By Richard Todwong

The period of instability and disorder in northern Uganda has lasted several years, to settle down but now that there is relative peace, we have to move past the misery and desolation of the war.

In what many termed crisis intervention, we saw many humanitarian agencies flooding northern Uganda and within a short time, the north became the centre of local and international agencies. Credit goes to those honest and dedicated agencies and discredit to those who used the misery of the people to make fortunes; I pray God punishes them heavily including those in the Government.

The challenge now is that the community became so used to the hand-outs from these agencies that it will take time to instill the spirit of hardwork and self-reliance. It is now hard to call for a meeting without your audience asking for â€œfacilitationâ€.

I recall when the German president visited Gulu, accompanied by chairman Mao and other leaders in 2007, in one of the meetings he held with women, the only question asked was â€˜facilitationâ€™.

The German president told them he had not gone there to give them money but share with them feelings of the German people and their interest to rebuild northern Uganda along side the Government.

This has been the policy of most non governmental organisations (NGOâ€™s). Any small village meeting or workshop facilitation is always given and some leaders in the north have made it a habit to go for workshops whenever they are invited because they expect â€˜facilitationâ€™.

With the global financial crisis, most of these NGOs are scaling down their operations due to the hardship in securing funds from their donors. This is happening at a time when the Government is encouraging the internally displaced people (IDPs) to resettle in their homes. As a result, the IDPs are faced with serious challenges like insufficient resettlement packages, inadequate health and education facilities, community roads, clean water sources and community security. The rampant land conflict which is splitting families, clans and chiefdoms is a time bomb to a final resettlement. These are forcing the child-headed families, the widows, the elderly and the sick to remain in the camps.

As IDPs ponder about the above, business speculators are moving in. This is putting even more pressure on the community making survival much harder.

While the NGOs are transforming themselves from charity-based organisations to profit agencies, the financial institutions are moving in. All these are targeting the local community and the proximity to Southern Sudan where there are more prospects for corporate bodies.

This has made property rates in Gulu more than double within the last few years. Accommodation has become a problem. NGOs, foreign researchers and Gulu University students, leave alone the able locals, are all searching for the limited accommodation facilities.

Gulu municipality is second after Kampala in population figures and money in circulation. Population- wise, if compared to other municipalities according to the 2008 Uganda Bureau of Statistics projection, Gulu municipalty has 141,500 people, while Lira, Arua, Soroti, Moroto, Mbale, Tororo, Mbarara and Fort Portal municipalities have less than 100,000 thousand people each.

With reconstruction money from the Government and NGOs, remittances from the Acholi in the diaspora and the open market in Southern Sudan and northern Uganda, Gulu is believed to be second to Kampala in bank deposits.

This could be explained by the many banks that have opened up branches there. Standard Chartered, dfcu, Stanbic, Barclays, Crane Bank, Centenary, Kenya Commercial Bank, Housing Finance and others have all got branches here.

The main issue now is how can the local community be made to benefit from all these opportunities? Many of these financial institutions have opened up their doors to the population, but among the banking services in Acholi was a thing for a few â€˜noblesâ€™ and the community used to bank in form of livestock for which they are now demanding compensation from the Government to enable them catch up with these opportunities. Secondly, the banks require security in form of land tittles before loans are given, yet most of the land is customary-owned and has no title.

In line with the above, many who lost their property during the war are finding all possible avenues to demand compensation from the Government to empower them be part of the financially changing north. I got a complaint from Bunyoro about the Acholi people in Karuma Parish who are selling land that was offered to them temporarily to settle on during the war. The reason for the sale is to provide them with some cash as they return home.

The legacy of the war, the retribution, rehabilitation, the quest for prosperity for all and the politics of stability all put together can make one feel for the local community in northern Uganda who seem to have plenty of opportunities and yet they are not tapping into them because of structural disadvantages. To them, I say, do not waste time learning the â€˜trick of the tradeâ€™, learn the trade itself.

The writer is the special presidential adviser on northern Uganda

MTN, Outbox boost young innovators with MoMo 2022 Hackathon

The MTN MoMo team lead by Stephen Mutana the Chief regulatory & administation officer and the Outbox team lead by Richard Zulu Team leader

Tags: