This is not the story as some would have it

The UK Press is full of stories that highlights the success of the East African Asians and the vast amount of wealth that they are said to generate and the control and influence that they are said to have on the UK economy. These reports also produce the 'evidence' to support the proposition that East African Asians are all doing very well and that they are not only gaining an increasing share of wealth but that they even 'control' various sectors of the UK economy.

Does this sound familiar? The same judgments were made of the Asians before they left East Africa during the mass migrations of 1968 and 1972. However, the recent reports in the UK do not deal accurately with numbers, and sometimes the reports also tend to inflate the extent of the economic power of East African Asians in the United Kingdom in order to celebrate their success.

This is not the story as some of us know it. I want to tell a different story in this blog, not only to explore the issue of the economic success of the East African Asians in the United Kingdom, but I also want to look into many other aspects of their lives. I am also interested in investigating whether lessons have been learnt. How have the Asians who still live and work in East Africa assessed their position since the major exodus of Asians from Uganda?

There is the impression that the former East African colonial countries 'ejected, rejected or expelled' a mass of 130,000 Asians and that they all arrived in England at the same time with large amounts of family wealth. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality the number of arrivals probably equated to about 30,000 families or households and this factor alone casts a different light on the patterns of income generation and expenditure of Asian households. Why have I used the words "rejected, ejected or expelled"? I hope to return to this issue on another day.