People and Demography
The Basoga are peace-loving people who traditionally lived in small homesteads comprising of the father, mother, children and relatives. They also subscribed to large communities with similar traditional norms, culture and origin. These large families or communities are known as clans. And as long as they shared these, their sense freedom was complete. The Basoga right from the traditional era are peace-loving people who live in harmony with each other and to-date they continue to extend it to visitors.

Busoga experienced massive movement of people right from the early period that led to its construction as a nation. Several factors contributed to the trend of events. They included mainly factors ranging from famine and security for their lives and property. Today, these factors continue to affect and define the population mobility in the kingdom on addition to quest for employment and social amenities.

The changes in the demographical trends have continued to witness a population influx in urban and peri-urban areas of Busoga kingdom for the above reasons. Towns like Jinja, Iganga and their surrounding areas are some of the areas that continue to face high levels of immigration. Imigrants join town life in search for jobs, security for their lives and food.

Between the period 1920 and 70s, Jinja, Busoga’s capital city, experienced economic changes and gained in economic importance. During this period, it transformed into an industrial town with the stead high cotton production, completion of Uganda railway and Owen falls dam. These factors elevated Jinja into an agro-industrial centre pausing with over 46 factories, several cottage industries and well-developed infrastructure. These developments attracted people in form of labour from the rural areas of Busoga to work in those factories, help in house keeping or in doing other urban development related activities. Externally, many people came from the neighbouring areas of Busoga. Among the new comers were families Asian origin who came to do business. Estates like Mpumudde and Walukuba were developed to accommodate the increasing population. Other services like piped water, electricity, roads, hospitals and schools were also extended to serve the population.

But in villages the majority of people, with the assured market in towns, concentrated on agriculture. They grew both cash and food crops like cotton, coffee, bananas, potatoes and cassava, fruits and vegetables.

Their standards of living drastically improved and Busoga kingdom raised its revenue and constructed more infrastructures. It forgot about subsistence system of life and turned to real economic production even coveted by Europeans.

In the pre-colonial era, people left their traditional lands. State structures disappeared. A number of clans and states decimated and peole migrated into Busoga in large numbers in this century, carrying with them the traditions and cultures of other lands.

The most important causes of these movements were Marjory families and epidemics, which occurred within and the surrounding areas. Slave trade 19th Century decimated the state and disorganized the trade of development. While the development of commerce and industry especially in the colonial era.

In the 19th Century, one of the principle routes along which Europeans travelled from the coast to Buganda passed through the Southern pot of Busoga. From John Speke and James Grant, Sir Gerald Portal, F.D Lugard, J.R. Macdonald, and Bishop Tucket all noted the country was platifully supplied with food and was densely settled as a result.

However, between 1898 - 99 and 1900-1, the first indications of sleeping sickeness were reported.

In 1906, orders were issued to evacuate the region. Despite the attemps to clear the area, the epidemic continued in force until 1910. As a result, most of the densely populated port of Busoga, the home land of over 200,000 persons in the 19th Century, was totally cleared of the population in the ten years. Lubas palace at Bukaleba, also the coveted European fruit mission, collapsed and relocated to other parts of Busoga. South Busoga contitulated about one third of the land area of Busoga, and, in 1910, South Busoga was cacant. In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the evacuees who survived the epedemic began to return to their original land. However, in 1940 a new outbreak of sleeping sickness resurfaced in the area, and it was only in 1956 that resettlement, promoted by the government began again, but things were not going to be the same again. Few Basoga returned to their traditional lands.

The consequences of the catastrophe were that the Southern part of Busoga, the area roughly corresponding to what Johnston, delimited as the most deadely populed area, was (Governor) virtually uninhabited. Other areas originally affected by sleeping sickness, including the eastern margins of Bukooli and Busiki conties were evidently depopulated too.

Famines, too, resulted in substantial population movements, Several areas in north east Busoga and in the adjacent Bukandi district across the Mpologoma river were repeatedly struck by famines - 1898 - 1900, 1907, 1908 - 1917 - 1918 and 1944. Populationin these areoss reduced, many people, falling victims to the famines while the survivors moved to other areas for safety.

The effects of these movements were apparent growth in population density in the central area of Busoga and int eh urban and peri-urban areas of Busoga. Many Basoga left Busoga in the same period, settling in other districts. The demographic profile of Busoga today is, as a consequence of all these developments.

Today Busoga is a home of many people 6 of different origins of similar above causes but with different faces. According to 2002 population census, Busoga has a population of 2.7 million people.