Uganda: Act Fast to Stop Famine in 2017

famine

The widespread drought that Uganda experienced in 2016 will likely lead to widespread famine in 2017. The drought brought many farmers on the brink of financial ruin as illustrated by the experience of a friend who got all his meagre savings and headed to the highlands of Sebei to grow maize.

In Sebei, maize takes seven months to mature but in 2016 the rains started falling intermittently around the fourth month. Even so my friend patiently tended his nine-acre garden for six and a half months until curiosity got the better of him and he opened one maize cob to check how full it was. The cob was very big but only had a few seeds dotted on it.

He checked more cobs and got the same result; huge cobs with few seeds. Other farmers who planted their maize at the same time as my friend reported the same finding, which led to the conclusion that the 2016 crop had failed massively.

Warning of looming famine

On November 3, 2016, Operation Wealth Creation (OWC) - an outfit led by army veterans and in charge of agricultural extension, tweeted the picture of President Museveni carrying a 20 litre water container on a bicycle to demonstrate drip irrigation. I suspect that by the time the President opted for this action, he had been warned about the looming famine in Uganda just like Pharaoh was warned about seven years of famine that were coming upon ancient Egypt.

But there are three important differences between the Ugandan and Egyptian situation. While the king of Egypt had seven years to prepare against the famine, the President of Uganda has less than seven months to respond to the biting hunger that might erupt in March 2017.

The king of Egypt had the wisdom and good character of Joseph to rely on but in Uganda both agricultural extension and disaster preparedness is in shambles.

Joseph had a plan which he implemented systematically and saved Egypt from ruin while Uganda is doing trial and error; we have already ditched drip irrigation and are now proposing to stop funding public works in order to make money available for buying food.

Required response

Two main responses are required from the government as we enter into 2017.

The government should outsource the provision of relief food to credible emergency response organisations such as the World Food Programme or World Vision Uganda. This will ensure that whatever little money there is goes into acquisition of food instead of diverting some of it to scale up the emergency response capacity by acquiring storage facilities, renting trucks and hiring staff.

Uganda must get agricultural extension service back on track. When the planting season starts in 2017, farmers will need quick maturing and drought resistant planting materials.

Many farmers will also need affordable financing to enable them prepare their gardens and acquire planting materials. I doubt that Operation Wealth Creation has the imagination and skillset needed to facilitate this important and now urgent role.

The plan

Create food reserves. According to Food and Agriculture Organisation, Uganda needs a food reserve agency that will backstop food security and protect farmers and consumers from the extremes of food price volatility.