The government and its development partners should wake up to the tragedy unfolding in the north and north eastern Uganda where millions of lives, mostly women and children, are threatened by famine.

The better-off individual Ugandans should also feel they have a duty to help their brothers and sisters living in these regions by doing whatever they can to help. This could include donating money and food bought locally.

But in the longer term, all Ugandans, led by their political and other leaders, have to come to grips with the reality that the famine is not an act of nature. It may be hard to admit, but the truth is that it is man-made and man can, therefore, take action to reduce its impact in the short term while working to end it altogether.

The first step is to develop the logistics necessary to move food from the areas with a surplus to those suffering deficits. The old ways of always going for imports while food is going to waste in some parts of the country should be done away with because they are partly responsible for the country's periodic famines because they rob the local farming communities the capacity to grow food for the market.

The second step is to cascade information on how to reduce post-harvest losses down to the farming communities because these are responsible for almost a third of the food losses in the country. Needless to say, this should be done urgently for thousands, if not millions, of lives depend on it.

The third step is for the country to take the threat of climatic change more seriously than it has done so far and take whatever action that may be necessary to mitigate them. For obvious reasons, the government is best equipped to lead the country to do things whose benefits will be reaped some years down the road.

These include the re-planting of trees, restoration of wetlands and a total ban on any further de-forestation and land degradation. It is unfortunate that in all these areas, the government has paid no more than lip-service while at times abetting the plunder of forests with the tired excuse that opening up the forested areas would create jobs.

The government needs to get its act together in this area so that it can reclaim its moral authority to lead the rest of the country by example.