Stalled factory progress leaves trail of rotten fruit

Thousands of commercial fruit farmers in Nwoya District are furious over the government’s failure to deliver the much-hyped Nwoya Fruit Factory, four years after President Museveni directed that the project be implemented.

Farmers comprising youth, women, retired public servants and religious leaders are particularly enraged at the fact that the factory’s stalled progress means their fruit produce will continue rotting away.
The anger of the outgrowers in not just Nwoya but other surrounding areas is informed by an undelivered promise by the government that the Shs19b fruit factory would absorb their produce. 

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After plans were made to erect the factory in Nwoya nearly four years ago, the government supplied locals with seedlings, whose produce would be regularly supplied to the factory upon completion.

The facility that is meant to sit on 1,700 acres in Nwoya District, Acholi sub-region, was meant to be expedited as directed by the President in a letter addressed to the Agriculture and Finance ministries on May 10, 2018. 
The letter essentially tasked the ministries to expedite the matter to ensure the farmers’ heavy volume of fruits grown on vast spaces of land in the district aren’t in vain.

“You recall that the two of you attended a meeting on November 19, 2016 at State House Entebbe with Alvan Blanch. In this meeting, I introduced Alvan Blanch, who had supplied good crop processing plants of all types all over the world,” the letter reads in part.
It further states: “I then directed that you work with them to set up agro processing plants to save our staggering post-harvest losses of our fruits and grains. Despite my earlier communication on October 4, 2017, it has again come to my attention that this project is not progressing.”
Alvan Blanch is a British firm specialised in availing technology and equipment focused on post-harvest crop production.

No cheer for Cheers
The fruit factory was meant to be constructed in conjunction with Nwoya fruit outgrowers and Delight Uganda Limited, who are renowned for their flagship product, Cheers Juice.
“This letter, therefore, is to direct you to expedite the establishment of grain, fruits and feeds processing plants, in particular the Yumbe Mango Processing Plant, Kapeeka Multi Fruit Processing Plant, Nwoya Mango Processing Plant and Kayunga Multi Fruit Processing Plant. These plants are long overdue and cannot be delayed any longer,” the letter further states.

The processing plants have, however, failed to materialise to this day as per the proprietor and managing director of Delight Uganda Limited. 
Ms Julian Adyeri Omalla says a number of factors could be responsible for this, including allegations that officials from the Uganda Development Corporation (UDC) are obstructing the project. This, she adds, is despite clearance for take-off of the project from relevant ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).

Mr Alfred Kilama, the Nwoya District agricultural officer, told Saturday Monitor that several officials from the relevant MDAs have made a number of on-site inspections and given the project a green light.
“Since I came [to this office], the song has always been that next year [the project will get underway],” Mr Kilama said, adding, “I am not very sure when this will start.”

The stalled progress has consequently seen locals reject fruit seedlings that are supplied by the National Agricultural Advisory Services (Naads) secretariat.
“Some farmers have started losing interest in picking seedlings because they had been told that the factory would start but this has never happened,” Mr Kilama confirmed.

Mr Christopher Omara, the newly deployed Nwoya Resident District Commissioner (RDC), told Saturday Monitor that he has been categorically told that the project is too small to be put on top of the pecking order.
“If you hear from some people, they say this is a small project. I don’t know whether that is sabotage. That means maybe when His Excellency made that promise, the follow-up was not really aggressive,” Mr Omara opined.

In the two months he has been in the Nwoya RDC office, Mr Omara has observed, through on-site inspections, that reasons adduced for not erecting the factory are hardly sound. His on-site visit established that there is adequate—even excess—supply of fruits such as mangoes, guavas and citrus required for production.

Counting losses
Mr Omara, for instance, confirmed that nearly 15,000 outgrowers grow and supply mangoes in the district. When President Museveni directed that the processing plant be delivered, the farmers—most of whom grow mangoes—went hard at work safe in the knowledge that their produce would be absorbed by the factory.

The factory was expected to have an output of at least 12 metric tonnes per hour. This excited the farmers more. A feasibility study for the project had already been done. The project was supposed to be implemented, thanks to a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between UDC, Naads, Ministry of Agriculture and Alvan Blanch.
Delight Uganda Limited, who are supposed to be private partners on the project, say they lose in the excess of Shs300m every harvest season. Ms Omalla also told Saturday Monitor that the company is struggling to pay workers, let alone bear the constraint of other administrative costs.

“The President, in his own wisdom, wrote a directive to build and equip this factory. People are ready for the factory, but, as a person, I have over waited and I am getting tired,” Ms Omalla said, adding, “For over two years, I have been waiting. It is very disgusting that as a local entrepreneur, I am going through this because I can’t meet the obligations. Sometimes I leave like a beggar and I ask myself why I started this project.”
She further stated rather dishearteningly: “You find that I am admired by those who see me, but I sleep with a shrinking heart.”

UDC responds
At the centre of the blame game is the UDC that has allegedly turned a blind eye to the problems stalling the project. Mr Patrick Birungi, the UDC executive director, was, however, dismissive of such allegations.

“It is not true that support has not been given,” he said via telephone, adding, “You know we get most of our funding through the budget process. Only in this last quarter did we get some releases related to that particular project. But we also have a responsibility to make sure the investment we go in is well planned to minimise losses of public resources.”

He proceeded to note thus: “There are still some gaps that we are tying knots to make sure appropriate infrastructure is in place; otherwise you will have a building and equipment with no electricity. So you will use a generator to run the facility, which will not make business sense. These are the kinds of things we are grappling with; not that there is no support.”
Ms Omalla, however, said she keeps counting losses with each passing day.

“I have sold off the land that I had to invest here. We don’t have any money [left] because all the money that we had has been invested here,” she said.
In an attempt to pick up the pieces, Ms Omalla is keen on starting small-scale production once she acquires locally designed machinery. She is hoping that a clarion call that has been sent to well-wishers to bankroll the project doesn’t go unnoticed.

“I have decided that as one of the resolutions, we shall have to fabricate our local machines and we start production,” Ms Omalla told Saturday Monitor, adding, “I also call upon any investor willing to support the installation of right equipment because this has to be a high-end factory, whose product will have to compete on the international market.”
Other units on the farm

Besides the fruit factory to be established on 1,700 acres of land in Nwoya District, the proprietor has established the Delight Academy, where interested parties are equipped with both theoretical and practical skills in fruit production, among others.
Ms Omalla has also set up a medicinal clinic serviced with more than 480 plant species of drugs that are used to contain anaemia and cough-related ailments.
The firm is also engaged in subsistence farming as a strand that is meant to enable workers to come up with produce that can be sold in small quantities as alternative survival means.