This week, my article targeted Sub-Saharan Africa, specifically Uganda. Recently, strikes have been causing conflict between the students at the Uganda University and the police in Uganda. Police have been throwing tear gas at student strikers, sending many of them to hospitals. There have also been reports of actual bullets being fired in Uganda to try and stop the strikes. Several students have been reported injured after being involved in riots with the police.The strikes are due to the unfair tuition policy. The deal is that to have an education at the university, you have to pay a certain amount of money but this money has to be paid in a certain amount of time. Many protesters argue that they do not have enough time to get all the money together to pay for their tuition. If they do not pay their tuition, they do not get an education and they have to pay a hefty fine too. Due to these strikes, many roads have been blocked and closed. This causes businesses and small stores to worry. The owners are afraid that they will lose their merchandise to the rowdy students and that potential customers would be overwhelmed and scared by teargas. I find this situation absolutely ridiculous. Yes, students should pay some for their education, but you should not charge them a fee if they don’t pay it in time. Some students might not be able to scrape up the money all at once, they might have to pay it off little by little like we do here in America with loans. I support these strikes because it is wrong. It wouldn’t bother me as much if it only affected a few people, but since this is obviously unfair and affecting a whole population, then it needs to be changed. I think that the government needs to step in and put an end to these fines because they are losing potential students in the future. No one will want to come to this University if there are fees for not paying on time and not getting and education. Plus the government should try to stop this because businesses and small stores can possibly go out of business, and if these rights continue and no one comes to their shops. This could have drastic effects and eventually lead to problems economically in Uganda.
