Norah Owaraga

How the food aid business is the driver of food insecurity in Uganda

The first question being, in whose interests does the Office of the Minister of MAAIF work How isn’t it valid for one not to surmise that government’s insistence to label Ugandan smallholder farmers in derogatory terms, such as peasants, when they are not; and subsistence farmers, when they are not; is intended after all. It…

We are net buyers of food

It is, in fact, policy of the President Yoweri Kagutta Museveni led National Resistance Movement party, which is the current Administration of the Republic of Uganda, to promote commercialisation of food crops. Promoting the growing of food crops as cash crops. It is thus simply Machiavellian for official government documents and discourse to refer to…

No Subsistence Farmers in Uganda

The only way in which agriculture is a significant contributor to Uganda’s GDP, is if the produce of its smallholder farmers is sold by them and is bought by others who didn’t produce it. Economic exchange must take places and money changes hands, so to speak. This means, de facto, that Ugandan smallholder farmers likely…

Ugandan Farmers Are Not Peasants

The implications of an industrialised economy with a developed service sector, as it is espoused in that vision, implies that smallholder farmers and semi-nomadic pastoralists who live in rural areas of Uganda, necessarily have to cede ownership of their land to others better positioned to use it in “optimal” ways. Those currently mal-described as “peasants”…