Pascal Odoch
13 November 2009
opinion
The National Agricultural Advisory Services (Naads) has of late been in the spotlight for reasons that show outright neglect of the programme's implementation guideline; from imposing crops on farmers without prior training, purchase of native cows and goats at incredible prices you can't find in Ugandan village markets, procurement of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers or seeds at inflated costs and leaving them idle or to rot in the stores for lack of "fuel", delivering planting materials long after the rainy season, awarding and delivering contracted items on the same day to falsified list of beneficiary farmers and procurement plans and sub-counties being conduit of fake procurements initiated elsewhere.
These malpractices are contrary to the strategic objectives, intervention areas and approaches for which Naads, established in 2001, was meant to pursue and attain, i.e. transform the predominantly peasant Ugandan farmer to semi-commercial and ultimately commercial farmer. One wonders why these Ugandan officials are neither upholding the Biblical teachings of love thy neighbour nor exercising patriotism that President Museveni keeps preaching, because their doings are not helping their own brethren escape from poverty.
Naads recognised that majority of Ugandan farmers are small-scale, resource-constrained operators who, as individuals, cannot easily have access and control over the structures and processes that are intended to transform the farmers' natural resource assets into outcomes that they desire.
Naads was meant to achieve three development results: increased access to financial services for farmers; increased uptake of new technological practices; improved production and productivity of high value crops and animals. The Naads Act provides for establishment of the Sub-County Farmers Forum as an institution for farmers to plan for and control the delivery of advisory services and the main point of leverage between farmers and government.
The Naads programmes run into billions of shillings and this has confused the very people who should have a watchful eye on the funds. There is no Ugandan tribe with the exact vernacular word for neither billions nor trillions.
At the recent NRM District Conference in Nebbi Town, the Nebbi people - the Alur tribe - translated the word billions as "lak alwala" which literarily means monkey's teeth; probably meant to depict the indescribable since the Alur tribe don't eat monkeys and hence don't have a clue to the total number of teeth a monkey has.
Now, how would such a villager mentally distinguish millions in the higher range from billions? And this lack of knowledge is, among other factors, a breeding ground for the confusion surrounding Naads monitoring and funds tracking.
Naads has lost touch with the potential beneficiary farmers. Uganda is a country where the reading culture and information seeking habits are still very low. A couple of months ago, Naads launched hotlines for farmers to use in raising their concerns about the programme implementation.
These hotlines were printed in the newspapers that are primarily read by people who are good at talking and not walking the agriculture talk. The newspapers are in English and go for as much as Shs1,200 and don't reach out to the hard to reach and stay areas of the countryside.
Sincerely, the hotlines could be best publicised in the local languages on the popular regional FM stations across the country. To assume that a rural, off-national grid peasant farmer has a fully charged phone with air time and capacity, to dial and express him/herself on phone, moreover in English for some good minutes, is stretching the whole thing too far.
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