• Katine farmers worry about food shortages
• Amref and Farm-Africa assess food situation
• Soroti district ‘experiencing famine’
Explainer: The food crisis in Uganda
Julius Eilu, 38, is worried. On a Sunday afternoon in Katine, north-east Uganda, he, his wife, Petelina Akello, and nine children sit around a small mound – no more than 1kg – of cassava flour meal, accompanied by wild vegetables.
“Now that they [the children] have had a meal during the day, at night we’ll just convince them to sleep,” said Eilu, his hair unkempt, shirt unbuttoned, face unwashed. “I keep worrying about what to do if this situation does not change.”
The situation he refers to is the severe food shortages being experienced in the Teso region of Uganda.
And what will Eilu, a farmer, do? “I don’t know,” he laughs, as people here often do at a grim situation. “I don’t know. Maybe I have to stop fathering children.”
There are many like Eilu in this region and in other parts of Uganda.
Earlier this month the government acknowledged that food shortages in the country had reached famine levels.
Soroti, the district in which Katine sub-county is found, is one of 17 regions in the north and east of Uganda that the government has defined as experiencing famine. While Katine has not reached this level, food shortages and rising prices indicate a potential crisis.
In the north and east of Uganda at least 35 people are reported to have recently died of starvation. The government said last week that so far 51 districts had requested relief food. Local and national leaders blame the famine on weather calamities starting with the floods of late 2007. After the floods came drought, tempered by late and poor rains, which resulted in food stress during much of 2008. The same pattern recurred in the first half of this year, culminating into the current drought.
Like many farmers in Katine, Eilu and his wife hoped to begin harvesting food last month, but they got nothing. “We planted one acre of millet, half an acre of sorghum and about a quarter acre of groundnuts but they have dried in the garden,” said Akello, as she showed me the empty granary in her compound. “And the cassava we planted last year did poorly again because of the drought.”
The government has announced it is allocating UShs 20bn (US$10m) to buy relief food and is seeking another $85m. But this money is yet to reach Katine. Christine Agwero, a member of the Katine sub-county council, says in her parish of Ochuloi many families are now having one meal a day, while children are starting to skip school so as not to miss out on that meal.
Calls for action
The district chairman of Soroti, Stephen Ochola, said the entire district was affected by the food crisis, including Serere and Kasilo counties, which usually grow a lot of food. Although Soroti had not received any food relief, Ochola hoped for help from the central government and agencies like the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Soroti Catholic Diocese Integrated Development Organisation (SOCADIDO).
Earlier this month, these two organisations and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) carried out a rapid assessment of the region’s food situation and their report was expected last week.
The head of SOCADIDO, Father Silver Opio, said only after such a report would the agencies determine the next course of action. Last year the church organisation, relying on donations from larger bodies like the American Catholic Relief Services, provided some food relief to Katine and other areas.
Opio said he had asked the priests in charge of the diocese’s 22 parishes in the Teso region to send him their assessment of the food situation in their parishes. He said getting accurate data was difficult because even parishes that were deemed to have reasonable levels of food had pockets of starvation that needed to be addressed.
But Ochola, a member of the opposition party Forum for Democratic Change, said that since last year, Teso leaders have been warning the government of possible famine because of the back-to-back drought, but no action was taken.
“May be if, by God’s grace, we get the second rains, we will save the situation. If we don’t get the second rains, next year will be worse,” he said.
Last weekend, the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, sought to reassure people in Teso of his government’s support. The New Vision newspaper quoted him as telling people in Bukedea district that “the people will not die of hunger because crops have failed”. The government would provide food relief and later farm implements and planting materials.
That would pleasantly surprise Eilu, who thinks an NGO, rather than the government, might offer assistance. In the last few weeks Eilu has been selling firewood in Soroti town to earn money to buy food from the market, but there is only a limited number of trees.
The family could offer their farm labour in exchange for food or cash. But with the dry weather, said Akello, there is no farm work to be had. Other people have resorted to selling goats or chickens to raise money for food, leaving themselves even more vulnerable.
“I think I may have to sell my one cow,” said Julius Epudu, a father of four from Ajobi village, Katine, as he surveys his dry, half a hectare (1 acre) garden of sorghum. “When these ones [children] start crying and I have no more money, I may have to sell that cow.”
Affect on project
The food shortages are starting to affect aspects of the Amref project in Katine. In Ajobi village, in Katine parish, one member of the village savings and loan association (VSLA) has disappeared without repaying a loan of UShs 60,000 ($30). The member had borrowed the money in April with the intention of using it for petty trade, but he has so far failed to pay it back and has fled the village.
“Actually some members have proposed that we dissolve the group and share out the savings, but I have said no,” said chairwoman Stella Apeduna.
Already the groundnuts and vegetable seeds distributed to farmers three months ago have gone to waste, as plants are drying in the gardens. Amref fears that contributions by users for the upkeep of water sources could reduce as families use all their money for food.
The health component of the project may not be spared either. Other parts of Uganda have reported severe malnutrition and Sam Agom, the in-charge medic at Tiriri health centre, fears similar problems may be experienced in Katine.
“Right now we don’t have anti-malaria medicines and our people have been selling food to buy medicines that we prescribe. Now if they have very little food, the disease situation in the community could get worse,” Agom said.
Amref’s country director Joshua Kyallo said the organisation was gravely concerned about the situation. Amref and Farm-Africa, which is offering technical support on the livelihoods component of the Katine project, were now gathering information on the effect of the food shortages on the community and the project, and would discuss the matter with district leaders, line ministries in Kampala and organisations like the WFP.
“If we see that the situation is getting out of control, or if government declares this a crisis situation, then Amref would make a separate appeal to respond to the problem,” Kyallo said.
George Mukkath, the director of programmes at Farm-Africa, said he was concerned about the low availability of food in the sub-county because the next harvest was “a long way down the road”. He said the fact that the price of maize had nearly doubled in Katine was one clear indicator that there was something chronically wrong.
Farmers needed more crop varieties that were drought-resistant. The 18 farmers groups established in Katine were given a new variety of cassava “but if they can introduce other crops which can withstand water stress, they will get a crop”, said Mukkath.
“We need to have wider discussions with Amref on how to deal with the current food crisis. We are talking to them and they are talking to people on the ground.”
He added: “I see an opportunity in this situation to address long-term food security. How it can be integrated into health, education and water and sanitation programmes. If there is no food security, health suffers, children don’t go to school. It’s important we all have discussions at a later stage on how to address these things.”
For Julius Eilu, a member of the Emorikikinos farmers group, the situation is getting out of hand.
Like it or not, I’m involved
Fed up with windbag actors advocating for the poor and needy? Me too. But shutting up is worse
Why do you have to hear it from an actor? I have a profound dislike of activism. I don’t enjoy hearing dispatches from the crisis zone delivered by actors and rock stars. I get no joy from fundraising events, op-eds, posters, speeches, slogans. I’m tired of it. And I’m tired of the crisis in Africa.
If your profession gives you a public voice, you have a new relationship with those who don’t. Your voice becomes a cherished commodity. Not for its merits but for its sheer volume. You may have nothing to say, but those who do – the wise, the desperate and the better informed – all clamour to make use of your media connection.
We are not in a position to choose whether or not we have a relationship with our own society or with the world’s poorest people. We can choose the nature of those relationships, but either way they’re there. We’re business partners. If we choose to ignore them we are simply choosing to make that relationship a negligent and destructive one. As voters and consumers we are directly complicit in the misery of the millions we do business with. If we let our governments and businesses think we are indifferent to their cynicism they will go on practising it on licence from us and every cup of coffee we drink and every piece of cotton we wear will continue to be an act of cruelty.
We are involved with Africa, whether we like it or not. Of course, I’m aware of famine, drought, poverty and corruption, but I also see the statesmanship of Mandela, Joaquim Chissano, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf … the works of Achebe, Okri, Soyinka … the music of Fela Kuti, Cheikh Lo and Angelique Kidjo.
My own children will inherit all this together with the children of that continent. Within 15 years they’ll be trading or fighting with each other, exchanging diplomacy or whatever other relationship we might have set in motion. They will also share the triple crisis of a global economic slump, high food prices and climate change – all of which will be addressed (or not) by this year’s G8 in Italy.
Italy is another relationship I can’t wish away. My wife and children are Italian. I am completely in love with that country for better or worse. I was decorated by the Italian ambassador as an exhortation to promote Italy’s image abroad; an easy task when it comes to food, wine, architecture, etc … but one which will be made almost impossible if Silvio Berlusconi does not improve his lamentable record on aid. For this reason Oxfam issued me with call-up papers once again. I’ve held the giddy title of global ambassador for Oxfam for a number of years now.
So, with an all too familiar sinking feeling, the ambassador agreed to go to Italy to try to do something to persuade the G8 leaders to deliver on their aid promises and prevent the overwhelming number of preventable deaths taking place daily on their doorstep. No problem.
It’s tempting to look for ways back to a decorous silence. To try to return to a pleasing and well-argued belief that actors should shut up. But you can’t unknow what you know. NGOs have a way of inviting you to be a firsthand witness. And once you’ve seen what a well-placed or well-timed word (by anybody) can do, shutting up starts to require some painful mental contortions.
I had dinner with Bob Geldof a couple of weeks ago. I explained that I felt I had to be judicious about when and when not to speak out, that I wanted to hold fire and keep under the radar so as not to blow all credibility. He said, “Fuck that, you’ve got to just go!”
If everyone did that, we could finally do away with long-winded actors.