OPINION

By Amlan Tumusiime

A few days ago, I hosted a group of friends led by Sedrack Nzeire Kaguta in Kikuube district. Nzeire had come to Hoima to visit the former First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Public Service, Mzee Henry Muganwa Kajura, at his home in Kitoba village, Hoima. Nzeire and Kajura are good friends and are both district National Resistance Movement (NRM) chairpersons. Kajura is NRM chairman of Hoima, while Nzeire is NRM chairman Kiruhura district.

After the Kitioba visit, I asked Nzeire and the group to take them around Kikuube district and see how the locals were seriously involved in commercial farming and growing a variety of food crops.

From Kitoba, we used Buseruka Road in Hoima district and we made several stopovers as my visitors were admiring different plantations planted by the people on a large scale. These include maize, beans, banana, cassava and coffee.

From each side of the road, you will see farmers busy in their gardens either harvesting or preparing their land.

On the side of Kikuube, the locals have planted maize in square miles. Also, big chunks of land have been planted with coffee. Square miles of beans have also been planted and so are other food crops like bananas, rice and avocado.

Happy and excited, Nzeire said: “I cannot believe what I am seeing. This is very good news. Bunyoro is going to feed the whole country.”

Yes, Nzeire was correct because Bunyoro still has vast land with fertile soils. Also, the rains have not been bad. Farmers have taken advantage of the fertile soils to plant enough food crops.

The farmers are no longer working for home consumption alone. Many have taken President Yoweri Museveni’s message of not only working for the stomach, but also growing food crops to make money so as to fight household poverty.

We have also taken advantage of the free government airtime on radios given to resident district commissioners (RDCs) to sensitise and mobilise the community to grow enough food for home consumption and more importantly for sale to get money.

Our focus is to emphasise the need to mind about quality of what farmers produce to be able to meet international standards, if they are to benefit from the huge market of both local and international workers in the oil and gas industry. Otherwise, without meeting international standards, the oil and gas expatriates will be forced to opt for imported foodstuffs.

I am happy that oil companies have also come on the ground and directly engage the community at the grassroots through Ebimeza to grow enough food to supply the oil companies.

The top managers of the oil companies themselves appeared before the people and encouraged them to do commercial farming. The oil companies do this very closely with the local leaders, including the office of the RDC, district chairpersons, chief administrative officers, mayors and LC1 chairpersons. This message has been well-received by the people and are practicing it.

Some of the people have formed groups at local levels or associations, depending on different enterprises they are involved in.

For example, those dealing in vegetables have their own associations or groups, and those dealing in poultry also have their own groups. Maize farmers also have their own groups and many more others.

This is intended to easily trace the farmers dealing in different enterprises since they are in groups.

There is no reason why Bunyoro can still remain in poverty when a lot of opportunities have been put in place by the Government. For example, Bunyoro is one of the regions with the best road network in the country. About 800km of the roads in Bunyoro are tarmacked, meaning that farmers can easily transport their produce for better market.

What the community wants now is to be mobilised. For the last two years I have served as the RDC of Kikuube, I have observed that people can have a mindset change, if the leaders continuously keep engaging them. People can learn, change and practice what they are told.

I saw this when a group of young people under their umbrella United Rural Development Association approached me and appointed me their patron. This is a group of about 400 members across Kikuube district with some branches in Kakumiro district, who had a good vision, but lacked guidance.

After I realised this is a good group of young people to work with, I offered them space at my office and in one season, these young people had more than 170 tonnes of maize, about 70 tonnes of beans and are also into fish farming and vanilla growing. I get happy when I see them very committed in the fight against poverty and working together for wealth creation.

As leaders in Bunyoro, it would be a shame on us to leave people use these beautiful roads tarmacked by the NRM Government to dry maize. We need to see trucks loaded with maize, bananas, rice, beans on these roads. We need to see trucks carrying dairy products for better markets and then we shall be benefiting from these beautiful roads. Regular community engagement is important and all of us leaders should play this role.

I know Bunyoro has got several sugar producing factories like Hoima Sugar Limited in Kikuube, Kinyara Sugar Works Limited in Masindi, Kiryandongo Sugar in Kiryandongo district and Bwendero Sugar in Hoima. It is very good to have all these sugar factories because they offer employment opportunities to the people and also pay taxes to the Government. They also need sugarcane to feed their factories.

It is important to encourage people with big chunks of land to be the ones to grow sugarcane as outgrowers and feed the millers. Families with small pieces of land should be encouraged to grow food crops and feed the factory workers. If we allow families with small pieces of land to use that very small land to grow sugarcane, then our people may lack food, which is not good.

I have had a very good discussion with the top management of Hoima Sugar to see how we can work together and address this concern. I am happy Hoima Sugar has agreed to sensitise the community through radio talk shows on the beauty of farmers growing not only sugarcane, but also food crops.

Hoima Sugar has accepted to champion this cause, which to me is good and should be emulated by other sugar companies.

This campaign will start soon and I believe farmers will benefit a lot from this initiative. The only challenge I see now affecting production is land grabbers. Land grabbers need to be handled aggressively because their greed for land, especially targeting the poor or voiceless, will even affect other government programmes such as the Parish Development Model. All these programmes need beneficiaries to be working in a quiet and peaceful environment.

I am happy both Judith Nabakooba, the lands and housing minister and Sam Mayanja, the state minister for lands, have strongly come out to fight these land grabbers countrywide. This is good and we all need to support them. Otherwise, Bunyoro region is unstoppable and soon it is becoming the food basket for Uganda. We shall continue mobilising people using radios and any other public gatherings to achieve this noble cause.

The writer is RDC Kikuube district