Godber Tumushabe
9 July 2009
Kampala — What has been happening is not really new. As a country, we rarely respond to public opinion. This issue of famine in Teso has been recurrent so people in the Government do not see it as an emergency.
The second reason why something like this has happened without the Government alerting people is that the local people do not matter politically. What matters is that politicians go there for votes.
The local government should have responded, but local governments are working like non-governmental organisations under the central government.What do I mean here? Local governments have no authority and adequate funding to intervene.
So the local government and the central government are in a partnership that excludes local people. It is regrettable that people are dying of hunger when we have abundant natural resources.
The minister of disaster preparedness should have called a press conference to resign and not blame the crisis on politics. What you have in Teso is that people are dying of hunger irrespective of their political affiliation.
The Government is obliged to address the famine in Teso by providing relief. This Government has enough resources to attend to the communities under disastrous conditions, that is why there is a Ministry for Disaster Prepardness.
The second intervention, which is long term, is planning and having a vision for the country. The food security and ecological situation is going to worsen. The country's water granaries - the forests and wetlands are almost gone. Recent research reveals that the climate change threat is greater in Africa than in many other parts of the world. On the average, the continent is 0.5°C warmer than it was 100 years ago. With the changing weather patterns disaster conditions are already creating new complex emergencies like the famine we see in parts of eastern Uganda.
What Uganda needs is scaled-up finances, technology and capacity building to combat climate change.
Following the state of environment report, soil erosion and environmental destruction has been increasing. All this undermines agricultural productivity. It is deceitful to think of prosperity for all when you are undermining the environment that sustains the rain-fed agriculture.
There is no short-cut, the Government has to address environmental issues in a more aggressive manner. This means the Government should invest more in this area and provide political leadership.
However, when it comes to allocation of resources, environment gets the smallest share of the cake. This should not be the case because the environment sustains the other sectors of the economy. When the lake water levels go down, there is less fish and the economy will suffer.
President Yoweri Museveni has been traversing the country encouraging farmers to produce more, but there is no institutional framework to sustain his programmes on the ground.
The Government has no capacity to work better. This is a blotted Government. For instance, the agriculture ministry has four ministers and then there is also the minister for disaster preparedness and the Ministry of Finance - but who is responsible for the food security situation? You have so many people responsible and there is no particular one who can be held accountable. This is an issue that can be addressed by the President. He has to organise the Government so that it is efficient and responsive.
Two years ago, I pointed out that the dropping water levels of Lake Victoria were not only a result of drought, but a result of long-term destruction of the environment, which combines with the impacts of climate change.
Environmental destruction and climate change also hamper production of food crops. This is something humanity can deal with because the fact is that the climate is changing. The country needs to be more organised to predict and respond to the changing climate, but the current level of organisation within the Government cannot deliver any helpful results. Do you remember when the floods, (also popularly called Teso floods) hit north-eastern Uganda two years ago? An assessment team from the Government was dispatched there, but what happened after that? How far have their recommendations been implemented?
Food security should be looked at in the context of national security. In Uganda, food security is a secondary issue. Countries, including neighbouring Rwanda, take food security as a serious issue. People in Rwanda are compelled to keep food in granaries, which they can turn to on a rainy day.
When the need arises, the country should buy food. We should not entirely depend on World Food Programme. It is intriguing that even with the endowment of natural resources, the country has failed to respond to such a crisis. This is something that should not arise as far as I am concerned. It is a total institutional and governance failure.
The writer is the executive director of Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment.
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