President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has taken credit for stimulating what he termed as “organic population control” of Ugandans that did not involve the use of dangerous medical methods.

“I am happy that we did not take the path of the people who even proposed the castration of men to control the population,” Museveni said.

“Some of you were following the advice of the foreigners about birth control and injections, but we said let’s have a reliable medical service to prevent child deaths. Second, we fixed the social economic base of the society, and the rest just came easily.”

The Uganda Bureau of Statistics through its Chief Executive Dr Chris Mukiza announced that Uganda’s population had grown to 45.9 million people.

“We now have a population of 45, 935, 046 people, from 34.6 million counted in 2014 representing an increase of 11.3 million in the last 10 years and it includes 780,061 refugees,” Mukiza announced.

The population growth rate, the results show, dropped from 3.1% to 2.9%.

This organic reduction, Museveni said, resulted from the government’s initiatives such as the mass immunisation of children, which brought down the Infant Mortality Rate from 122/1000 to the current 30/1000.

Museveni also noted that Uganda’s life expectancy increased from 43 in 1986 to 63.

The president was also pleased that his recent estimation that Ugandans had entered the Middle Income Status, – which was initially based on an estimated 48 million Ugandans – has now been confirmed since the population is slightly smaller.