It is reported that the entire Busoga is being galvanized to conduct a week's long prayers and fasting aimed at interceding to the creator the Almighty God to remove the curse of poverty on Busoga.
This will be the second such inter-denominational prayer campaign being organized in Busoga as one of the tools in fighting the endemic poverty in the sub region.
This is being done on the backdrop that Busoga and Uganda as a whole is a religious country where faith in the power of God's intervention in our lives and in all situations is never doubted or under estimated. It is this entrenched belief that does make us all young, old, big and small always seek to cast all our tribulations and challenges at the feet of our creator for his intercession and deliverance.
So the prayer campaign being organized in Busoga in respect of the challenges of impoverishment that continues to ravage the sub region should come as surprise. It is indeed a very good intentioned and welcome campaign by the Church in Busoga.
However, the question that must be interrogated is can prayers alone be able to get Busoga out of the current predicament of poverty that the sub region is finding herself to be in? It is reported by UBOS that the current poverty levels in Busoga stand at between 14% - 17% compared to the national average of 10%.
Regarding having faith, the Bible in St. James 2: 17-18 teaches that faith without works is dead. The two verses teach that when you have faith but no works, you are only compared to a person who finds a poor person that is hungry and cold, but you only tell that person to go and be filled and be warm without actually giving that person any food or warm clothing. The Bible instructs that faith without deeds is empty and ineffective. So coming back to our prayer campaign being organized in Busoga, what lesson can we possibly take from this century's long biblical teaching?
While it remains good and expected of us the believers to pray for God's intercession, this faith must be accompanied with actual deeds. Simply spending a week-long in prayers throught the sub region without actually also taking practical steps to address the devil called poverty that is in our midst may be simply trying to send our people in hypnotized state of mind. Poverty in Busoga won't be fought by prayers alone! Other regions that have registered a steady decline in their poverty levels do undoubtedly engage in prayers, but they also match their prayers with practical works. The actions taken to fight poverty in other regions such as Buganda and in the West have involved the religious institutions as well. In some cases, it is the religious institutions or formations that have taken the lead in the fight. They have done this not only by holding the mantle of sensitizing their faithful but also they have actually established productive undertakings that serve as examples to the communities where they operate.
In examining how the church can play a pivotal role in making interventions to fight poverty, we take note of developmental projects in the doicese that the maverick late Bishop Cyprian Bamwoze initiated in the whole of Busoga. All were aimed at helping the followers of the Church to improve on their livelihoods. The projects ranged from tackling the exploding population by starting up the Family Planning Learning Center in Jinja known as FLEP, he started the Dairy Cattle project, he started up a Fish farming project, he started a Coffee, Cocoa and Banana growing campaign in the diocese. Bishop Bamwoze was a renown prayer warrior, an accomplished theologian and a deep philosophical mind but he hated poverty too.
Traditional churches that were started some years back have been known to have relatively some good pieces of land for the church or even in the precincts of the church. For example the Church of Uganda in Busoga is known to own over 246 acres of land at Kyando. It also own sizeable land at CMS in Iganga. Probably this isn't the only land that the church has in Busoga. The question now is what productive activities is the Church doing on or with this land that can be said to be geared at helping the sub region to come out poverty. In Kyando, we know that majority the church land has been for decades only hired out to the tycoon sugar cane growers who give loyalty fees to the Church headquarters at Bugembe. As for the other land that the church owns, there is almost zero information known about any activities being carried out.
One should be wondering how much revenue the Church in Busoga would be making annually if only the land at Kyando was to be put under a Coffee crop enterprise. This, certainly would not only be an indomitable cash cow for the church itself but by far multiplier effect, many lives of the Basoga around the place would be transformed.
Potential in Busoga Church land:
For the sake of trying to paint the picture clearly for the Church in Busoga to see the potential that they are not exploiting but simply throwing it away by these wanton hire out of land to sugar cane growers, we shall make some assumption and then make some predictions.
Let assume that the Church only used 200 acres of their available land to be dedicated to growing coffee. It is reported by experts that in each acre 444 coffee seedlings at a spacing of 3 x3 meters are planted. This therefore means that the church would have planted 88,800 coffee seedlings.
It is also assumed that each coffee plant yields 5kgs of unshelled coffee called "Kiboko" annually. This means that we can assume that the 88,800 coffee trees will yield around 444,000kgs of kiboko coffee annually.
According to current market prices, kiboko coffee is going for Shs. 3,000 per kilo. Therefore, the Church was to put only 200 acres of its land at Kyando to coffee growing, the church would be making an annual income of Shs. 1,332,000,000. For purposes of accounting for what goes into the production of such yield, we are going to assume that 50% of the potential proceeds go into the overall costs of production. The Church would be having a net annual income of Shs. 666,000,000.
It needs to be noted that currently, thanks to the entreprenueral foresight of some sons of Busoga, a coffee hauling and roasting plant is being established at Kagoma along Jinja - Kamuli Road. The purpose of this plant is to help to add value to the coffee from Busoga. So, the first beneficiary from this investment should have been the Church in Busoga by providing the coffee to be value added in order to add premium prices. But in addition, by engaging the plant with coffee to haul, clean and roast, many youths in the surrounding areas would be employed and thus help them in uplifting their livelihoods. That is how the efforts of fighting poverty in Busoga can have wider multiplier effects to the communities.
With this practical way of utilizing what you are endowed with in order to fight poverty, the Church would be seen not only be preaching only faith but with works. That is when the church prayer campaign would make effective meaning to the followers. No church goers or any religious person that likes being inherently eaten up in poverty. They will therefore entertain enthusiastically and faithfully the idea of praying for poverty to disappear from their lives, but such prayer will only be effective if it is accompanied with real works that take people out of poverty. The church owes to the followers to show the way by demonstrating the practical means of getting out poverty other than mere calls of prayers. It may be the most convenient way to the Church leaders to be seen as doing their pastoral work, but it is one that won't yield the desired results.
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The church must be an institution that teaches and emphasizes production in addition to spiritual nourishment. We all appreciate that there has been total moral decadence of our people and that there has been an erosion of mindset in our people which has to be fought against and reversed. Continuing to seem to be teaching people that there are actually free things out there for which they only need to offer incessant prayers is for sure being deceitful and delusional. By that kind of teaching, the church shall only be sending and condemning our people to perpetual poverty.
Poverty among followers is not welcome state of affairs. We know that the majority of religious institutions in Uganda thrive and depend mainly from the giving (tithes) and donations by the followers. So if the Church is not working on ensuring that those followers from which it derives its survival get out of poverty, then it gets one to wonder how genuinely that church will continue to survive as independent and as a credible institution that can offer spiritual nourishment, homage and renewal.
The Bible is never short of very instructive guidance and teaching to those that want to listen. In Matthew 13: 9-16, it has something cautioning us to listen if we have ears to listen and see if we have eys that see. We have certainly heard of the exciting stories from the Buganda Kingdom's campaign dumbed "emmwanyi terimba", we have seen the figures coming out that campaign drive. It is reported that over 25,000 areas of coffee have been planted in Buganda since the "emmwanyi terimba" campaign was launched. It has also been reported that poverty levels in Buganda have fallen downwards from initially 9%-15% to 6% - 9%.
Let us be praying but also let us be working the soils for the elimination of perpetual poverty in Busoga.
