Donors should be at least consistent

Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014

The assent to the Anti-homosexuality Bill by President Museveni has generated much debate, controversies and a mixture of reactions. The most unusual, and yet very strong reactions to the Act emerged from donor community and the usually docile and insensitive tribe in Uganda called the “Elites”

I think the donor and international community must be consistent in their responses to policy development in Uganda. If their strong reaction to the Anti-Homosexuality Act is due to human rights concerns then they have let us all down. These donor communities have been feeding this ogre for so many years to the point that it has matured beyond a pet they thought they were breeding.

For many years, the US and EU countries have supported the regime of President Museveni even when they know he rigs elections and blatantly violates human rights. They pampered it with money and protected its corrupt officials. Sweden, Holland, USA and Denmark have never condemned the many human rights violation that the regime has afflicted on the opposition with decisive actions. The donor money has been used for procuring instrument of repression and for recruiting and sustaining a politicized police while these donors just look on.

Many of us have wondered why Sweden’s foreign policy towards Uganda has been very deliberately anti-change. We understand that Sweden provided citizenship and protection to President Museveni’s family and many current NRM officials. However, since the NRM came to power, Sweden, and most of the EU countries have never taken strong measures to admonish the regime against its human rights excesses.

Human rights preservation is crucial for every human being irrespective of culture, creed, sexual orientation or association whether one is gay or not. And yet, these very same standards are not upheld when our opposition politicians are being humiliated by the Police or our people are dying senselessly in Northern Uganda.

The donor community did not threaten this regime with stern action or withdrawal of assistance when the regime enacted the draconian Public Order Management Act, 2013. The donor community watched with glee when the likes of Hon Otto Odonga, Hon Ibrahim Ssemuju Nganda and others were whisked away like ruffians from Parliamentary chambers

I am definitely not in support of the Anti-Homosexuality Act categorically on professional and humanitarian grounds. As a member of the medical fraternity, practitioner of public health and Global Health, I know better that discrimination against minority has profound long term implication on public health systems. However, I am also sensitive to the dominant culture of Uganda which views the same sex relationships as objectionable and alien.

The Buggery Act of 1533 criminalized gay activities in Britain which it considered sinful and punishable by death. Gay rights and activities only gained prominence between 1967 and 1982 and has just been consolidated by the Equality Act of 2012. The ultra-conservative section of the North American society still views gay marriages as improper and a violation of the institution of marriage. And, of course, the devout mainstream religious following also consider same sex relationships as a deviation from the religious norms and teachings. In the US, only 17 States of the 50 have fully legalized gay marriages.

As global leaders, we must learn to be tolerant with people who are different from us and cognizant of their stages of development and of mainstream cultures which shapes their conscience. The celebrated American, Rev Jeremiah Wright once counseled that being different does not mean being deficient at all. Take for instance, US, Canada, UK and EU countries criminalizes polygamy and yet some cultures here delight in it.

My second discomfort with the anti-homosexuality Act, outside of human rights concerns, relates to health inequities and access to other pertinent socio-economic services. Our social services are not capacitated to accommodate vulnerable groups such as women and persons with disability. Likewise, in the 60s and 70s, most medical experiments and drug tests were geared mainly to male related illnesses and conditions. This made it very difficult to contain women specific illnesses and conditions such as cervical and breast cancers.

Therefore, coming purely from a professional perspective, we have learned that discriminating against minority groups generate inequalities, institutionalizes exclusion from social services and yet, exclusion does not imply extermination of such a group.

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Strong imagination critical in post conflict Acholi

Latanya, Pader

My Global Health practicum in Kitgum and Pader has given me unimaginable opportunity to traverse this huge district. In my sojourn, I have been humbled by people’s resolve to self mobilize so as to build their communities from the debris of over 25 years of anarchy.

In Latanya subcounty of Pader District, deep under the mountains, an impoverished community is silently struggling with an aspiration and a priority to start a secondary school. It has resolved to grow the secondary school to the point where government may take it up. In the whole of Latanya, there is no secondary school and yet there are so many Primary schools. 

The lack of a nearby secondary school also means that the children from these impoverished rural peasantry households are limited to primary school education. This Latanya Community seed secondary school represented by two small buildings peripheral to Wiliwili government primary school, is all that CARITAS and USAID sponsored for them. 

This year, senior three is to be introduced, which means they may not have a classroom to accommodate this growth. It is amazing how community members are willingly donating land for the expansion of this school.

Listening to the narratives of the parents, the principles of community empowerment and community networking comes alive. However, the lack of imagination and concrete realities of poverty strains such resolves.

Beyond Latanya’s community initiatives, I was taken aback at the amount of alcohol being consumed here. Residents have complained of crude waragi being imported from Lira called Gur and other crude drinks in sachets. 

Here, death occurs by the sachets. In one week, over seven funerals had been associated with deaths from alcohol. Drinking alcohol has potential negative implications across these communities. It is lessening the workforce as would-be able-bodied folks turn to drinking the moment they are awake. This behavior sets a wrong tone for children and youths who may have to grapple with bad role models. Domestic and gender based violence are on the increase. Cases of murder resulting from petty quarrels at drinking joints are rampant here.

Another major challenge here is that men are not actively seeking health care services. This means that women have become the gatekeepers to healthcare, nutrition and to security for the household. Women in the post conflict Acholi have become the pillars of homes and communities, which is unusual because in Acholi tradition, men have always shaped social and economic discourses, while women played supervisory and support roles. Today, women are doing it all while the men are drinking.

It is disheartening that women are the ones actively seeking for HIV tests and HIV care. The men, who are most likely to have multiple partners, acquire and spread HIV, TB and other diseases, are not involved in healthcare seeking. You will only find women at antenatal clinics. Stories have been told where some men living with HIV have the audacity to forcefully grab the ante-retroviral medication from their wives to share the dose.

One of the major problems of this post conflict Acholi region is the lack of imagination among local leaders. As pre conflict leadership now yearns for a transition to post conflict societal engagement, there is a huge vacuum of leaders with imagination. Here, people vie for leadership position as routine job seeking venture.

There is need to eliminate from society the obviously unhelpful symbols of past conflict. People need to be re-connected and wired to a hopeful future. The dusty and bumpy roads that confront us daily are definitely a major setback to this imagination and economic development. The environment here is rapidly diminishing due to inadequate deliberate preparation to contain extreme weathers; flooding during rainy season and prolonged dry season. Communities should be prepared to build water reservoirs to harness the excessive flooding during dry spells.

In short, post conflict Acholi is badly in need of characters with imagination to catapult this region to a new economic order. These leaders ought to mobilize the bludgeoning resolve of the people and harness it to spur development, to break from the traditions of fear and pessimism. Unfortunately, everything here is linked with politics which renders most elected leaders ineffective.

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Thematic Curriculum benefits Dure Primary School

Dure - Pader, Uganda

A couple of MPs have been fuming that the thematic curriculum is responsible for poor performance of some pupils in the just concluded Primary Leaving Examination. They argued that the introduction of mother language at formative years in school makes it impossible for the pupils to score good grades in English. They blamed the thematic curriculum for this poor performance and yet, the problem lies elsewhere.

While these MPs are genuinely concerned as parents, they exhibited total lack of knowledge on how education success and scores are measured.

The basis for introducing mother language in lower grade school emerged from scientific evidence from many years of studies by scholars and UNESCO. 

Consistent evidence illustrated clearly that the overall quality of comprehension and articulation in scholarship are significantly enhanced when a child has mastery of mother language or the first language spoken at home.

The incoherence that we witness in Uganda is embedded in this assumption that mastery of the English language is a superior indicator of being educated or intelligent. 

This serves to illustrate how dominated and subjugated we are and how unconsciously we now accept this explanation that our intellect is defined by our ability to communicate in the English language. And yet, one of the most unfortunate things ever to happen in Uganda is that this colonial tool of dominance called English has not inspired any advance in any field relevant to human civilization.

Take for example in my village of Dure. This year, pupils at Dure Primary School in Latanya sub-county of Pader district have posted tremendous improvement in their PLE results. Two students passed in first grade and 39 passed in second grade, 4 pupils passed in division three and 3 students passed in division 4 category. So far, this has been the biggest school grade achievement of this village school in its post conflict recovery.

Dure Primary school is a rural community school which suffers from challenges akin to rural schools in Northern Uganda. However, this dismal and yet celebrated performance at Dure Primary school provides an evaluation opportunity for those with keen interest in the education of our children beyond English scores. The thematic curriculum has huge promises where the benchmark for our intellect is not judged by one’s scores in English but math and sciences alike.

Here in Dure, we have children who lack in every facility and are heavily disadvantaged in comparison to children in urban schools and in Western or Central Uganda generally. These children may be already heads of their families at tender age because their parents are either dead or immobilized by HIV/AIDS. Most of them live under squalor with grandmother or relatives who are impoverished with very little to eat.

Pader, like most post-conflict Northern Uganda communities endures alcoholism and HIV prevalence which have horrendously devastated homes and livelihood. Children study and compete with their counterparts elsewhere without preps or doing homework because they have no source of light to study after school.

So, the Universal Primary Education is an important asset and any incremental performance in these rural schools becomes a source of inspiration and hope for many guardians. Children here have little prospects of advancing past primary schools because Universal Secondary Education has become costly. Even the six (6) USE facilities are distantly spaced. Small additional costs, such as transportation, basic secondary school requirements and the roles that these children hold in their families, always become major impediments to advancing to secondary school education.

Therefore, these MPs must be taught that performance of the thematic curriculum is not measured only by scores in English grades in examination. There are many factors involved, for instance, how well has Ministry of Education invested in improving the quality of teaching workforce to meet this peculiar UPE challenges? Has the Ministry and UNEB considered revising PLE examination standard to reflect the current English instructional level for candidate classes?

Let’s give the thematic curriculum a chance to gain traction.

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How Alcohol defines social transformation in Kitgum

Alcohol Consumption

The scotching weather in Kitgum is one which can make life very difficult. However, for the people here, heat is not as much as discomforting as the chronic and persistent poverty that confront them on the daily basis. Fortunately, for Kitgum’s middle class, artisans and business fraternity, life appears to be vibrant. Kitgum is a small town, humbly laid in valleys and interlaced with River Pager which gives it the vein to wash away its filth and to others, the water to feed its living systems.

Walking on the streets, I hear that this year, Kitgum’s simsim harvest has been remarkable. The sight of heavily loaded Dyna trucks ferrying sacks of simsim away reaffirms this prospect. With simsim giving the people a good harvest, many would hope that the livelihood here would dramatically transform. The fact is, much of the proceeds from a good harvest go to drinking alcohol.

The truth be said, Kitgum was voted the dirtiest town in Uganda recently by the New Vision panel of experts. Walking through the dusty streets, it is obvious that Kitgum town’s main streets have never seen tarmac since independence. The traces ofTarmac built during colonial rule have faced enormous wear and tear, causing terrible unease for travelers. The dusty roads and the rather flat landscape give the city a naturally dirty appearance.

And yet, beneath its entire neglected infrastructure, Kitgum has probably the most resilient population in the entire Uganda. Here, boda-boda and wheelbarrow pushers are still trusted with your valuables; you hardly hear of petty thefts, like phone stealing, night time robbery or such under-class mannerism which afflicts most of the sprawling urban centres elsewhere.

The humble life in Kitgum town also reveals the tragedy of the NRM’s desire for social transformation to dependence. In the last two years, the District budget shows that the population only contributes about 1.5% to its total budget. The rest of the tab is picked by central government and donors. This also signifies persistent and chronic poverty.

But this city has also been gifted with hard working city bureaucrats who toil day and night to make ends meet with the meager resources at hand. Maybe someday, they will bring tarmac to this city’s main roads.

However, it is the low productivity and high alcohol consumption which challenges the economic recovery of this district. The harsh hot weather and the exhausted soils due to environmental degradation presents a fear for a rough future of this place transforming into semi-arid land.

Social transformation comes with re-alignment and a shift in collective consciousness of a people. If a place like Kitgum is to reinvent itself to a post conflict modern city, then the force to compel it forward must come from within. The over two decades of war has made the residents of Kitgum suspicious of foreign influences. Coupled with the many NGOs that had flooded this place, people had become dependent on hand-outs but the lull created by the subsequent withdrawal of NGOs has also driven the people to their gardens, to grow Simsim and other food crops.

The dilemma of this place now is alcoholism. Alcoholism has redefined the collective consciousness of this town, just as it has usurped the growth of other districts in this region.

I heard saddening stories in social places such as morning devotions that people are selling their harvests to buy alcohol. Unlike in the south and other parts of the country where youths sell off their lands to buy boda boda cycles, here, people have the proclivity to dispose-off valuable assets for alcohol. The situation has reached a pandemic level and yet the societal response is minimal if not timid. One would get the impression that the churches and local authorities have already been defeated. Even the prospect of near death cannot can not deter  alcohol consumption.

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Anti-corruption fight is a bully for the weak

FIGHTING CORRUPTION

The article by Hon Rose Namayanja Nsereko, the Minister of Information and National Guidance titled “Government has registered victory in fighting corruption” must be applauded and at the same time examined critically (see: DM, Jan 10, 2014). So far, this article is the most comprehensive insight of the progress being made by the office of the Inspector General of Government, the statutory body assigned to fight the endemic vice of corruption in government.

To add a more moderate voice to this rather glamorous account as depicted by the Minister, Uganda is known for having some of best laws in the region. Whether laws against graft or those prohibitive laws against moral corruption, human liberties and so forth. When it comes to writing laws, Uganda has gone off its way to extract laws from Britain and from the United States without fear. Of recent, this country has been able to invoke a colonial law – that ensures preventive arrests on assumptions or prediction of potential breach. 

This law has been used specifically against dissenters like Besigye and others but not on potentially corrupt politicians.

The existence of many robust anti-corruption laws in Uganda is not issue of contestation here. The major ingredient that Uganda lacks in the fight against corruption is the political will to reinforce those laws to their rational ends. In all aspects, the problems that afflict the fight against corruption are also the transformative as well as functional nature of corruption, it being used as a political tool.

Ugandans will not be dubbed by romanticized statistics which glorifies half a success story. While I am tempted to believe that all is rosy at the Ombudsman’s office as the Minister portrays, reality checks may reveal another narrative - far from what government is numbing our nerves with.

First, cases that have been easily disposed are those that affect the less important personalities who commit petty acts of corruption due to poor supervision. The government has deliberately failed to persecute those bigger political fishes whose fingers never leave public purse. And yet, the political class is the most corrupted class. This means the IGG’s office and the police have never had sufficient and real powers to reign in on the politicians.

Second, corruption is the mediating mechanism of the regime upon which patronage and allegiances are negotiated. 

As a consequence, the cost of politics on public purse has become overwhelming at the expense of public service. The cost of public administration and the corruption which sustains it ensures that no public institution can claim to work independently and free of corruption. The IGG’s office and its officers are no exception. This is why those political honchos, who can bribe their way out or those who are connected to the establishment, tend to also evade the wrath of anti-corruption laws as we saw with the Gavi/Global funds scandal.

Thirdly, government’s failures to prioritize funding for anti-corruption institutions and its inherent inability to accept good governance as a principled aspect of the fight against graft, do illustrate their contempt for genuine anti-graft fight. Here and there, favoritism, cronyism, tribalism and the desire for life presidency, comes in handy to compromise any genuine head strong efforts at fighting corruption. The police appear too incompetent to conduct thorough and timely forensic investigation targeting politicians, and even where they have the capacity; their efforts are often thwarted by political interference from above.

These are not far-fetched claims because the recent Office of the Prime Minister’s scandal involving Ministry of Finance where money for reconstruction of Northern Uganda was fleeced, can attest to utter political sabotage in the works of police criminal investigation.

It is therefore justifiable to assert that any successes in the fight against corruption cannot be celebrated when the small fish down there are the target, leaving the politicians and key decision makers to be protected by the status quo.

It is only logical that any victory in the fight against corruption should not be celebrated too soon; else we shall be throwing the baby out with the bath water. Corruption prevails precisely because of thriving inequities in resource distribution. The political class and the corrupted middle class have conspired to operate in the unofficial institutions which have deprived the public institution of resources and sanity. Public servants have resorted to abuse public service because it is not rewarding anymore, so they sit on their hands or abandon it all together for politics.

The injustice is even distressful because the political elite appropriate larger shares of national resources to themselves while they mockingly implore the public servants and peasant farmers to adhere onto patriotism rather than distributive justice and equitable society. Today we hear common slogans like “tusaba gavumenti etuyambe” (we beg our government to help us), which signifies the increasing gap between the government and the common people.

People are increasingly distrustful of their government because of its corrupted way. All they see as the face of this regime are wealthy politicians accumulating personal wealth, while the common man’s space is dwindling and his fate consigned to providence. Like Karl Marx would say, issues of economic production have become too stressful that religion and Premier League have provided the fantasies of solace for the majority of disengaged Ugandans. The anti-corruption fight is one which is perceived as bully for the weak and toothless on the most corrupt.

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Identity Politics has become the landmark of NRM regime

IDENTITY POLITICS

In writing this article, I have made deep reflections on the evolution of NRM regime in its close to 30 years rule. Most interesting is the current manifestations of the regime, from a promising state builder into the very political organism for which its predecessors were condemned. We all recall in the late 80s and 90s when President Museveni, then liked by the masses as messiah incarnate, would berate the Obote’s UPC regime as a government which had perpetuated tribal factionalism, escalated religious divisionism and above all, a regime that was characterized by obscurantism.

To Museveni, the NRM had come with ten point programs, one key facet of it was the restoration of true democracy, establishing meritocracy in individual merit and so on. That the first ten point programs became the commandments of failures and were revised to fifteen points, then shelved, reveals the point of deviation to where we are today.

President Museveni has excelled in symbolic misrepresentation of both his intentions and relations. Where he promises rule of law and democracy, he instituted and ruled by legal notices, which in themselves are dictatorial decrees; where he promised free democratic society, he imposes the draconian article 269 in the 1995 Constitution to limit fundamental human liberties and rights of people to associate or indulge in free speech and he presides over rigged elections.

These, and many more, explains why it was inevitable for the NRM to become in all purposes and intent, the very vice for which it had promised to resolve.

Today, every public institution is confronted by breakages. Since independence, Uganda’s public service has suffered enormous neglect and mismanagement. Indigenous Ugandans have to endure limited options for basic and fundamental services like healthcare. Our hospitals have become a place where death is vended. 

Schools are in worse possible shape in history and for the record, even the government agrees that the education standards are at its lowest, regionally. Ministry of transportation, roads and infrastructure authorities have presided over the decay of the public transport sector with poor infrastructure all around the country.

Today, Uganda is experiencing growth in the private sector where ordinary Ugandans have been left unprotected against the vagaries of rogue individuals and private institutions. 

Hard-working Ugandans are losing homes over unsustainable mortgages whose rates are unstable; Banks are in cahoots with loan sharks to rip off hard working citizens while the regime watches with glee. The counterfeit products are being imported into the country in full gaze of the regime's minders; food prices are soaring by the day with scarcity of almost every basic food items despite the fact that Uganda still relies on agro-based economy.

Amidst these all, something more stellar a revelation must be made out of courage – identity politics has become the landmark of the NRM regime. 

If the UPC regime got the country divided on ethnic identities, the NRM regime has excelled in perpetuating identity politics. This is something they deny, but available facts counterpoises their obscurantism which is pedaled by a well orchestrated machination.

Frantz Fanon has argued that the chief consequence of identity politics is the rift in the nation along religious and ethnic boundaries. Fanon identifies that it is the national bourgeoisie who flame these religious and ethnic divides for which they are major beneficiaries.

In the case of Uganda's malicious middle class, we must find a plausible explanation to the prevailing rampant decadence in social services and in public institutions. This is attributable to identity politics, if not identity crisis.

We all know that the bush war NRA was founded on the basis of ethnicity in the pretext of fighting the same vice. The original 27 people who started the 1980 bush-war were all people from same ethnic group. The NRM government has retained such a characteristic through its close to 30 years in power. Majority of cabinet and key public service positions are retained by persons from the Western part of Uganda.  

Incidentally, the bulk of the NRA guerillas were nourished by many sons and daughters of former Rwandese exiles living in Western Uganda since 1959. Today, many of them have taken up Ugandan citizenship, while equal number or more, continued to hold dual identities of Ugandan and Rwandese – like the recently slain Col Patrick Karegyera - thereby setting grounds for identity conflict and crisis in loyalty to Uganda as we saw in the Kisangani conflicts. 

And yet, In Uganda, this group wields enormous power and are influential in both private and public sectors. Those in government are strategically located in key military and government positions where their influence remains visibly profound.

Herein lies the dilemma, could the conflicting identities and crisis in loyalty also explains the disparity in degree of commitment to public service delivery between Uganda and Rwanda? Why is Rwanda governed meticulously with social services delivered to near efficiency while in Uganda things have fallen completely apart? Why do we endure this high disregard for public utility in Uganda, while in Rwanda every public officer is accountable, professional and efficient?

In his book, The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon explains that identity politics generate distinctive situations that wear the spirit of a nation out; the ruling class becomes sympathetic to the bourgeoisie who don’t usually care about the welfare of the masses and nation building. Avigail Eisenberg and Will Kymlicker in their 2011 book “Identity politics in public realms: Bringing institutions back in” provided a robust analysis of state response to identity politics and illuminated both the risks and opportunities embedded in state response to identity claims. They concluded that public institutions can either enhance or distort the benefits of identity politics based on the agency of citizenship.

The above citations show that the Ugandan regime has increasingly become supportive of predatory middle class, many of whom are direct beneficiaries or a prodigy of the regime itself. And yet these groups are faced with identity conflict leading to crisis in loyalty to Uganda and to public service. Because of the crucial positions that this conflicted group dominate, the regime’s utmost interests have grown to become exclusively mutual with that of the many impoverished and disenfranchised common citizens of Uganda.

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Eliminating food losses and wastes could reduce food insecurity

FOOD SECURITY

One of the biggest dilemmas in Uganda is the sight of children who are malnourished and often emaciated due to adequate foods and sick from lack of safe drinking water. Putting the challenge of safe and adequate water aside, this article posits that the problem of food shortage in Uganda is a matter of negligence which should be addressed.

One worrying situation of all Ugandans is food. Families and friends are often alienated from each other because the thought of food required to feed guests does not encourage frequent re-unions. People in urban areas don’t like impromptu visitors from their rural roots because of food costs. Food – whether its availability or scarcity, remains the number one determinant of social relations; it defines and shapes human character and offers deeper implication in the socio-cultural evolution of society.

Principally, the foods that we eat define our culture and identity; it may also define one’s social class and caliber. The way we acquire food and the way we consume it also determines our degree of dignity as human beings. If we are forced to beg, steal or negotiate for a compromised food value, we suffer indignation and constant sense of insecurity. Food scarcity is a major source of insecurity worldwide and this concern is at the core of global health.

Our ability to afford the foods that we want and when we want it also validates our dignity and sense of purpose in life. Ability to afford adequate and nutritious food on timely basis also gives us a liberating mindset – the confidence attributable to successful life beyond mere existence. This liberating potential also defines our social status and relations. It follows that people, who can afford food, can also afford other amenities of life, including healthy children rearing.

It is almost impossible to believe that in Uganda food is scarce. Our annual budget reflects that subsistence agricultural is still employing 85% of Ugandans. This means that 15% of the population is not participating directly in farming. Uganda is a country of nearly 35 million people. That means less than 6 million people are not directly participating in subsistence farming. Unfortunately, the national budget allocation to agriculture which is critical to our economy is still very low, leading to low food production and food insecurity.

A key factor which perpetuates food insecurity is the wasteful nature of our interaction with the foods that we produce. The difference between food loss and food waste can be found along the chain of events that precede food production to consumption. Food loss occurs constantly starting from the way gardens are prepared, crops are planted or catered for; during the use of fertilizers, harvesting, storage, preservation, transportation, and at the market. 

For instance, research in Kenya and India are increasingly showing that between 25-30 percent of fruits produced by local farmers are lost during this process. For fruits such as mangoes, oranges, bananas etc the loss is even enormous because 98% are consumed in the domestic market, while only 2% actually find its way to export markets. Of the 98% in domestic market, it is estimated that 40-50% is lost; birds and animals will eat, children will destroy fruits that are not ready, pests, warms, weather conditions and so many other factors leads to loss of agricultural products. These losses could actually be minimized.

Likewise, food waste is when food arrives at the point of consumption and, because of some reasons; it is discarded or recycled before it is consumed! Definitely, you must have seen how farmers of perishable goods always dump consumable foods in trash at the end of the day. That is waste. Yet, someone in need could have used that food. The estimate of foods wasted in a day is stunning, but close to half of every food or crop that leaves the market to households goes to waste.

FAO reports shows that food loss and food waste actually occur at the early to middle stages of production in developing countries. This means, by the time food reaches the market; more than half of the total volume of produce per harvest, in a season will have been lost or wasted.

Food loss and wastage are a major concern for FAO and food security fraternity globally.  It is important to note that some of the general challenges which affect developing countries also affect food security. Bad governance, corruption and institutional failures, for instance, also ensure that food production distribution and consumption are interrupted. These, lead to persistent food insecurity that is made worse by persevering conflicts and natural disasters and yet food insecurity can itself perpetuate societal conflicts.

For Uganda to minimize food losses and wastage, it is important to invest in major regional food storage facilities, improving agricultural practices, skills and human resources; encouraging farm consolidation and cooperatives for small to medium size farmers; improving on rural roads and distribution system so that food can reach storage facilities and markets on time; provide a sustainable shock prevention mechanisms and tax incentives for farmers who may face adverse conditions, such as insecurity, bad weather roads and natural calamities, such as droughts.

Otherwise, the foods produced in Uganda, should be enough to feed the nation and the surplus could still feed the arteries of the international food markets. But first, we must recognize the imperative to mitigate the rampant food losses and wasting in our food chain.

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