Govt moves to hook Diaspora on PDM

The government has mooted plans to engage Ugandans in the Diaspora in progressing the Parish Development Model (PDM), two years after the launch of the poverty alleviation programme.

Amb Johnny Muhindo, the head of the Diaspora Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Monitor that Ugandans living abroad are being courted to leverage their expertise and networks to expand overseas opportunities for their kin at home.

The Diaspora community, he noted, is a repository of knowledge and resources which, if deployed through structured engagement, would enlighten Ugandan farmers on best practices for higher and quality yields attractive in the international markets.

Ugandans living in foreign countries would provide support to pillars of logistical value chains, including storage and overall post-harvest handling, and identifying appropriate ICT tools to aid informed and profitable business decisions.

Amb Muhindo in a blueprint prepared for discussion and decision by Ministry of Foreign Affairs top management proposed that the government starting from December this year, organise annual Diaspora homecoming summits to enable them to interact with, and educate, farmers in rural areas of origin.

The Foreign Affairs Ministry estimated that some 781,400 Ugandans were, as of 2020, living in other countries, making them an important economic bloc and political influencer.

They collectively remitted $1.1 billion (Shs4.2 trillion) in the 12 months to July 2022, according to the Bank of Uganda, for, among other things, business capitalisation, medical care, tuition, and upkeep for dependents. 

Amb Muhindo told Monitor in an interview last week that the financial clout of the Diaspora community, coupled with their connections overseas, means their inclusion under PDM for transfer of knowledge and best international practices will skill Ugandan beneficiaries of the poverty alleviation programme to be more productive.

“The Diaspora will be facilitated by the Uganda government in exchange for their skills in the implementation of the PDM,” he said, pointing to the potential for international market access and increased forex earning for individual farmers and the country.

The overseas Ugandans, according to the blueprint, will be facilitated and enabled to directly interface with rural farmers at parishes, the implementation unit for PDM, in order to coach them on producing quality products acceptable in foreign markets, including supermarket chains where Ugandan Diaspora members are salespersons, quality control supervisors or managers.

Their combined expertise, according to Amb Muhindo, will help Ugandans identify enterprises whose products are marketable abroad or even provide affordable capital.

The proposed Diaspora engagement will start with Ugandans living in Germany, the United States of America and its northern neighbour, Canada.

“We implore the government to support our Diaspora so that this community can in turn metamorphose into a formidable constituency that can contribute to the socio-economic development hitherto spearheaded by President Museveni,” he said.

President Museveni has been a lead crusader of the socio-economic transformation of Uganda gospel, which, in his words, is to catapult the country into middle-income after decades of staggered peasant survival.

A key pillar for the transformation, according to the Ugandan leader, is PDM which he launched in the eastern Kibuku District in February 2022. The programme is billed to lift 17.5 million Ugandans in 3.5 million households out of poverty and hook them into the money economy.

Under the initiative, which has been dogged by allegations of corruption amid some early successes, the government planned to disburse up to Shs1 trillion annually to beneficiaries.

However, financing constraints at the centre have meant the Treasury could ill-afford the transfers, leaving hundreds of savings and credit societies (Saccos) formed by would-be beneficiaries either under or unfunded.

PDM secretariat spokesperson Silvester Nyombi welcomed plans to incorporate the Diaspora, saying they would “provide great insight for our decision makers and will inform us on how to improve PDM … implementation”.