Written By | Evan Sande Ndahura
Evan Sande Ndahura is a Ugandan columnist, researcher, and poet. His work focuses on governance, labour rights, social justice, and Pan-African identity
Search
In the 21st century, long after the formal end of chattel slavery, millions of Africans continue to journey abroad in search of work that promises dignity but often delivers exploitation, abuse, and even death. Across borders and oceans, labour export has become a multibillion-shilling enterprise—legally sanctioned, politically supported, and economically hyped—yet riddled with deception, brutality, and human cost.
Nowhere is this darker side clearer than in Uganda’s experience with labour export to the Middle East.
From Hope to Harsh Reality: The Silent Investigation
In 2021, I joined the ranks of hopeful young Ugandans seeking employment abroad—what many in Kampala call kyeyo. I registered with a labour export company in Mengo, paid non-refundable registration and medical fees, and applied for jobs that matched my qualifications. I was told there were opportunities with a wage equivalent to about Shs 3.2 million per month as a supermarket attendant.
After paying Shs 1 million in registration, medical, COVID-19 certificate, and transport costs during the process—and remaining with Shs 3.7 million in placement fees—I waited. A month later, I was summoned to an orientation at Fairway Hotel—the first inkling that something was terribly wrong.
What unfolded was not preparation for dignified employment, but the unravelling of a recruitment charade. The company I had applied through had no actual foreign job placements. Instead, it had brokered a deal with another agency—owned, shockingly, by a sitting Youth Member of Parliament—to take applicants and assign them to jobs regardless of qualifications or expectations.
When my name was called, I was allocated a job selling ice cream on the streets of Saudi Arabia. A university graduate reduced to vending sweets—hardly the opportunity marketed to me. Worse still, the monthly wage attached to this job—1,000 Saudi Riyals—translated to far less than Ugandan minimum expectations after deductions.
This was not employment mobility. It was a form of labour commodification, indistinguishable in its exploitation from what our ancestors endured centuries ago.
Uganda’s Labour Export: Numbers and Trends
Uganda’s labour export industry has grown exponentially over the past decade, driven by unemployment, economic pressures, and hopes for remittances. Official data shows:
These figures reflect official placements only. Undocumented migration, trafficking routes, and informal brokers further increase exposure to abuse. 
Some of the Ugandan women going for Kyeeyo in the Middle East. (Courtesy Photo)
Human Cost: Exploitation, Death, and Insecurity
Behind the statistics lie broken families and silent tragedies:
Weak Governance and Ethical Failures
Why does this continue?
1. Regulatory Weakness
Labour export companies operate with minimal monitoring. Recruitment fees are collected before jobs are confirmed. Contracts are altered after arrival. Complaint systems are ineffective.
2. Political Capture
When politically connected individuals own or influence recruitment agencies, enforcement becomes compromised. Victims have nowhere to report safely.
3. Weak Overseas Protection
Embassies are understaffed, underfunded, and often powerless against host-country labour systems that prioritise employer control.
4. Failed Economic Planning
Instead of building productive economies at home, governments lean on labour export to reduce unemployment statistics and attract remittances.
Pan-Africanism Under Strain
Pan-Africanism speaks of dignity and unity, yet Africans continue to be traded across borders as expendable labour. When coffins return home monthly and exploitation is normalised, the gap between rhetoric and reality becomes impossible to ignore. True African unity must include the protection of African workers—at home and abroad.
Conclusion
The story of modern labour export is not one of opportunity alone; it is one of systemic governance failure, weak leadership accountability, and policy choices that prioritise foreign remittances over human dignity. When recruitment agencies operate with little oversight, when politically connected individuals profit from labour brokerage, and when embassies lack the power and resources to protect citizens abroad, exploitation becomes not an accident but an outcome of neglect.
This is, at its core, a leadership crisis. Governments that cannot create sustainable employment at home yet promote labour export as an economic strategy are exporting not only workers but also the consequences of poor development planning. Instead of investing heavily in industrialisation, agricultural value chains, technical education, and local enterprise, many states rely on foreign labour markets to absorb their unemployed youth. This approach treats migration as a policy rather than a last option and, in doing so, exposes citizens to dangerous and unregulated labour systems abroad.
But responsibility does not rest with governments alone.
Citizens, too, must exercise vigilance, collective organisation, and public accountability. Communities must question recruitment practices, demand transparency from agencies, and support whistleblowers who expose abuse. Families and youth must resist the culture of desperation that pushes people into unsafe migration without verified contracts or protections. Civil society, media, and religious institutions must continue to document abuses and amplify the voices of victims—not only during scandals, but consistently and persistently.
Most importantly, young people must critically reflect on the economics of labour export itself. In many cases, recruiters demand between Shs 1 million and Shs 10 million in registration, medical, training, and placement fees. This is not small money. For many families, it represents land, livestock, loans, and lifetime savings. Yet that same amount, if invested locally, can start small businesses in agriculture, trade, transport, crafts, services, or digital enterprise—ventures that may grow gradually but build long-term stability at home without exposing one’s life to foreign exploitation and legal vulnerability.
The tragedy is that many young Africans are not leaving because they want to, but because they feel trapped—misled into believing that dignity exists only abroad. This mindset is itself a product of weak governance, poor economic planning, and decades of policy failure that have normalised migration as survival rather than choice.
For governments, reform must move beyond speeches and task forces. What is required is:
Until African states treat migrant workers as citizens whose rights travel with them, labour export will remain a conveyor belt of vulnerability. And until African societies demand ethical governance with the same urgency with which they seek employment, exploitation will continue to wear the mask of opportunity.
Modern slavery does not survive only because of foreign demand for cheap labour. It survives because of domestic silence, institutional weakness, and political indifference. Ending it, therefore, requires not only international reform but courageous leadership at home and informed, vigilant citizenship across the continent.
Only then can labour mobility become a pathway to dignity—not a return, in modern form, to the very injustices Africa once fought to escape.
About the Author
Evan Sande Ndahura is a Ugandan columnist, researcher, and poet. His work focuses on governance, labour rights, social justice, and Pan-African identity. Through articles, essays, and poetry, he interrogates structural inequality and advocates for dignity, accountability, and meaningful reform across African societies.
TORCH MEDIA AFRICA
