| Zusammenfassung |
This project tries to explain why rates of both population growth and sexually-transmitted disease (STD) infection have varied so greatly from one ethnic group to another in Africa in the past. The research is concerned with two of the most important issues in modern Africa's history: the origins of rapid population growth, and the emergence of the HIV pandemic. I have attempted to address these issues by examining four neighbouring societies, Buhaya in northwest Tanzania, and Bunyoro, Buganda and Ankole in southern Uganda. Buganda, Bunyoro and Buhaya were chosen because they experienced low or delayed population growth by natural increase and high rates of STDs before 1980, while Ankole was selected as an example of a society which experienced an early transition to rapid population growth and low STD prevalence. These societies were also selected because the borderland between Buganda and Buhaya was where Africa's first rural HIV epidemic erupted, and because in this region, unlike the rest of Africa, the societies whose populations grew most slowly before 1980 were those that had experienced the most economic and social development.\nThe project has combined traditional archival research with over 300 oral interviews and group discussions, and the analysis of a range of quantitative sources, such as censuses and government death registers. Given the poor quality of censuses and vital registration in this region, I have employed relatively novel research techniques to identify changing demographic trends. I have, for example, tracked changes in birth spacing trends through the technique of family reconstitution from information contained in church parish registers of baptism and marriage. I have been able to create family trees by linking siblings who were baptised by the same parents in different years, and thus measure the period between the births of successive children. I have also used hospital maternity registers to identify changes in fertility, child survival and birthweight over time.\nThe project has produced a number of new findings. The analysis of parish baptism records indicates that birth spacing within marriage began to fall in this region from the 1930s, which is the earliest statistical indication of an acceleration in reproduction anywhere in tropical Africa. But this increase in marital fertility was offset in the most developed societies before the 1950s by several factors. Rising divorce rates and a high female age at first marriage, due initially to high bridewealth charges and then to female education and employment, meant that women spent an unusually low portion of their reproductive lives in long-term sexual relationships. The frequency of marital breakdown and extra-marital affairs, as well as the early dispersal of commercial sex workers into rural communities, meant that STDs were common, and contributed to a high incidence of sterility. The sexual pattern which facilitated the rapid spread of HIV from the late 1970s was firmly established by the 1950s. Meanwhile, the extreme social inequality of the wealthiest societies resulted in severe problems of malnutrition, and therefore a high frequency of obstructed labour and low birth weight babies, among other problems.\nIn the most favoured areas, however, the scale of nutritional problems declined as cash cropping and medical care expanded. Data contained in hospital maternity registers show that average birthweights rose dramatically between 1920 and 1969, before declining again during the political and economic downturn of the Amin and Obote II regimes. Neo-natal and child mortality fell extremely rapidly in the Kampala area from the early 1920s. Population growth in the wealthiest districts grew sharply from the 1950s, when this mortality decline was matched, according to maternity registers, by an increase in fertility, associated with an increase in pre-marital conceptions and the role of antibiotics in reducing STD-associated infertility. |
