The 2007 UNDP Human Development Report contains very bad news for those who have been pedalling a rosy portrait of a country that has been having a near double-digit rate of economic development over the last 20 years. In addition to dropping ten points on the global Human Development Index over the last year alone (2006/2007), Uganda according to the report, has reduced its dependence on agriculture – not because farmers have found better livelihood options, but due to desertion of the increasingly risky, loss-making, poverty-entrenching farming enterprises. But why this contradicting state of affairs?
In the immediate aftermath of the bruising fiver-year NRA bush war, the former guerrillas were hasty to practicalise a “fundamental change” which president Museveni promised during his swearing in speech. Their phobia for anything and everything that related with former president Obote drove them into a universal loathing frenzy. They set about dismantling systems, procedures and mechanisms that Obote had ushered in – often without objective evaluation.
The impetus underlying the “fundamental change” seemed to have been to erase “oboteist” principles and policies from the post-Obote Uganda irrespective of whether those principles and policies were rational or not. For the young guerrillas who had won a gruelling bush war against all odds, they felt nothing could possibly fail their post-war revolutionary agenda. How wrong time has proved them wrong!
From the agricultural standpoint, the liberalisation of agricultural markets without adequate marketing infrastructure exposed farmers to “business sharks”. Under the liberalisation framework, government abolished commodity-marketing institutions such as the Coffee Marketing Board, Lint Marketing Board, etc – under the guise of eliminating monopoly and ensuring better returns to farmers. Sadly, government chose to overlook the imperfect market conditions pertaining at the time, which would never allow perfect competition to flourish.
Consequently, the vacuum left by abolished commodity marketing institutions enabled very few individuals close, to or within government to control agricultural trade with even more impunity. It was a case of replacing pro-Obote monopolies with pro-Museveni business entities; of driving farmers from the frying pan to naked fire fames!
Neither government, nor any other authority, has adduced evidence to show that farmers’ returns have improved following abolition of commodity marketing institutions. To the contrary, disorder, chaos and frustration have marred commodity marketing over the last decades. Farmers continually face the historical fleecing game in which they are relentlessly strangled by shrewd business intermediaries. For the poor farmers, it has indeed remained “business as usual” despite the fragrance of the “fundamental change.”
The abolition of agricultural cooperatives as another aspect of Museveni’s post war “fundamental change” agenda could as well be the single most important catalyst for the collapse of farming in Uganda. Where as government was correct when it accused cooperatives of being corrupt, it grossly blundered by prescribing that they be abolished. Typically, this blunder conformed to a classical case of a wrong medical prescription for a correct diagnosis! Were the cooperatives incurably defective that the only choice was to abolish them? Understandably, Obote had cultivated a close relation with cooperatives owing to their grassroot mobilisational power and influence. Was this symbiotic link between Obote and cooperatives the real reason Museveni terminated them?
Allegations of corruption not withstanding, agricultural cooperatives of the time constituted a collective voice for poor rural farmers; an avenue through which village farms linked with urban markets; a mechanism through which poor farmers negotiated and accessed agricultural tools and inputs.
Cooperatives were safety nets; the life-support for rural farmers – without which many were bound to fail. The fact that this failure was reported (by UNDP) in 2007; nearly 20 years after the dismantling of the cooperative infrastructure only means that Ugandan farmers are resilient. Unfortunately, resilience is not limitless and time bombs explode unless defused. Without doubt, the “fundamental change” of the NRM regime has graduated into fundamental disaster – at least with respect to agriculture.
Does government have a chance to salvage the ruins? I would respond in the affirmative – provided it’s ready to “repent” and redress its historical flaws. Being an optimist, I want to think that the recent talk regarding revival of cooperatives is the beginning of the repentance process and that it will yield substance.
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