Recently, on the social media, X, I came across a video clip of Makerere students singing a question “from the hill”: “Lwaki omuyizi asula enjala?”
Loosely translated: Why is the student sleeping hungry? I felt that one. The average university student has no job. They survive on whatever upkeep their parents or guardians can afford to give them.
That money has to cover transport, airtime, data, printing coursework and, among many other things, food. So, the student has to choose. Most times, lunch is the first thing they cut out.
And it is easy to dismiss all this with the familiar advice that students should learn to budget. Yes, university life demands some financial discipline. But what happens when one has budgeted, cut every unnecessary expense and stretched every shilling, and yet the money still runs out?
Start with the students who receive some support. Government-sponsored students at Makerere University who live off campus are allocated about Shs 768,000 a semester to cover both rent and food.
Spread over a semester of about 17 weeks, that comes to about Shs 6,400 a day, and it must cater for accommodation before it buys a single plate of food. And that assumes the money arrives on time.
In late 2024, thousands of Makerere’s government-sponsored students reportedly went months without receiving their allowance. If a student on government allowance struggles to eat, budgeting advice cannot be the answer.
And now spare a thought for the privately sponsored student whose parents send far less or send it late. See, Makerere once fed its students in the halls until government-supported meals were phased out and students were left to survive on allowances and upkeep.
So now, are we going to just accept the consequences of that decision and do nothing about it? Some will argue that students find money for data, outings and the occasional bet, so the problem is probably priorities, not poverty.
Admittedly, some students do waste money. But if a policy is to be built around the careless few, then it ends up punishing the many who are doing everything right and still come up short. This is even beyond the stomach.
A hungry student cannot concentrate in a 2 pm lecture. And when that student is government-sponsored, the public is already paying for an education that hunger is quietly undermining.
To be fair, universities cannot solve every financial problem their students face, and it would be unrealistic to demand free meals for everyone. But between doing nothing and feeding the whole university for free, there is plenty of room for some practical intervention. Here is one idea.
Universities could work with the food vendors already operating on and around campus to offer a basic but proper meal at an agreed price, with government subsidising part of the cost.
Imagine a student walking into a university canteen, showing a valid university ID and getting a decent meal for Shs 2,500. Of course, the figure is just illustrative; the real price would depend on what a decent meal costs to prepare. And why should it be open to every student, not just the needy ones?
Because a student who is comfortable in week two can be the hungry one in week 10, when upkeep runs out. Any sort of list of “needy students” drawn up at the start of the semester wouldn’t catch that.
Importantly, vendors would need contracts that protect both food-portion sizes and their margins, and IDs would need checking. But hey, these are administrative problems, not reasons to do nothing. Would it cost a lot? Not as much as you’d think.
Say the government pays Shs 1,500 towards each meal for 10,000 students, for 100 days of the year. That comes to about Shs 1.5 billion. That’s real money, but little compared to what the government already spends on these students.
Again, none of this means the government paying every student’s food bill or relieving students of personal responsibility. It means recognising that personal responsibility certainly has limits when the money available simply cannot meet basic needs.
University is supposed to be where young people sharpen their minds and prepare for the future. That is a hard promise to keep when simply finding lunch takes up so much of a student’s attention. The students on the hill, and many like them, have asked their question. It deserves a better answer than “learn to budget.”
The writer is a software engineer.
pbmulinzi@gmail.com