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Idi Amin Seizes Power and Expels Uganda's Asians

1971–1972·Politics & governance·Sub-Saharan Africa (Uganda)·
1971–1972Date
Politics & governanceCategory
7Empires active
Date
1971–1972
Category
Politics & governance
Region
Sub-Saharan Africa (Uganda)
Era
Contemporary
Significance

Uganda's descent into one of Africa's most notorious dictatorships began on 25 January 1971, when army commander Idi Amin overthrew President Milton Obote in a coup while Obote was abroad.

In August 1972, Amin ordered roughly 80,000 people of South Asian descent—many of them Ugandan-born citizens who dominated commerce and the professions—to leave the country within ninety days, seizing their businesses, homes and property and handing them to his supporters. Amin justified the expulsion by claiming Asians had sabotaged the economy, but the result was economic collapse: skilled traders and administrators vanished overnight, factories and shops shuttered, and Uganda's gross domestic product and manufacturing output fell sharply through the decade. The expelled families rebuilt lives in Britain, Canada and India, while Amin's rule descended into terror that killed hundreds of thousands before his 1979 overthrow. The episode became a defining case study in the human and economic cost of ethnic scapegoating and remains a stark warning about how quickly targeted persecution can devastate a nation's prosperity.

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