A lifeline crop for the Banyakigezi, (irish) potato was both a staple food and a main household income source throughout the Kigezi Highlands. Unfortunately, the crop has been decimated by pests and diseases, particularly bacterial wilt and late blight.
Where as research shows that potato can yield over 30mt/hectare, yields in the Kigezi highlands range between 4-7 mt/ha. Latest estimates show production declining even further per unit of cultivated land to the extent that most farmers have abandoned their lifeline crop.
Having realised the potato’s economic significance to communities in the Kigezi highlands, agricultural researchers and development institutions have over the years attempted to increase production of the crop by introducing higher-yielding, pest-resistant varieties into the farming system. The varieties have included: Uganda 11 (Rutuku) of 1973; Sangema of 1980; Cruza of 1983; Victoria of 1992; Kisoro of 1992; Kabale of 1992; NAKPOT 1 of 1999; NAKPOT 2 of 1999; and NAKPOT 3 of 1999). However the success of nearly all these varietal introductions was severely short-circuited by mediocre extension support and consequent low farmer adoptions.
Efforts by development organizations, including the South Western Reconstruction Project (SWARP), the African Highlands Initiative (AHI), PRAPACE, AFRICARE which provided farmers with production skills were disjointed and paid little attention to clean potato seed supply systems. Farmers continued deriving their seed from the previous harvest because organised potato seed production businesses were un-available and/or never received any support from the development organisations.
The inception of NAADS in Kabale in 2001, and its subsequent expansion to the rest of the Kigezi Highland districts of Kisoro, Kanungu, and Rukungiri gave potato farmers hope; hope which was rooted within the NAADS’ professed philosophy of integrated farmer access to knowledge, information and technology for profitable agricultural production. Between 2001 and 2005, NAADS focussed on strengthening capacity of farmer groups to produce improved potato seed at farmer-managed technology development and multiplication sites. In Kabale district, this had the immediate impact of increasing the number of potato seed producers from 1 group (Uganda National Seed Potato Producers Association –UNSPPA) before 2001, to more than 100 (albeit small-scale) by 2005.
However, the emerging (trainee) potato seed production groups required sustained technical mentoring through farmer advisory services---which were being delivered through the NAADS framework. The groups needed to learn potato seed quality control processes; integrated disease and pest management; entrepreneurship and marketing skills development; group dynamics; etc before they could become qualified clean potato seed producers.
Unfortunately, the restructuring of the NAADS which came after the 2007 presidential suspension altered the programme’s learning orientation. Accused of over-teaching farmers, NAADS was essentially converted into an input supply-oriented organisation with a minimal farmer advisory and training component. NAADS now had to source and supply thousands of metric tonnes of agricultural inputs, including potato seed. In an instant, the trainee potato seed producer groups were tipped to become commercial seed suppliers. After all, they were the only option available in an environment characterised by long-term neglect of the potato seed production sector.
Over the last three years, these half-baked seed potato producers have under the auspices of NAADS, supplied thousands of metric tonnes of contaminated/diseased potato seed to farmers that have received little or inadequate training about potato agronomy. In essence, the restructured NAADS has facilitated the trainee potato seed producers to become agents of contamination; to inoculate the entire farming system with pest and disease agents. The impact is devastating: late blight and bacterial wilt have scoured the entire Kigezi farmlands; diminishing production to its lowest levels in 30 years!
Courtesy of NAADS, the lifeblood of the Banyakigezi is gone or nearly so! Anybody who has travelled to Kigezi over the last few months and talked with farmers must have noted the cynicism farmers ascribe to NAADS: “NAADS has totally killed our gardens!”
Will NAADS ever redeem its credibility, given the increasing incidences of corruption and embezzlement of programme funds; and now its association with the spread of the decimating bacterial wilt and late blight in the Kigezi highlands, and perhaps other regions?
Published in Sunday Monitor, January 6, 2010: http://www.monitor.co.ug/OpEd/Commentary/-/689364/836418/-/view/printVersion/-/j9l2cpz/-/index.html
Showing posts with label Poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poverty. Show all posts
30 December 2009
15 March 2009
Warehouse Receipt System is far-fetched
In his article entitled “Why farmers need to produce for the market” (New Vision, 12 March 2009), Mr. Ambrose Bugaari argues passionately about the need for market orientation in the agricultural sector. He underscores the establishment of producer organisations; creation of certified rural agricultural commodity bulking centres; and scaling-up of warehouse receipt systems – as some of the measures to improve agricultural marketing.
His views indeed resonate some of the latest policy directions that many poor countries around the world, Uganda inclusive, consider as eminent pathways for rural transformation. Consider the warehouse receipt system for example. They have potential for improving overall efficiency of markets, particularly in the agribusiness sector, because producers and commercial entities can convert inventories of agricultural raw materials or intermediary or finished products into a readily tradable device.
Since warehouse receipts are negotiable instruments, they can be traded, sold, swapped, and used as collateral to support borrowing. They also provide farmers with an instrument that will allow them to extend the sales period of modestly perishable products well beyond the harvesting season.
However, In order for a warehouse-receipt system to be viable, the economy within which it operates must meet certain conditions. For instance the prospective recipient of a warehouse receipt should be able to determine, before acceptance, if there is a competing claim on the collateral underlying the receipt.
Secondly, the warehouse system requires sound operational architecture – such as reliable warehouse certification, guaranteeing basic physical and financial standards; the existence of independent determination and verification of the quantity and the quality of stored commodities, based on a national grading system; and the availability of property and casualty insurance extending to agricultural commodities.
Thirdly, a key prerequisite for the acceptability of warehouse receipts by the trade and by banks is the existence of a performance guarantee for warehouses, assuring that the quantities of goods stored match those specified by the warehouse receipt and that their quality is the same as, or better than, that stated on the receipt. Without this guarantee, farmers and traders will be reluctant to store their crops, and banks will be hesitant to accept warehouse receipts as secure collateral for financing agricultural inventories.
While I don’t want to sound a pessimist, I can’t realistically see these pre-conditions being met in the foreseeable future in Uganda. There is simply too much corruption in the system; regulatory institutions are riddled with incompetence at national level; while being non-existent at district and lower governance levels. In any case, there is considerable loss of public trust in collective marketing owing to the past fiascos, and I can guarantee that most commercial banks will remain sceptical about dealing with anybody who comes with a promissory note based on agricultural inventory.
Moreover, looking at the quality of government investments (in roads which don’t last a year; schools which crumble before they are commissioned; hospitals whose supplies are never delivered; etc), I doubt that there will be sufficient government commitment and investment of the required calibre to guarantee safe storage of agricultural products in rural warehouses. Letting the private sector to run rural warehouses will obviously make the service too costly for the impoverished farmers.
What I don’t doubt is that the government of Uganda will force through some legal framework on the warehouse receipt system. In fact, that is inevitable given the hysteria that has enshrouded the concept of agricultural warehousing in the recent past. However, government ought to know that passing frameworks is the easiest part; the devil will be in the details of operationalising such frameworks and ensuring they deliver benefits to farmers.
In any case, one needs to ask whether farmers have enough produce to warehouse when nearly one third of the country’s population is reportedly facing starvation! Therefore where as Mr. Ambrose Bugaari contended that the supply-driven, government interventionist approach is doomed, I strongly differ! Such an approach is what exactly we need at the moment to enable the starving farmers escape hunger. Talk of the warehouse receipt system, while undoubtedly good, is far-fetched for the impoverished rural farmers.
His views indeed resonate some of the latest policy directions that many poor countries around the world, Uganda inclusive, consider as eminent pathways for rural transformation. Consider the warehouse receipt system for example. They have potential for improving overall efficiency of markets, particularly in the agribusiness sector, because producers and commercial entities can convert inventories of agricultural raw materials or intermediary or finished products into a readily tradable device.
Since warehouse receipts are negotiable instruments, they can be traded, sold, swapped, and used as collateral to support borrowing. They also provide farmers with an instrument that will allow them to extend the sales period of modestly perishable products well beyond the harvesting season.
However, In order for a warehouse-receipt system to be viable, the economy within which it operates must meet certain conditions. For instance the prospective recipient of a warehouse receipt should be able to determine, before acceptance, if there is a competing claim on the collateral underlying the receipt.
Secondly, the warehouse system requires sound operational architecture – such as reliable warehouse certification, guaranteeing basic physical and financial standards; the existence of independent determination and verification of the quantity and the quality of stored commodities, based on a national grading system; and the availability of property and casualty insurance extending to agricultural commodities.
Thirdly, a key prerequisite for the acceptability of warehouse receipts by the trade and by banks is the existence of a performance guarantee for warehouses, assuring that the quantities of goods stored match those specified by the warehouse receipt and that their quality is the same as, or better than, that stated on the receipt. Without this guarantee, farmers and traders will be reluctant to store their crops, and banks will be hesitant to accept warehouse receipts as secure collateral for financing agricultural inventories.
While I don’t want to sound a pessimist, I can’t realistically see these pre-conditions being met in the foreseeable future in Uganda. There is simply too much corruption in the system; regulatory institutions are riddled with incompetence at national level; while being non-existent at district and lower governance levels. In any case, there is considerable loss of public trust in collective marketing owing to the past fiascos, and I can guarantee that most commercial banks will remain sceptical about dealing with anybody who comes with a promissory note based on agricultural inventory.
Moreover, looking at the quality of government investments (in roads which don’t last a year; schools which crumble before they are commissioned; hospitals whose supplies are never delivered; etc), I doubt that there will be sufficient government commitment and investment of the required calibre to guarantee safe storage of agricultural products in rural warehouses. Letting the private sector to run rural warehouses will obviously make the service too costly for the impoverished farmers.
What I don’t doubt is that the government of Uganda will force through some legal framework on the warehouse receipt system. In fact, that is inevitable given the hysteria that has enshrouded the concept of agricultural warehousing in the recent past. However, government ought to know that passing frameworks is the easiest part; the devil will be in the details of operationalising such frameworks and ensuring they deliver benefits to farmers.
In any case, one needs to ask whether farmers have enough produce to warehouse when nearly one third of the country’s population is reportedly facing starvation! Therefore where as Mr. Ambrose Bugaari contended that the supply-driven, government interventionist approach is doomed, I strongly differ! Such an approach is what exactly we need at the moment to enable the starving farmers escape hunger. Talk of the warehouse receipt system, while undoubtedly good, is far-fetched for the impoverished rural farmers.
30 October 2008
The unrelenting tragedy of the Ndorobos of Mt Elgon
Socially, economically, and politically marginalised; the Benet (also known as Ndorobos) are without doubt one of the most miserable communities in Uganda! They comprise a cluster of Sabinys who have lived in and around Mt Elgon forest for more than two centuries, initially as hunters and gatherers but later on as sedentary pastoralists and small-scale farmers without land tenure rights.
In 1938, much of the Mt Elgon forest landscape in which Ndorobos lived was gazetted a forest reserve by the British colonial government implying the area would be managed primarily for protection of its water catchment values and timber exploitation. The colonialists did recognise however, the importance of the forest to the Ndorobo and so decided to leave them behind the demarcated forest boundary; inside the gazetted area.
In fact, the name Benet, which means "people who were left behind" in Kup Sabiny attests to this colonial goodwill. By-and-large, successive post-independence governments maintained the status quo, leaving Ndorobos to live and survive on Mt Elgon forest resources until 1983, when a decision was made by the then UPC Government to degazette and resettle them on 6000ha of reserve.
By that time, the increased Ndorobo population was impacting negatively on the forest reserve resources and their presence inside the forest reserve was legitimising and catalysing illegal encroachment from forest criminals and other non indigenous communities.
Contrary to government intentions, much of the 6000ha land was grabbed by, and benefited voracious power brokers at the expense of the voiceless, the powerless, and the impoverished Ndorobos. Prominent local politicians and businessmen parcelled out big chunks of land for themselves and their relatives. Even forest rangers who were on the land allocation became illegitimate beneficiaries.
To the Ndorobos, this was a double tragedy; a cruel unfolding of the biblical philosophy according to Mark 4:25: "For whoever has, to him more shall be given; and whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him." They had been excised from their ancestral home with a compensatory promise of alternative land but by an ugly turn of fate, what was meant to be a gesture of goodwill from government was abused by officials of the same government! And because all illegitimate beneficiaries comprised of power brokers; the Ndorobos owing to their powerlessness had nowhere to turn for redress.
To survive, Ndorobos have since lived the life of an outlaw; playing a deadly game of “hide and seek” with heavily-armed Mt. Elgon rangers in an attempt to access the only livelihood means available to them: forest resources. This game has been even more ferocious since 1993, when Mt. Elgon forest reserve was elevated to a National Park status. For instance early this year in February, 4,000 Ndorobos living in Mt. Elgon National Park were violently evicted by Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) rangers and the UPDF. People lost their lives while property worth millions of shillings was destroyed during the operation.
Yet amid all this animosity, conflict, and abuse of power; there is still a sense of goodwill from government. UWA for example, has consciously attempted to taper their fall out with Ndorobos through collaborative forest management; an initiative which empowers local communities to legally access their preferred forest resources in accordance with terms mutually agreed upon and laid out in a forest resource use agreement. In recent past, government has de-gazetted additional chunks of Park land to resettle Ndorobos - although a lack of fairness in land distribution is still apparent in much the same way as in 1980s (see “Mt. Elgon squatters petition IGG over land, The New vision, October 6, 2008).
Thus, while there has not been shortage of government goodwill to address the Ndorobo question, their tragedy remains unrelenting because a complementary political goodwill to bring corrupt power brokers to account has been glaringly lacking. And until government wakes to this deficiency, Ndorobos will remain mere pawns on the chess board; baits for local politicians and businessmen who seek personal economic aggrandizement from National Park land.
In 1938, much of the Mt Elgon forest landscape in which Ndorobos lived was gazetted a forest reserve by the British colonial government implying the area would be managed primarily for protection of its water catchment values and timber exploitation. The colonialists did recognise however, the importance of the forest to the Ndorobo and so decided to leave them behind the demarcated forest boundary; inside the gazetted area.
In fact, the name Benet, which means "people who were left behind" in Kup Sabiny attests to this colonial goodwill. By-and-large, successive post-independence governments maintained the status quo, leaving Ndorobos to live and survive on Mt Elgon forest resources until 1983, when a decision was made by the then UPC Government to degazette and resettle them on 6000ha of reserve.
By that time, the increased Ndorobo population was impacting negatively on the forest reserve resources and their presence inside the forest reserve was legitimising and catalysing illegal encroachment from forest criminals and other non indigenous communities.
Contrary to government intentions, much of the 6000ha land was grabbed by, and benefited voracious power brokers at the expense of the voiceless, the powerless, and the impoverished Ndorobos. Prominent local politicians and businessmen parcelled out big chunks of land for themselves and their relatives. Even forest rangers who were on the land allocation became illegitimate beneficiaries.
To the Ndorobos, this was a double tragedy; a cruel unfolding of the biblical philosophy according to Mark 4:25: "For whoever has, to him more shall be given; and whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him." They had been excised from their ancestral home with a compensatory promise of alternative land but by an ugly turn of fate, what was meant to be a gesture of goodwill from government was abused by officials of the same government! And because all illegitimate beneficiaries comprised of power brokers; the Ndorobos owing to their powerlessness had nowhere to turn for redress.
To survive, Ndorobos have since lived the life of an outlaw; playing a deadly game of “hide and seek” with heavily-armed Mt. Elgon rangers in an attempt to access the only livelihood means available to them: forest resources. This game has been even more ferocious since 1993, when Mt. Elgon forest reserve was elevated to a National Park status. For instance early this year in February, 4,000 Ndorobos living in Mt. Elgon National Park were violently evicted by Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) rangers and the UPDF. People lost their lives while property worth millions of shillings was destroyed during the operation.
Yet amid all this animosity, conflict, and abuse of power; there is still a sense of goodwill from government. UWA for example, has consciously attempted to taper their fall out with Ndorobos through collaborative forest management; an initiative which empowers local communities to legally access their preferred forest resources in accordance with terms mutually agreed upon and laid out in a forest resource use agreement. In recent past, government has de-gazetted additional chunks of Park land to resettle Ndorobos - although a lack of fairness in land distribution is still apparent in much the same way as in 1980s (see “Mt. Elgon squatters petition IGG over land, The New vision, October 6, 2008).
Thus, while there has not been shortage of government goodwill to address the Ndorobo question, their tragedy remains unrelenting because a complementary political goodwill to bring corrupt power brokers to account has been glaringly lacking. And until government wakes to this deficiency, Ndorobos will remain mere pawns on the chess board; baits for local politicians and businessmen who seek personal economic aggrandizement from National Park land.
10 September 2008
Lack of government regulation fans cults in Uganda
Mr. Robert Kalumba gave an excellent account of the scourge of cults which has gripped Uganda over the last two decades (see “Uganda now hit by an influx of cults”, Sunday Monitor, September 7, 2008). His article exposes the vulnerability of Ugandans to cultists, and the attendant government failure to safeguard its citizens.
The NRM regime soon after coming to power restored religious freedoms which past governments had constricted. Ugandans may recall that in the 1970s, President Amin banned all religious groupings apart from the mainstream three: Catholics, Anglican and Muslim. Even then, Anglicans and Catholics felt and were treated like second class citizens under Amin’s administration. In the early 1980s, Catholics and Muslims were marginalised by Anglicans following the defeat of Catholic-dominated DP by the Anglican-dominated UPC in the 1980 presidential election.
The 1995 Constitution guaranteed freedom to believe in, practice, and promote religion of one’s choice without interference, harassment, or other repercussions. Since the 1990s, religious demagogues preaching “the glory of God” have mushroomed, curving out new congregations from the Anglican, Catholic and Muslim denominations. But this growth draws less from the generosity of the 1995 constitution than it does from the increasing hopelessness of a people firmly gripped by suffering, poverty, ignorance and despair.
The word of God is a fountain of hope for the goodness of life here-after. To the dejected, it is the ultimate consolation; a motivation to walk through to the “promised land”. Uganda is a country where hope of a decent life for most citizens seems more like a dream that never will be. It is a country where HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases have traumatised millions; and hundreds of thousands of hungry women, children and the elderly sleep before dark because they can’t afford even the most primitive indoor lighting.
For such people, it is easy for religious demagogues to hide behind the message of hope, salvation and the glory of life here-after to advance an agenda whose real motive is not to secure their spiritual deliverance from sins, but to extort even the little they own – including their life through psychological blackmail!
On March 17, 2000, government was caught off-guard when an estimated 1000 religious cultists (including more than 100 children) were cremated alive at Kanungu by Rev/Fr. Joseph Kibwetere of the “Movement for Restoration of Ten Commandments of God.” For more than 20 years, he had openly preached about “the coming of the Virgin Mary to carry her people to heaven” at the turn of the new millennium. To prepare for the “journey to eternity”, he requested his followers to sell all their possessions and bring proceeds to the church.
Neither did government anticipate the birth of the Holy Spirit Movement founded on the teachings of ''prophetess'' Alice Lakwena with a mission to “restore Ugandans on the road to faith” The Holy Spirit Movement evolved into fully-fledged rebel movements whose followers launched suicide attacks in the belief that magic oils spread over their bodies would make them immune to government bullets.
Dosteo Bisaka’s cult---“Abaikiriza” (Faith of Unity and Oneness) is certainly a time-bomb that is bound to explode. But there are other unexploded cultist ordinances too which government is aware about. For instance “Prophet” Samuel Kakande of the Synagogue Church claims the ability to heal and devotes weekly meetings to “delivering people from their physical ailments”. Every Sunday, he dishes out this “holy water” with “miraculous powers” to distressed Ugandans seeking deliverance from their woes. The “prophet” allegedly draws his inspiration from another West African “prophet” John Obiri Yeboah.
With government knowledge, many local pastors have taken advantage of Malachi 3:10: “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house” to extort property and money from their impoverished flock.
While government has always reiterated its commitment to protecting Ugandans from religious sharks, it has not done much. Yes, it quashed, the 19-year-old “prophetess” Mbasa Gwajwa who in November 1999, was claiming to have died in 1996
before being sent back to earth by God on a mission to preach repentance to
her people prior to the turn of the millennium. It has arrested some religious leaders on charges of sexual harassment, witchcraft, abduction and theft. But lack of comprehensive government regulation leaves Ugandans exposed to cultists.
The NRM regime soon after coming to power restored religious freedoms which past governments had constricted. Ugandans may recall that in the 1970s, President Amin banned all religious groupings apart from the mainstream three: Catholics, Anglican and Muslim. Even then, Anglicans and Catholics felt and were treated like second class citizens under Amin’s administration. In the early 1980s, Catholics and Muslims were marginalised by Anglicans following the defeat of Catholic-dominated DP by the Anglican-dominated UPC in the 1980 presidential election.
The 1995 Constitution guaranteed freedom to believe in, practice, and promote religion of one’s choice without interference, harassment, or other repercussions. Since the 1990s, religious demagogues preaching “the glory of God” have mushroomed, curving out new congregations from the Anglican, Catholic and Muslim denominations. But this growth draws less from the generosity of the 1995 constitution than it does from the increasing hopelessness of a people firmly gripped by suffering, poverty, ignorance and despair.
The word of God is a fountain of hope for the goodness of life here-after. To the dejected, it is the ultimate consolation; a motivation to walk through to the “promised land”. Uganda is a country where hope of a decent life for most citizens seems more like a dream that never will be. It is a country where HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases have traumatised millions; and hundreds of thousands of hungry women, children and the elderly sleep before dark because they can’t afford even the most primitive indoor lighting.
For such people, it is easy for religious demagogues to hide behind the message of hope, salvation and the glory of life here-after to advance an agenda whose real motive is not to secure their spiritual deliverance from sins, but to extort even the little they own – including their life through psychological blackmail!
On March 17, 2000, government was caught off-guard when an estimated 1000 religious cultists (including more than 100 children) were cremated alive at Kanungu by Rev/Fr. Joseph Kibwetere of the “Movement for Restoration of Ten Commandments of God.” For more than 20 years, he had openly preached about “the coming of the Virgin Mary to carry her people to heaven” at the turn of the new millennium. To prepare for the “journey to eternity”, he requested his followers to sell all their possessions and bring proceeds to the church.
Neither did government anticipate the birth of the Holy Spirit Movement founded on the teachings of ''prophetess'' Alice Lakwena with a mission to “restore Ugandans on the road to faith” The Holy Spirit Movement evolved into fully-fledged rebel movements whose followers launched suicide attacks in the belief that magic oils spread over their bodies would make them immune to government bullets.
Dosteo Bisaka’s cult---“Abaikiriza” (Faith of Unity and Oneness) is certainly a time-bomb that is bound to explode. But there are other unexploded cultist ordinances too which government is aware about. For instance “Prophet” Samuel Kakande of the Synagogue Church claims the ability to heal and devotes weekly meetings to “delivering people from their physical ailments”. Every Sunday, he dishes out this “holy water” with “miraculous powers” to distressed Ugandans seeking deliverance from their woes. The “prophet” allegedly draws his inspiration from another West African “prophet” John Obiri Yeboah.
With government knowledge, many local pastors have taken advantage of Malachi 3:10: “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house” to extort property and money from their impoverished flock.
While government has always reiterated its commitment to protecting Ugandans from religious sharks, it has not done much. Yes, it quashed, the 19-year-old “prophetess” Mbasa Gwajwa who in November 1999, was claiming to have died in 1996
before being sent back to earth by God on a mission to preach repentance to
her people prior to the turn of the millennium. It has arrested some religious leaders on charges of sexual harassment, witchcraft, abduction and theft. But lack of comprehensive government regulation leaves Ugandans exposed to cultists.
20 May 2008
“Bona Bagagawale” is a Miscarriage of Progress
The recent launch of Bona Bagagawale (prosperity for all) programme and the glamorous publicity it has attracted in the local media following the President’ mobilisational tour around the country has raised a storm of false expectation. Utterly false, because it is inconceivable how a paltry target of only 30 “model farmers” per Sub County will transform agriculture; a way of life for nearly 90% of Uganda’s human population.
Ugandans may recall with embarrassment, how Government realized too late, that it could not proceed with the envisaged Bona Bagagawale because it hadn’t thought through how is would be implemented. Indeed, it was a subject of speculation for a while that Bona Bagagawale would dish money to farmers through SACCOs. This however hit a snag after realizing that there was no legislation to regulate the operations of SACCOs.
To massage the embarrassment and with public patience running out, Government has opted to restructure NAADS and use it as a conduit for dispersing Bona Bagagawale funds – albeit through a procedurally, ethically, and technically bizarre process: targeting 30 “model farmers” in every sub county! I want to put it to government that the proposed “model farmer” scheme will achieve nothing beyond catalyzing rural inequality, social discord, and economic marginalization.
There is obviously the question of how the 30 farmers will be selected and how this approach will interface with farmer groups that have been receiving support under the NAADS. Over the last seven years, millions of rural farmers have organized themselves into legal entity groups – dully registered with, and recognized by Local Governments. These farmer institutions have served as a forum for collective action (planning, production, marketing, and others) and have been providing matching funds for agricultural extension and other rural development programmes. Unless the 30 members are selected from same farmers group (which I doubt that it will be the case), rest assured that the approach will trigger farmer individualism instead of collectivism; farmer conflict rather than collaboration; resentment and destructive sabotage in place of mutual support.
In essence, the “model farmer” approach will spell absolute doom for rural farmer institutions which NAADS has progressively empowered over the last seven years! It will be a villainous finale to the cooperative movement which Government has attempted to suffocate beginning in the late 1980s; a regrettable miscarriage of progress that has made with farmer institutional building in Uganda!
It is disturbing that it is NAADS itself, though understandably under undue political pressure from Government, which will undermine and short-circuit its own farmer institutional models by promoting an obnoxious “model farmer” approach. It has been coerced into abdicating its well-thought out principles in favour of a cosmetic, highly risky development paradigm. Iam actually surprised that none of the NAADS managers whom I regard very highly, have resigned given all these policy swings. Is there greater pain than seeing a distressed mother forced to slay and burry her own child alive?
Moreover, Government’s abhorrence of all modes of farmer sensitization will stifle opportunities for strengthening entrepreneurship among the farming community, implying that Bona Bagagawale investments could go down the drain before catalyzing sustainable businesses. Judging from the entadikwa experience, and since its “business as usual”, chances are “model” farmers will go on a “free holiday”- courtesy of the generosity of NRM regime.
The impeding Bona Bagagawale fiasco, on top of other previous high profile embarrassing Government failures (entandikwa, Global Fund, etc) questions the appropriateness of budget support or basket-funding regimes through which development partners allow government full discretion to allocate resources as it feels. It has indeed become abundantly clear that government may not yet be ready to make the right investment decisions and that therefore a return to project mode donor financing would be a better option for Uganda.
With a heavily compromised parliament incapable of checking the excesses of an errant Government; a debt burden per capita that is soaring every year without tangible returns, and a President who has intensified his nationwide mobilization for a doomed Bona Bagagawale programme, Ugandans and their posterity should brace for the worst!
Ugandans may recall with embarrassment, how Government realized too late, that it could not proceed with the envisaged Bona Bagagawale because it hadn’t thought through how is would be implemented. Indeed, it was a subject of speculation for a while that Bona Bagagawale would dish money to farmers through SACCOs. This however hit a snag after realizing that there was no legislation to regulate the operations of SACCOs.
To massage the embarrassment and with public patience running out, Government has opted to restructure NAADS and use it as a conduit for dispersing Bona Bagagawale funds – albeit through a procedurally, ethically, and technically bizarre process: targeting 30 “model farmers” in every sub county! I want to put it to government that the proposed “model farmer” scheme will achieve nothing beyond catalyzing rural inequality, social discord, and economic marginalization.
There is obviously the question of how the 30 farmers will be selected and how this approach will interface with farmer groups that have been receiving support under the NAADS. Over the last seven years, millions of rural farmers have organized themselves into legal entity groups – dully registered with, and recognized by Local Governments. These farmer institutions have served as a forum for collective action (planning, production, marketing, and others) and have been providing matching funds for agricultural extension and other rural development programmes. Unless the 30 members are selected from same farmers group (which I doubt that it will be the case), rest assured that the approach will trigger farmer individualism instead of collectivism; farmer conflict rather than collaboration; resentment and destructive sabotage in place of mutual support.
In essence, the “model farmer” approach will spell absolute doom for rural farmer institutions which NAADS has progressively empowered over the last seven years! It will be a villainous finale to the cooperative movement which Government has attempted to suffocate beginning in the late 1980s; a regrettable miscarriage of progress that has made with farmer institutional building in Uganda!
It is disturbing that it is NAADS itself, though understandably under undue political pressure from Government, which will undermine and short-circuit its own farmer institutional models by promoting an obnoxious “model farmer” approach. It has been coerced into abdicating its well-thought out principles in favour of a cosmetic, highly risky development paradigm. Iam actually surprised that none of the NAADS managers whom I regard very highly, have resigned given all these policy swings. Is there greater pain than seeing a distressed mother forced to slay and burry her own child alive?
Moreover, Government’s abhorrence of all modes of farmer sensitization will stifle opportunities for strengthening entrepreneurship among the farming community, implying that Bona Bagagawale investments could go down the drain before catalyzing sustainable businesses. Judging from the entadikwa experience, and since its “business as usual”, chances are “model” farmers will go on a “free holiday”- courtesy of the generosity of NRM regime.
The impeding Bona Bagagawale fiasco, on top of other previous high profile embarrassing Government failures (entandikwa, Global Fund, etc) questions the appropriateness of budget support or basket-funding regimes through which development partners allow government full discretion to allocate resources as it feels. It has indeed become abundantly clear that government may not yet be ready to make the right investment decisions and that therefore a return to project mode donor financing would be a better option for Uganda.
With a heavily compromised parliament incapable of checking the excesses of an errant Government; a debt burden per capita that is soaring every year without tangible returns, and a President who has intensified his nationwide mobilization for a doomed Bona Bagagawale programme, Ugandans and their posterity should brace for the worst!
7 March 2008
Sustainable peasantry: Does government have a role?
During his katebe days, current East African Cooperation Minister Eriya Kategaya was reported to have castigated Museveni and his regime for glorying peasantry at a time when other developing countries are striving to eliminate it. Kategaya based his assertion on the unwillingness and inability of government to tackle poverty in a manner that would create a meaningful livelihoods change among the peasant community. His outburst is indeed supported by budget statistics which indicate that NRM government has never allocated to the agriculture sector, more than 5% of the annual national budget despite the sector employing 80% of the population.
The inevitable consequence of this neglect has been a steady decline in agricultural output, hunger and poverty owing to inadequate agricultural extension support; lack of access to quality technology and germplasm; declining soil fertility; crop pests and diseases; severe exposure to vagaries of weather; and perhaps most importantly, poor or lack of agricultural processing and marketing infrastructure.
It should be recalled that in the immediate after math of the five-year NRA bush war, government liberalised agricultural markets (among other things) and abolished commodity-marketing institutions under the guise of eliminating monopoly and ensuring better returns to farmers. Sadly, it chose to overlook the imperfect market conditions pertaining at the time and ever since, which would never allow perfect competition to flourish.
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. Neither government, nor any other authority, has adduced evidence to show that farmers’ returns have improved following agricultural market liberalisation. To the contrary, disorder, chaos and frustration have marred commodity marketing over the last several decades.
Moreover, the strangling of agricultural cooperatives by the same government could have been the critical catalyst for burgeoning poverty and peasantry. 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. Without the cushioning effect of cooperatives, rural farmers were inevitably bound to plunge into poverty.
Government might have had a point when it accused cooperatives of being corrupt. However, it grossly blundered by prescribing that they be abolished. I wonder whether cooperatives could have been so incurably defective that the only plausible management decision was to abolish them!
Without doubt, the 2007 UNDP Human Development Report contains very bad news for a government that has been pedalling a rosy portrait of the fastest economy in the developing world. According to the report, Uganda had become poorer by ten points on the global Human Development Index over 2006/2007 alone, while more Ugandans had lost their agricultural livelihoods. Logically, its hopeless for farmers to carry on with the increasingly risky, loss-making, poverty-entrenching agriculture and as a result, they have abandoned farming even though they have no other livelihood options.
Undeniably, this sets the stage for sustainable peasantry – especially in the rural areas. Instead of ensuring increased funding for the agricultural sector to alleviate the plight of peasants, Museveni has reportedly remarked on several occasions that his votes are with peasants. Has he found solace in the peasants’ predicament? As we all know, neither do peasants complain about, nor have the voice to challenge the status quo. Does this give credence to Kategaya’s assertion that Museveni’s government glorifies and sustains peasantry?
The inevitable consequence of this neglect has been a steady decline in agricultural output, hunger and poverty owing to inadequate agricultural extension support; lack of access to quality technology and germplasm; declining soil fertility; crop pests and diseases; severe exposure to vagaries of weather; and perhaps most importantly, poor or lack of agricultural processing and marketing infrastructure.
It should be recalled that in the immediate after math of the five-year NRA bush war, government liberalised agricultural markets (among other things) and abolished commodity-marketing institutions under the guise of eliminating monopoly and ensuring better returns to farmers. Sadly, it chose to overlook the imperfect market conditions pertaining at the time and ever since, which would never allow perfect competition to flourish.
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. Neither government, nor any other authority, has adduced evidence to show that farmers’ returns have improved following agricultural market liberalisation. To the contrary, disorder, chaos and frustration have marred commodity marketing over the last several decades.
Moreover, the strangling of agricultural cooperatives by the same government could have been the critical catalyst for burgeoning poverty and peasantry. 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. Without the cushioning effect of cooperatives, rural farmers were inevitably bound to plunge into poverty.
Government might have had a point when it accused cooperatives of being corrupt. However, it grossly blundered by prescribing that they be abolished. I wonder whether cooperatives could have been so incurably defective that the only plausible management decision was to abolish them!
Without doubt, the 2007 UNDP Human Development Report contains very bad news for a government that has been pedalling a rosy portrait of the fastest economy in the developing world. According to the report, Uganda had become poorer by ten points on the global Human Development Index over 2006/2007 alone, while more Ugandans had lost their agricultural livelihoods. Logically, its hopeless for farmers to carry on with the increasingly risky, loss-making, poverty-entrenching agriculture and as a result, they have abandoned farming even though they have no other livelihood options.
Undeniably, this sets the stage for sustainable peasantry – especially in the rural areas. Instead of ensuring increased funding for the agricultural sector to alleviate the plight of peasants, Museveni has reportedly remarked on several occasions that his votes are with peasants. Has he found solace in the peasants’ predicament? As we all know, neither do peasants complain about, nor have the voice to challenge the status quo. Does this give credence to Kategaya’s assertion that Museveni’s government glorifies and sustains peasantry?
20 December 2007
Farmers’ education is indispensable
Like the biblical prodigal son who “came back to himself” after spending a while in the wilderness of confusion, Government has finally made a U-turn and rescinded its unwarranted five-month suspension of NAADS.
By restoring NAADS, government has only corrected a deliberate fault and does not deserve any applause. In a country where farming is still entirely dependant on weather, farmers strictly align their activities to weather patterns. Whoever wants to support them must synchronise their support with their seasonal calendar. Government should therefore apologise for the gross disruption it caused on farming activities.
Moreover, government has never been convincing on why it banned NAADS in September 2007. The expert government panel which facilitated NAADS design consultations identified lack of farmer access to information, knowledge and technology as the biggest impediment to agricultural growth. It envisaged an agricultural transformation process maturing over at least 25 years and thus recommended that NAADS be given enough time (25 years) to build a firm foundation for sustainable, self-propelling farming enterprises.
However, government now wants to discount the projected achievements of the 25-year programme into two, three or maximum five years. By blasting NAADS for “having nothing to show” other than spending a lot on farmers’ education, government behaved like the impatient idealist, Obi Okwonko, whom Chinua Achebe portrays in his novel No Longer at Ease. Obi is out of touch with reality after spending a while in a western university and clamours upon his return, for space where he “can stand and move the world.” At the end, he becomes a victim of his impatient idealism. He is dejected, rejected by his own people, finally arrested and convicted in court.
Like the impatient idealist, government has expressed its desire to “give Uganda a new face” in the immediate term. It has reportedly completed a restructuring of NAADS so that it primarily focuses on agro input supply rather than information, knowledge, and farmers’ education. The restructuring has in essence converted NAADS into a relief organisation. How despicable!
While I appreciate that farmers are needy, NAADS objective was to fulfil the biblical philosophy: teaching man how to fish rather than give him fish” in accordance with expert panel recommendations. The “trained angler” would obviously need a “hook” to do a good job – which NAADS was providing through its enterprise promotion and technology multiplication strategy.
Obviously, the relief approach will not create a sustainable impact on farming communities. By their nature, relief programmes only provide a cosmetic end product. I have witnessed farmers cooking and eating hybrid seeds meant for demonstration and multiplication. In several parts of the country, there have been reports of farmers slaughtering imported exotic boar goats during Christmas, Easter and weddings rather than rearing them to cross breed with, and improve local goats. In Kabale, an innovative donkey initiative meant to alleviate constrained transportation of farm produce in remote, inaccessible villages ended disastrously when some malicious farmers poisoned and killed all the donkeys. Etc. Looking back, one key lesson learnt was that farmers were not adequately educated before introducing those technologies.
Government must realise that farmer education is the ignition key for agricultural transformation. The adoption process for any innovation starts with awareness. Only when somebody is aware about an innovation is he/she likely to develop interest. Interest will often be followed by a trial and evaluation phase before farmers choose to adopt or not.
Farmer education (demonstrations, seminars and workshops, music, dance drama, etc) catalyses the adoption process and creates necessary farmer demand for innovations. By restructuring NAADS into a relief organisation, government has effectively suffocated a vital catalyst for the adoption process. In the end, agricultural technologies will be thrown at ignorant farmers who will not know what to do with those technologies. Won’t that spell “business-as-usual?”
Let government be forewarned that if it must push more agro inputs to farmers, it ought to ensure that such a precarious detour doesn’t devalue the role of information, knowledge and farmer education. It is said, “You may force a cow to the river but you can’t force it to drink.” The onus is on government to avoid the predicament of Chinua Achebe’s impatient idealist!
By restoring NAADS, government has only corrected a deliberate fault and does not deserve any applause. In a country where farming is still entirely dependant on weather, farmers strictly align their activities to weather patterns. Whoever wants to support them must synchronise their support with their seasonal calendar. Government should therefore apologise for the gross disruption it caused on farming activities.
Moreover, government has never been convincing on why it banned NAADS in September 2007. The expert government panel which facilitated NAADS design consultations identified lack of farmer access to information, knowledge and technology as the biggest impediment to agricultural growth. It envisaged an agricultural transformation process maturing over at least 25 years and thus recommended that NAADS be given enough time (25 years) to build a firm foundation for sustainable, self-propelling farming enterprises.
However, government now wants to discount the projected achievements of the 25-year programme into two, three or maximum five years. By blasting NAADS for “having nothing to show” other than spending a lot on farmers’ education, government behaved like the impatient idealist, Obi Okwonko, whom Chinua Achebe portrays in his novel No Longer at Ease. Obi is out of touch with reality after spending a while in a western university and clamours upon his return, for space where he “can stand and move the world.” At the end, he becomes a victim of his impatient idealism. He is dejected, rejected by his own people, finally arrested and convicted in court.
Like the impatient idealist, government has expressed its desire to “give Uganda a new face” in the immediate term. It has reportedly completed a restructuring of NAADS so that it primarily focuses on agro input supply rather than information, knowledge, and farmers’ education. The restructuring has in essence converted NAADS into a relief organisation. How despicable!
While I appreciate that farmers are needy, NAADS objective was to fulfil the biblical philosophy: teaching man how to fish rather than give him fish” in accordance with expert panel recommendations. The “trained angler” would obviously need a “hook” to do a good job – which NAADS was providing through its enterprise promotion and technology multiplication strategy.
Obviously, the relief approach will not create a sustainable impact on farming communities. By their nature, relief programmes only provide a cosmetic end product. I have witnessed farmers cooking and eating hybrid seeds meant for demonstration and multiplication. In several parts of the country, there have been reports of farmers slaughtering imported exotic boar goats during Christmas, Easter and weddings rather than rearing them to cross breed with, and improve local goats. In Kabale, an innovative donkey initiative meant to alleviate constrained transportation of farm produce in remote, inaccessible villages ended disastrously when some malicious farmers poisoned and killed all the donkeys. Etc. Looking back, one key lesson learnt was that farmers were not adequately educated before introducing those technologies.
Government must realise that farmer education is the ignition key for agricultural transformation. The adoption process for any innovation starts with awareness. Only when somebody is aware about an innovation is he/she likely to develop interest. Interest will often be followed by a trial and evaluation phase before farmers choose to adopt or not.
Farmer education (demonstrations, seminars and workshops, music, dance drama, etc) catalyses the adoption process and creates necessary farmer demand for innovations. By restructuring NAADS into a relief organisation, government has effectively suffocated a vital catalyst for the adoption process. In the end, agricultural technologies will be thrown at ignorant farmers who will not know what to do with those technologies. Won’t that spell “business-as-usual?”
Let government be forewarned that if it must push more agro inputs to farmers, it ought to ensure that such a precarious detour doesn’t devalue the role of information, knowledge and farmer education. It is said, “You may force a cow to the river but you can’t force it to drink.” The onus is on government to avoid the predicament of Chinua Achebe’s impatient idealist!
The first 10 years of Poverty Action Fund is woeful
I have always been complementary about Uganda’s policy and programmatic orientation towards poverty alleviation. We have a PEAP (Poverty Alleviation Plan); the PMA (Plan for Modernisation of Agriculture); NAADS (National Agricultural Advisory Services); Bona Baggagawale (prosperity for all); and other initiatives. All these poverty alleviation strategies are conceptually vibrant. What I find increasingly baffling though is how such vibrancy could fail to catalyse improved household incomes – especially in the rural areas.
Beginning 1998, Government created the Poverty Action Fund (PAF) to channel resources saved from the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt relief Initiative to PEAP sectors. Through PAF, Government pledged to increase direct funding for agriculture, infrastructure, health, and other social services. However, in contravention of the HIPC principles, millions of dollars worth of savings from international debt payments have continually been disproportionately allocated outside the PEAP thematic areas.
Consequently, PEAP and the PMA have largely remained paper tigers. On the other hand, NAADS and Bona Baggagawale have been catastrophically politicised with their funding hooked into Government’s political objectives rather than economic sustainability principles.
That may explain why poverty is escalating nationwide. More than 70% of the population in some regions (Northern Uganda) lives in abject poverty while one third of the country faces starvation. The recent (2007) UNDP Human Development Report for Uganda has confirmed that indeed Ugandans are in a poverty-freefall – having dropped 10 places on the global Human Development Index from 145 in 2006 to 154 in 2007.
At the programmatic level, the core assumptions underlying PMA, NAADS and Bona Baggagawale need critical re-examination. Farming remains a highly risky business. Seasonal price oscillations on farm inputs and outputs; continued lack of marketing infrastructure; absence of value-addition facilities accessible to rural subsistence farmers; and consequently the infinitesimal shelf life of agricultural produce – seem to have shattered farmers’ agricultural commercialisation dreams.
The reliability of the NAADS enterprise selection mechanism that ideally would orient farmer’s production activities to the market is compromised by vagaries in the market environment. Moreover, increasing land scarcity and fragmentation due to growing populations in some regions, coupled with widespread soil exhaustion have edged poor farmers out of the modernisation initiative.
This year’s Christmas and New Year pilgrimage to the Kigezi Highlands enabled me to interact with frustrated farmers who have given up hope of transforming their subsistence farming. I was struck by the rate at which enterprises (such as poultry and piggery) which had been appraised viable for land-constrained scenarios have been abandoned.
Poor farmers can’t meet livestock feed demands and have failed to expand their enterprises to economical threshold levels above which they would realise profit. In essence, the enterprises had become an added burden upon the impoverished households. Herein lies the evidence for UNDP assertion that more Ugandans have abandoned agriculture (UNDP Human Development Report, 2007).
Since more than 80% of Uganda’s population has nothing else to live on other than farming, abandoning farming without alternative livelihood options places the country into a historic predicament. As agriculture loses relevance to Ugandans, destitution will spiral uncontrollably out of hand. Are there any quick fix solutions to this quagmire? I don’t think so, but we are not stuck either!
Since infinitesimal, fragmented plots of land are economically unfeasible for farming, Government should address the politically unpalatable question of land consolidation. True, land belongs to the people but a package of appropriate incentives could trigger voluntary land consolidation.
A relatively shorter-term and easier solution could be to catalyse “block farming” – where multitudes of farmers with contiguous infinitesimal plots are incentivised to agree to a collective landuse plan. Block farming would build on farmer associations which NAADS is empowering; whereupon only farmers who agree to a block farming system would access NAADS and Bona Baggagawale funds. Setting aside an agricultural commodity stabilisation fund out of PAF would help farmers cope with the seasonally oscillating commodity prices.
Livelihoods diversification towards non-farm enterprises holds significant promise for resource-constrained farmers. Government however needs to devise and implement a regulatory and incentive regime to kick start non-farm business entrepreneurs.
With 10 years of a futile PAF, Government must reenergise the anti-poverty drive and address itself to the HIPC principles, which demand comprehensive commitments to poverty alleviation initiatives.
Published on: http://hdr.undp.org/en/nhdr/monitoring/news/2008/title,6807,en.html
Beginning 1998, Government created the Poverty Action Fund (PAF) to channel resources saved from the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt relief Initiative to PEAP sectors. Through PAF, Government pledged to increase direct funding for agriculture, infrastructure, health, and other social services. However, in contravention of the HIPC principles, millions of dollars worth of savings from international debt payments have continually been disproportionately allocated outside the PEAP thematic areas.
Consequently, PEAP and the PMA have largely remained paper tigers. On the other hand, NAADS and Bona Baggagawale have been catastrophically politicised with their funding hooked into Government’s political objectives rather than economic sustainability principles.
That may explain why poverty is escalating nationwide. More than 70% of the population in some regions (Northern Uganda) lives in abject poverty while one third of the country faces starvation. The recent (2007) UNDP Human Development Report for Uganda has confirmed that indeed Ugandans are in a poverty-freefall – having dropped 10 places on the global Human Development Index from 145 in 2006 to 154 in 2007.
At the programmatic level, the core assumptions underlying PMA, NAADS and Bona Baggagawale need critical re-examination. Farming remains a highly risky business. Seasonal price oscillations on farm inputs and outputs; continued lack of marketing infrastructure; absence of value-addition facilities accessible to rural subsistence farmers; and consequently the infinitesimal shelf life of agricultural produce – seem to have shattered farmers’ agricultural commercialisation dreams.
The reliability of the NAADS enterprise selection mechanism that ideally would orient farmer’s production activities to the market is compromised by vagaries in the market environment. Moreover, increasing land scarcity and fragmentation due to growing populations in some regions, coupled with widespread soil exhaustion have edged poor farmers out of the modernisation initiative.
This year’s Christmas and New Year pilgrimage to the Kigezi Highlands enabled me to interact with frustrated farmers who have given up hope of transforming their subsistence farming. I was struck by the rate at which enterprises (such as poultry and piggery) which had been appraised viable for land-constrained scenarios have been abandoned.
Poor farmers can’t meet livestock feed demands and have failed to expand their enterprises to economical threshold levels above which they would realise profit. In essence, the enterprises had become an added burden upon the impoverished households. Herein lies the evidence for UNDP assertion that more Ugandans have abandoned agriculture (UNDP Human Development Report, 2007).
Since more than 80% of Uganda’s population has nothing else to live on other than farming, abandoning farming without alternative livelihood options places the country into a historic predicament. As agriculture loses relevance to Ugandans, destitution will spiral uncontrollably out of hand. Are there any quick fix solutions to this quagmire? I don’t think so, but we are not stuck either!
Since infinitesimal, fragmented plots of land are economically unfeasible for farming, Government should address the politically unpalatable question of land consolidation. True, land belongs to the people but a package of appropriate incentives could trigger voluntary land consolidation.
A relatively shorter-term and easier solution could be to catalyse “block farming” – where multitudes of farmers with contiguous infinitesimal plots are incentivised to agree to a collective landuse plan. Block farming would build on farmer associations which NAADS is empowering; whereupon only farmers who agree to a block farming system would access NAADS and Bona Baggagawale funds. Setting aside an agricultural commodity stabilisation fund out of PAF would help farmers cope with the seasonally oscillating commodity prices.
Livelihoods diversification towards non-farm enterprises holds significant promise for resource-constrained farmers. Government however needs to devise and implement a regulatory and incentive regime to kick start non-farm business entrepreneurs.
With 10 years of a futile PAF, Government must reenergise the anti-poverty drive and address itself to the HIPC principles, which demand comprehensive commitments to poverty alleviation initiatives.
Published on: http://hdr.undp.org/en/nhdr/monitoring/news/2008/title,6807,en.html
Government is responsible for collapse of agriculture in Uganda
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.
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.
3 December 2007
It’s sadistic to ridicule family planning
In 1798, the Rev Thomas Robert Malthus raised a storm of international controversy when he anonymously published an essay on the principle of population and society. Through the essay, he warned that disparity between the rate of population growth and the slower increase in food supply would lead to war, famine, and disease. Malthus’s conclusions were dismissed then, and ever since as un-researched, misleading and illusionary.
More than 200 years later (1972), the “Club of Rome,” an elitist association of scholars, businessmen and politicians published an even more controversial report on “the predicament of mankind.” Their article modelled an ultimate uncontrollable crash of both population and industrial production due to exhaustion of physical resources such as cultivable land, minerals and the earth’s capacity to absorb pollution.
Critics to Malthus and the Club of Rome have found ammunition from the fact that unprecedented population growth over the last couple of centuries has been accompanied by an impressive growth of world economies. The standard of living in developed countries has steadily improved even though the Club of Rome had predicted the world will run out resources within 100 years.
The latest critic to Malthus is our own, President Museveni who has openly expressed his support for large populations. His views are based on what is a grossly misguided view that large populations boost development by enlarging markets. Not when: (1) the population lacks purchasing power, (2) government lacks capacity to fully exploit its resources, (3) government uses ad hoc, cosmetic development formulas, (4) a country glorifies, rather fights peasantry!
In the remote villages of Kigezi, and indeed else where in Uganda, congested families who can still harvest some yams and sweet potato tubers from their rapidly degrading gardens eat them raw because they can’t afford to buy fire wood for cooking. In Soroti, it has been reported that the only time UPE classrooms are full is during the fruiting season for wild mango trees. Only then would children rest assured of scavenging for wild fruits to keep them going throughout the day. Hunger keeps most children away from school during the non-fruiting season.
Latest statistics indicate that Uganda’s maternal mortality ratio is 505 per 100000 live births, implying that 16 women die every day due to pregnancy-related factors. Only 38% of pregnant women deliver in a health unit. Infant and child mortality are on the rise while income poverty is increasing.
With a population growth rate of 3.2% per annum, Uganda’s population could reach 130 million by the year 2050! By all indications, more than three quarters of this will still be living in a peasant household economy denoted by “hand-to-mouth” survival. It is inconceivable that governments which have failed to transform the livelihoods of 30 million people will succeed with 130 million!
Even if government intensifies utilisation of unexploited resources – including protected forests, wetlands and the recently discovered oil, we will at best, end up enabling a minority of Ugandans to become stinkingly wealthy – given the rate of income inequality. On the other hand, Iam tempted to think destitution will reach unprecedented levels, as crammed peasant households exhaust all the possible survival means.
This phenomenon has already unfolded in the dramatically developing countries such as India, China, Brazil and others. In China for instance, with a population of 1.3 billion people, only 400 million have a decent livelihood. Nearly 70% of the population, or 900 million Chinese are destitute. It is estimated that 80% of the Indian population lives precariously on the fringes of life and death – without access to government social services. For the record, India is one of those developing countries where quality of life for its elite population rivals that of Western Europe and North America.
Museveni’s assertion that a bigger population would lead to increased consumption and therefore bigger markets will remain utopian unless a miraculous, divine intervention improves the purchasing power of the destitute peasants.
While I believe Uganda’s economy will thrive, like India and China, only a minority of the population will enjoy the full benefits of economic growth. It would therefore be rational that we preach and reaffirm the importance of family planning to limit the number of households living on raw sweet potato tubers or wild mangoes for their dinner; or pregnant women and children dying for lack of medical care.
No person has been misunderstood like the Rev Thomas Robert Malthus. He simply argued against the widely held view that a nation's resource was determined by the size of its population and that fertility added to national wealth. The core of his reasoning emanated from his humane concern for the sufferings caused by overpopulation and thus recommended moral restraint against large families.
For a country like Uganda where the president’s word becomes national policy, Iam worried that Musevenis’s open campaign for a large population will undermine family planning efforts. If that happens, government will have condemned the lives of millions of Ugandans to eternal destitution and suffering.
More than 200 years later (1972), the “Club of Rome,” an elitist association of scholars, businessmen and politicians published an even more controversial report on “the predicament of mankind.” Their article modelled an ultimate uncontrollable crash of both population and industrial production due to exhaustion of physical resources such as cultivable land, minerals and the earth’s capacity to absorb pollution.
Critics to Malthus and the Club of Rome have found ammunition from the fact that unprecedented population growth over the last couple of centuries has been accompanied by an impressive growth of world economies. The standard of living in developed countries has steadily improved even though the Club of Rome had predicted the world will run out resources within 100 years.
The latest critic to Malthus is our own, President Museveni who has openly expressed his support for large populations. His views are based on what is a grossly misguided view that large populations boost development by enlarging markets. Not when: (1) the population lacks purchasing power, (2) government lacks capacity to fully exploit its resources, (3) government uses ad hoc, cosmetic development formulas, (4) a country glorifies, rather fights peasantry!
In the remote villages of Kigezi, and indeed else where in Uganda, congested families who can still harvest some yams and sweet potato tubers from their rapidly degrading gardens eat them raw because they can’t afford to buy fire wood for cooking. In Soroti, it has been reported that the only time UPE classrooms are full is during the fruiting season for wild mango trees. Only then would children rest assured of scavenging for wild fruits to keep them going throughout the day. Hunger keeps most children away from school during the non-fruiting season.
Latest statistics indicate that Uganda’s maternal mortality ratio is 505 per 100000 live births, implying that 16 women die every day due to pregnancy-related factors. Only 38% of pregnant women deliver in a health unit. Infant and child mortality are on the rise while income poverty is increasing.
With a population growth rate of 3.2% per annum, Uganda’s population could reach 130 million by the year 2050! By all indications, more than three quarters of this will still be living in a peasant household economy denoted by “hand-to-mouth” survival. It is inconceivable that governments which have failed to transform the livelihoods of 30 million people will succeed with 130 million!
Even if government intensifies utilisation of unexploited resources – including protected forests, wetlands and the recently discovered oil, we will at best, end up enabling a minority of Ugandans to become stinkingly wealthy – given the rate of income inequality. On the other hand, Iam tempted to think destitution will reach unprecedented levels, as crammed peasant households exhaust all the possible survival means.
This phenomenon has already unfolded in the dramatically developing countries such as India, China, Brazil and others. In China for instance, with a population of 1.3 billion people, only 400 million have a decent livelihood. Nearly 70% of the population, or 900 million Chinese are destitute. It is estimated that 80% of the Indian population lives precariously on the fringes of life and death – without access to government social services. For the record, India is one of those developing countries where quality of life for its elite population rivals that of Western Europe and North America.
Museveni’s assertion that a bigger population would lead to increased consumption and therefore bigger markets will remain utopian unless a miraculous, divine intervention improves the purchasing power of the destitute peasants.
While I believe Uganda’s economy will thrive, like India and China, only a minority of the population will enjoy the full benefits of economic growth. It would therefore be rational that we preach and reaffirm the importance of family planning to limit the number of households living on raw sweet potato tubers or wild mangoes for their dinner; or pregnant women and children dying for lack of medical care.
No person has been misunderstood like the Rev Thomas Robert Malthus. He simply argued against the widely held view that a nation's resource was determined by the size of its population and that fertility added to national wealth. The core of his reasoning emanated from his humane concern for the sufferings caused by overpopulation and thus recommended moral restraint against large families.
For a country like Uganda where the president’s word becomes national policy, Iam worried that Musevenis’s open campaign for a large population will undermine family planning efforts. If that happens, government will have condemned the lives of millions of Ugandans to eternal destitution and suffering.
31 October 2007
Uganda should heed World Bank Advice
In his article entitled “World Bank lacks good intentions for Uganda” (New Vision of Monday October 29, 2007), Warren Nyamugasira launched a stinging attack on World Bank’s recent economic assessment on Uganda. He accused the international lending institution and other development partners of harbouring a hidden agenda aimed at stifling government response to spiralling poverty and declining economic growth.
This was after Wold Bank had released a Country Economic Memorandum, castigating the Ugandan government for loosing focus from its core development strategy – and instead diverting its attention to ad-hoc alternative interventions.
Compared with other developing countries, Uganda is exceptional in the degree it has made poverty the central focus of its intervention. It has a robust development strategy – the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) which provides the long-term framework for catalysing and sustaining economic growth.
According to PEAP, poverty will be reduced through better macro-economic management; enhancing production, competitiveness and household incomes; improving security and governance; and investing in human development.
Boosting private investment; eliminating corruption; enhancing transparency and accountability; modernising agriculture, natural resource conservation, infrastructural improvements and private sector skills development are elements envisaged under PEAP framework to provide a platform for a private-sector led economic growth.
While income poverty incidence reduced in the 1990s, poverty prevalence has increased since 2000. Inequality has worsened since 1997; infant and child mortality have both increased; while the poorest hardly benefit from development. The gross failures in the government’s economic growth strategy are a universal concern.
Despite these failures, World Bank, and some of us strongly believe (to Nyamugasira’s distaste) that the current development strategy is robust enough to deliver economic gains; and that we don’t need a fundamentally new approach. Government only needs to address itself adequately to the core elements of PEAP.
Corruption and abuse of office is rampant; physical infrastructural facilities are rotten; while agricultural production and marketing systems remain in shambles. Trade policies – the few that Government have negotiated are irrelevant to the rural poor – and could in fact be fuelling economic inequalities.
Moreover, fiscal indiscipline is at all-time high – considering recent revelations that government granted and eventually lost trillions of shillings in unsecured loans to its confidant businessmen and companies.
Granted, Universal Primary Education has increased school enrolment but at the expense of education quality. Few people will disagree that Universal Secondary Education will further plunge educational standards in the country – especially given government’s disproportionate attention to education facilities; teacher training, facilitation and motivation.
World Bank’s considered opinion is that rather than dismantle the current economic growth apparatus, Government needs to focus more on inherent weakness therein; plug all the loopholes, and purge the debilitating factors.
Ad-hoc alternatives such as Bona Bagagawale (Prosperity for all) don’t constitute anything fundamentally different from what we have seen. The same government experimented with Entandikwa in the 90s– which ended in disaster. The Bona Bagagawale project will, as World Bank correctly noted, promote selective lending and therefore aggravate rural inequality and poverty.
Since 2001, government has been using NAADS as the main avenue for enhancing household incomes. NAADS has a unique approach that is all inclusive – mainstreaming gender and targeting the poor through its farmer fora mechanism. The only requirement for farmers to access NAADS services is for them to join common interest farmers groups – which as experience shows, tend to be all-inclusive.
NAADS may not be bringing riches to farmers as fast as anybody would have wished but it is, and might remain the best option for three quarters of the Ugandan population. Warren Nyamugasira should explain why more farmer groups are joining NAADS every year despite his assertion that farmers loath it.
World Bank is clear: Let Government give a chance to ongoing development mechanisms rather than animatedly shift goal-posts. Fundamentally, this calls for a sustained focus and concentration on the principles of PEAP coupled with self-cleansing. We don’t have to be like the Batwa (pygmies) of Semliki and Bwindi national parks who desert their forest dwellings every time some one dies in there. Truth is sometimes bitter, but government should heed World Bank advice!
This was after Wold Bank had released a Country Economic Memorandum, castigating the Ugandan government for loosing focus from its core development strategy – and instead diverting its attention to ad-hoc alternative interventions.
Compared with other developing countries, Uganda is exceptional in the degree it has made poverty the central focus of its intervention. It has a robust development strategy – the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) which provides the long-term framework for catalysing and sustaining economic growth.
According to PEAP, poverty will be reduced through better macro-economic management; enhancing production, competitiveness and household incomes; improving security and governance; and investing in human development.
Boosting private investment; eliminating corruption; enhancing transparency and accountability; modernising agriculture, natural resource conservation, infrastructural improvements and private sector skills development are elements envisaged under PEAP framework to provide a platform for a private-sector led economic growth.
While income poverty incidence reduced in the 1990s, poverty prevalence has increased since 2000. Inequality has worsened since 1997; infant and child mortality have both increased; while the poorest hardly benefit from development. The gross failures in the government’s economic growth strategy are a universal concern.
Despite these failures, World Bank, and some of us strongly believe (to Nyamugasira’s distaste) that the current development strategy is robust enough to deliver economic gains; and that we don’t need a fundamentally new approach. Government only needs to address itself adequately to the core elements of PEAP.
Corruption and abuse of office is rampant; physical infrastructural facilities are rotten; while agricultural production and marketing systems remain in shambles. Trade policies – the few that Government have negotiated are irrelevant to the rural poor – and could in fact be fuelling economic inequalities.
Moreover, fiscal indiscipline is at all-time high – considering recent revelations that government granted and eventually lost trillions of shillings in unsecured loans to its confidant businessmen and companies.
Granted, Universal Primary Education has increased school enrolment but at the expense of education quality. Few people will disagree that Universal Secondary Education will further plunge educational standards in the country – especially given government’s disproportionate attention to education facilities; teacher training, facilitation and motivation.
World Bank’s considered opinion is that rather than dismantle the current economic growth apparatus, Government needs to focus more on inherent weakness therein; plug all the loopholes, and purge the debilitating factors.
Ad-hoc alternatives such as Bona Bagagawale (Prosperity for all) don’t constitute anything fundamentally different from what we have seen. The same government experimented with Entandikwa in the 90s– which ended in disaster. The Bona Bagagawale project will, as World Bank correctly noted, promote selective lending and therefore aggravate rural inequality and poverty.
Since 2001, government has been using NAADS as the main avenue for enhancing household incomes. NAADS has a unique approach that is all inclusive – mainstreaming gender and targeting the poor through its farmer fora mechanism. The only requirement for farmers to access NAADS services is for them to join common interest farmers groups – which as experience shows, tend to be all-inclusive.
NAADS may not be bringing riches to farmers as fast as anybody would have wished but it is, and might remain the best option for three quarters of the Ugandan population. Warren Nyamugasira should explain why more farmer groups are joining NAADS every year despite his assertion that farmers loath it.
World Bank is clear: Let Government give a chance to ongoing development mechanisms rather than animatedly shift goal-posts. Fundamentally, this calls for a sustained focus and concentration on the principles of PEAP coupled with self-cleansing. We don’t have to be like the Batwa (pygmies) of Semliki and Bwindi national parks who desert their forest dwellings every time some one dies in there. Truth is sometimes bitter, but government should heed World Bank advice!
27 September 2007
Farming will not Guarantee Prosperity to most Ugandans
In 1997, Uganda launched the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) to transform the country into a modern economy. PEAP envisages the creation of an enabling environment for rapid and sustainable economic growth and aims to reduce the population living in absolute poverty, from 44% (1997) to below 10% by 2017. It places stronger emphasis on agricultural transformation, owing to the importance of the agricultural sector to the economy.
To enable farmers shift from predominantly subsistence farming, to producing for the market, government developed the Plan for Modernizing Agriculture (PMA) in 1998. PMA has several components, one of which is National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) which was launched in 2001 to facilitate the envisaged agricultural commercialization by supporting farmers to access agricultural information, knowledge and technology.
Despite these magnificent strategies, recent studies indicate that majority of the country’s population are becoming poorer. The National Household Survey showed a significant increase in the poor from 34% (7.2 million people) in 1999/2000 to 38% (8.9 million people) in 2002/2003.
NAADS has been heavily criticised and blamed for the persistent rural poverty. On his recent Bona Bagagawale (prosperity for all) tour of Luwero, president Museveni slapped a ban on NAADS funding and ordered a review into why it has failed to catalyse agricultural commercialisation.
Is it fair for government to blame NAADS for lack of progress on agricultural commercialisation? Have we critically analysed the basic ingredients for commercialisation, and are we satisfied that all is in place? Isn’t it possible that NAADS is only a scapegoat; that agricultural commercialisation is in fact an illusion that might never occur?
NAADS has definitely done the best it could have done – under the circumstances. It has mobilised farmers; empowered them through their farmers’ fora and procurement committees to articulate their farming constrains and procure advisory services to address those needs. In addition, it has championed the introduction and multiplication of new agricultural technologies such as temperate fruits (apples and grapes) in Kigezi and Rwenzori highlands.
Commercialising agriculture in most parts of Uganda, especially the heavily settled areas, faces a serious hitch over which NAADS has little control though. Consider the case of poor household access to arable land. In Kabale for instance, recent estimates show population density as nearly 300 persons per square kilometre of total land (including forests and other non-arable land cover forms). This increases to nearly 800 people per square kilometre of arable land. High density, coupled with the traditional land inheritance method has fragmented land into meagre plots. Total land holding in Kabale is estimated to be 0.25 – 1.0ha for a six-member household. Who does not agree that such an acute land scarcity would fatally short-circuit NAADS? How much commercialisation will a 6-member household owning fragmented, less than 0.3 ha plots achieve?
For such land-constrained communities, the key to Bona Bagagawale will certainly not be farming! Government should be aware that whatever its intentions, any agricultural spending on such people will not significantly transform their mode of production – which will at best – remain subsistence.
An opportunity which government can, and should pursue for such communities, is to promote Non-Farm Enterprises (NFEs). A landmark study, which DFID recently conducted in Uganda, revealed that NFEs contributed a bigger proportion of household income compared to farming. It also revealed that poverty was reducing fastest amongst women with a high level of NFEs within their livelihood strategies.
Uganda therefore needs to undertake policy reforms aimed at catalysing growth of the NFE sector. However, given the interdependence of NFE with other sectors (agriculture, natural resources, tourism, etc), what may actually be required is to fine-tune existing policies to improve linkages between NFE and other livelihood sectors.
It is important that we identify real issues behind commercialisation failures and proactively put Bona Bagagawale into context. Unfairly blaming NAADS is tantamount to wrong diagnosis. There are definitely areas where NAADS needs to improve to increase its impact and visibility.
NAADS is an evolving programme, which already constantly adjusts its methodological approaches based on regular reviews and critical reflection. A review which the president has ordered will therefore not only be utterly redundant but will miss the point!
Denis Mutabazi
September 2007
To enable farmers shift from predominantly subsistence farming, to producing for the market, government developed the Plan for Modernizing Agriculture (PMA) in 1998. PMA has several components, one of which is National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) which was launched in 2001 to facilitate the envisaged agricultural commercialization by supporting farmers to access agricultural information, knowledge and technology.
Despite these magnificent strategies, recent studies indicate that majority of the country’s population are becoming poorer. The National Household Survey showed a significant increase in the poor from 34% (7.2 million people) in 1999/2000 to 38% (8.9 million people) in 2002/2003.
NAADS has been heavily criticised and blamed for the persistent rural poverty. On his recent Bona Bagagawale (prosperity for all) tour of Luwero, president Museveni slapped a ban on NAADS funding and ordered a review into why it has failed to catalyse agricultural commercialisation.
Is it fair for government to blame NAADS for lack of progress on agricultural commercialisation? Have we critically analysed the basic ingredients for commercialisation, and are we satisfied that all is in place? Isn’t it possible that NAADS is only a scapegoat; that agricultural commercialisation is in fact an illusion that might never occur?
NAADS has definitely done the best it could have done – under the circumstances. It has mobilised farmers; empowered them through their farmers’ fora and procurement committees to articulate their farming constrains and procure advisory services to address those needs. In addition, it has championed the introduction and multiplication of new agricultural technologies such as temperate fruits (apples and grapes) in Kigezi and Rwenzori highlands.
Commercialising agriculture in most parts of Uganda, especially the heavily settled areas, faces a serious hitch over which NAADS has little control though. Consider the case of poor household access to arable land. In Kabale for instance, recent estimates show population density as nearly 300 persons per square kilometre of total land (including forests and other non-arable land cover forms). This increases to nearly 800 people per square kilometre of arable land. High density, coupled with the traditional land inheritance method has fragmented land into meagre plots. Total land holding in Kabale is estimated to be 0.25 – 1.0ha for a six-member household. Who does not agree that such an acute land scarcity would fatally short-circuit NAADS? How much commercialisation will a 6-member household owning fragmented, less than 0.3 ha plots achieve?
For such land-constrained communities, the key to Bona Bagagawale will certainly not be farming! Government should be aware that whatever its intentions, any agricultural spending on such people will not significantly transform their mode of production – which will at best – remain subsistence.
An opportunity which government can, and should pursue for such communities, is to promote Non-Farm Enterprises (NFEs). A landmark study, which DFID recently conducted in Uganda, revealed that NFEs contributed a bigger proportion of household income compared to farming. It also revealed that poverty was reducing fastest amongst women with a high level of NFEs within their livelihood strategies.
Uganda therefore needs to undertake policy reforms aimed at catalysing growth of the NFE sector. However, given the interdependence of NFE with other sectors (agriculture, natural resources, tourism, etc), what may actually be required is to fine-tune existing policies to improve linkages between NFE and other livelihood sectors.
It is important that we identify real issues behind commercialisation failures and proactively put Bona Bagagawale into context. Unfairly blaming NAADS is tantamount to wrong diagnosis. There are definitely areas where NAADS needs to improve to increase its impact and visibility.
NAADS is an evolving programme, which already constantly adjusts its methodological approaches based on regular reviews and critical reflection. A review which the president has ordered will therefore not only be utterly redundant but will miss the point!
Denis Mutabazi
September 2007