This is
not one of those articles that begins by attacking your pastor for shouting “omunnyo”! Rather, it points to how
international trade, by pre-modern standards, developed in the pre-colonial
societies of Africa. I’m a firm believer in what our past has to teach us, and
from time to time I will abandon my original ramblings on this blog for an
excerpt that can provide a better understanding to certain economic phenomena.
In his A Political History of Uganda, Samwiri
R. Karugire provides an account of the country’s history, from the earliest
times up until the beginning of the Amin regime. The first chapter on the
Pre-Colonial societies of the ethnic groups that would later comprise Uganda
provides a detailed account of their socio-economic interaction. From this, one
can deduce how the trade in salt led to the evolution of an open economy, long
before the advent of Arab traders and European colonialists. The excerpt below
is from that chapter, and it centres on the trade in salt and how it aided the
overall trade in what was to become Uganda.
In the communities of pre-colonial Uganda the demand for consumption goods outside one’s own community, was extremely limited largely because these communities were almost self-sufficient. Each of these communities produced most of the goods they needed for their own consumption and there was hardly any need for producing a surplus beyond the necessity of producing the kind of food that could be stored against bad times or to cover the intervals between one harvest and the next one. The range of consumption goods was itself limited since these consisted in nothing much more than food and domestic implements.Despite these strictures, however there were a few essential commodities which were beyond the means of certain communities to procure within their borders owing, largely, to natural or ecological factors. The most important of such commodities was salt. This explains why salt was the primary commodity around which trade was built in pre-colonial Uganda. To a very limited extent several communities of Uganda were able to supply their needs and those of their animals for salt from diverse improvised sources. For example, a type of grass found in swamps when burnt to ashes and strained is salty enough for purposes of food seasoning. In some areas, too, there existed marshes or springs whose water was imbued with different degrees of salinity so that it could be used for human and animal consumption. But these sources of salt were far too inadequate even for those areas in which they existed and they were wholly useless in those areas in which they did not exist. It was therefore to the salt mines – or area where natural salt existed – that every community was finally attracted in order to supply its needs. In the supply of this commodity nature had not been overgenerous with Uganda for the principal centres of salt extraction were Kibiro (on the eastern shore of Lake Albert), Katwo and Kasenyi (extinct since the beginning of this century). And until the first half of the 19th century all these centres were in the kingdom of Bunyoro – from about 1830 Katwe and Kasenyi became part of Toro kingdom which ceded from Bunyoro at about that date. The location of this most sought-after commodity had important consequences upon the interaction of the peoples in this region. In particular this is why Bunyoro became the principal link between the predominantly Nilotic speaking people of the North and the predominantly Bantu speaking people of the south. The fact that Bunyoro provided this link was not a result of deliberate policy; it was quite simply a result of the fact that the single commodity upon which all societies of Uganda placed an equal premium was to be found in Bunyoro and everything else followed from this unalterable fact. There were other vicarious factors which facilitated the flow of trade in salt especially between Bunyoro and her northern neighbours and some of these were mainly historical in the sense that the connection between Bunyoro and her northern neighbours predated the exploitation of the salt mines.Many of the Palwo who set up states in northern Uganda and as far afield as Busoga continues to attach some importance to their origin in Bunyoro. Thus such states as Payera, Patiko and Alero and the Alur chiefdoms Musongwa, Muswa and Jukoth just to mention a few examples, traced their origins to Bunyoro and kept this connection alive by occasional formal contacts. For such communities, therefore, trade with Bunyoro presented very few problems because, for some, it could be said that they were going back “home” – Pawir (or Chope) from where their ancestors had migrated in not too distant a past.Besides the consideration of historical connections, trade between Bunyoro and other Uganda communities flourished because it was beneficial to all the parties engaged in it so that where historical or genetic connections existed, these served as agencies of promoting such trade but not as the cause of it. In the general northward direction trade involved several communities – principally the Alur, Lendu, Kebu, Madi and the Lugbara and the principal intermediaries between these communities and Bunyoro were the Parombo whose main area of settlement was modern day Padyere county of West Nile district. The Parombo’s close involvement in trade led them to establish another nucleus settlement in Okoro county to ensure that their role as middlemen in this trade was maintained intact.[1]For the purposes of this trade there were two collecting centres on either side of Lake Albert – Panyimur and Magungo on the eastern and western shores of Lake Albert respectively. This trade was based on specialised production which in turn was dictated by ecological factors rather than by deliberate choice. Thus the Alur and the Lugbara were farmers (both agricultural and livestock) while the Kebu were ironsmiths (largely because they had iron ore deposits) and also a clan of the Kakwa (the Nyangilia) had acquired specialised skills in making iron implements and they imported some of the iron ore from modern Zaire.[2] Thus from the Kebu, Lugbara, Madi and Alur, the Parombo would obtain livestock, iron products and foodstuffs which they carried to Panyimur and thence across the narrow neck of the lake to Magungo. From here these were transported overland to Bunyoro and exchanged for salt and dried fish. The homeward journey took them to Magungo and across the lake to Panyimur and thence to the various societies of northern Uganda with whom they exchanged these commodities for local ones and then they would get ready for the southward journey. By means of these shuttle journeys those goods were spread to the various communities – the Acholi, Langi and the Iteso and as far south as Buganda.In the southwest in the present Toro district important trade connections developed around the salt mines of Katwe and Kasenyi and this trade fanned out in several directions. The salt obtained from these mines was transported southwards to Nkore, Kigezi, Rwanda and Karagwe (in Tanzania). The existence of the trade in salt – both that leading to the north and to the south – seems to have been of long standing and it seems reasonable to suggest that it was increasing in volume (and the absence of statistical data forbids one to make a more categorical statement than this) when it was interrupted by the coming of Arabs and Europeans in the 19th century.
References
Karugire, Samwiri Rubaraza
(1980) A Political History of Uganda.
Chapter 1: The Pre-Colonial Setting, pp. 26-28
[2] Given
the book was originally published in 1980, the Democratic Republic of Congo was
at the time still referred to as Zaire. We also find references to “present day
Toro district”, because at the time the Toro sub-region was considered a single
district.
