Uganda: So much maize, but gaining less out of it

Were you excited about the report the other day about Uganda's maize production having increased to over four million metric tonnes annually?

Great news, right?

I thought so and started effusing about our national potential as the food basket of Africa and whatnot, then realised that I haven't heard, in the past, about Uganda being a global maize giant.

So, I went straight to the Internet and got told that we are not even on the list of the world's top 20 exporters of maize going by United States dollar values. At the bottom of that list is Turkey at $154m (2018 numbers, though) — which makes us pale at our $83m by then.

Let's ignore the figures being so old. Now that we have a bigger crop of maize for processing and export, what are we doing? Do we have a chance to get our leg up and touch Turkey's tail?

We keep talking about such things. But what, exactly, are we doing about them?

Seeing the news about increased maize production made me think about all the products that come out of maize. The range is massive and was only highlighted to me during another conversation about why we needed to stop exporting raw or unprocessed maize to neighbouring countries.

One wise fellow clarified that the need to process the maize before exporting it was driven by more than just "value addition" as we normally chorus.

Processing the maize, he explained, meant that we would remove certain elements from the kernels that would be used as animal feeds here, and help grow our animal husbandry even more.

What? Yes — not only would we be getting more money for less maize exported, but the extras could be consumed in-country at a much higher value in a way that would create even more value from another product — our agricultural animals.

Googling even more proved this and even highlighted that we have much more value in our fields than we discuss in our headlines and on the table tops that matter. One annoying trend that had developed in the recent past, for instance, was for exporters to pay for entire maize crops while still in the field.

There was even a rumour of one exporter who would pay for a maize crop mid-season and then set up accommodation tents within the fields and live there while monitoring the crop. The owner of the field was only allowed to return after the entire crop had been evacuated.

That wise exporter would pay for the maize cobs at raw value but take the entire crop including the stalks, leaves, and so on, leaving the farm bare for the owner to return to at the end of the season.

Do you know what maize stalks and leaves can be used for? Manure? Energy or electricity generation? There is a list of possible uses following that question — but those are never paid for.

Imagine that!

So as we celebrate the increased quantity of maize being produced, does anyone have a calculation of how much additional there is in terms of the cob, the stalks, and the leaves and what value they present?

I'd be impressed if anyone confirmed so because there are not enough signs of such critical approaches to our production, processing, and consumption.

For instance, in 2019, according to online sources and government records, we imported 545 million kilos of wheat worth $171m. For bread, cakes, and Rolexes, right?

But here we are producing so much maize and not yet pulling the full value out of it while consuming a vast amount of Rolexes that gives value to countries that produce so much wheat. Do we have the capacity to move our Rolex structure to tortillas rather than chapatis in their current format?

We should think about it. The number one maize producer in the world is the United States, and number nine is Mexico.

That doesn't surprise me because guess which two countries created and consume the highest number of tortillas in the world — to the extent that they export tortilla chips into supermarkets in Uganda where a packet sometimes costs more than two kilos of processed maize?

www.skaheru.com
@skaheru