place of worship.

While data on Ugandans’ perceptions of refugees is largely positive, the reality is that the adversity facing refugees in informal settlements like Kisenyi continues to be a major challenge to communities and authorities in urban cities.

Refugee forums: bridging the gap

The considerable challenges, mentioned above, were recently discussed and addressed during a series of community forums in Kisenyi, run through the ‘City forums for refugee inclusion in Kampala project’ – a partnership between AYAN, IIED and Slum Dwellers International. The forums reflect our inclusive and adaptive approach to engaging Kampala’s urban refugees and collectively reframing the narrative about their lives.

We have conducted six settlement forums in six parishes in Makindye and Central Divisions. Sixty-five people participated: 50% were refugees, while others included community leaders, youth, women, government leaders, KCCA divisional officials and staff from AYAN and ACTogether Uganda.

Local leaders told us they appreciated the use of community forums as a best practice for creating inclusive safe, resilient cities through collective action, and for addressing inextricably interlinked problems. With refugees, community leaders and stakeholders in Kisenyi taking part together, the forums acted as a cornerstone for peer learning, participatory research, governance and communication flows.

The forums also bridged the gap between actors, stakeholders and policymakers, by fostering solutions to issues around cohesion, coexistence, urban housing, decent living standards and delivery of services such as education, health and sanitation. This has created a pathway to responsive planning and collective problem-solving of the specific realities faced by groups such as refugees.