Food for thought as our basket runs dry
Traders sell fruits in Nakasero market in 2023. PHOTO | ABUBAKER LUBOWA
What you need to know:
- For Uganda to regain its lost status as a food basket, the government will need to do three fundamental things. These include: promoting farmer-led cooperatives, augmenting value chains and aligning production with demand.
Our recent report that explores the pernicious effects of Uganda’s loss of its status as East Africa’s food basket demands close scrutiny. As our reportage on March 23 laid bare, the known details of the disappearance of Ugandan grown foods from market stalls and the context are alarming.DM bodytext: Unfortunately, state actors in Uganda have not responded adequately to what is by all accounts a multifaceted problem. Such is its interconnected nature that the infrastructural and production bottlenecks it invokes speak to critical aspects of food security, market access, and climate resilience for smallholder farmers.
To transcend the limits imposed by the aforementioned bottlenecks, the Ugandan government will need to break ranks with the maddeningly slow response it has mustered thus far. It is easy to see why the Ugandan government’s response keeps being deemed as insufficiently thorough. Its pace, or—more accurately—the lack of, suffers from two related problems: politics and state actors being stuck in a time warp.
Ultimately, two things concentrate minds: firstly, a genuine need to divorce Uganda’s food chain from politics, and, secondly, the dire necessity to make key investments to rejuvenate the country’s creaky food chain. As to the politicking, that is in and of itself a towering problem, a 2022 inquest by the House Trade Committee turned up some startling discoveries around VAT exempted rice imports from Tanzania. It is also made clear that a policy aimed to foster regional trade under the East African Community (EAC) framework coupled with little to no subsidies for Ugandan rice farmers has led to an influx of Tanzanian rice in Uganda.
The absence of subsidies is but one of many troubling aspects that have contrived to leave Uganda’s smallholder farmers on the back foot. The road network in rural Uganda, cold storage everywhere, and irrigation systems could do with some substantial investments. All these stumbling blocks have contrived to blunt the food production capabilities of what once was a food basket. To compound matters, the Ugandan government continues to eschew climate-smart agriculture, data-driven forecasting, and cooperative models. These are known to not only guarantee efficiency but also reduce waste.
Evidently, there is a lot of work to be done. The load can be lightened, we reckon, through public-private partnerships. These coupled with technology adoption can address bottlenecks—such as weak market linkages, high costs and limited finance—that have Uganda’s smallholder farmers chasing shadows.
The Ugandan government should also think deeply about how best it can make its food systems sustainable. State actors should do this safe in the knowledge that such an investment can undoubtedly bolster market access and climate resilience for smallholder farmers.
For Uganda to regain its lost status as a food basket, the government will need to do three fundamental things. These include: promoting farmer-led cooperatives, augmenting value chains and aligning production with demand. It sounds like a lot of work, but, with a bit of planning, is actually a cakewalk.
