"I write what I like," like Steve Biko
About two weeks ago, a New Vision story headline, “Museveni backs Sh200b job creation programme,” caught my attention. A headline that excites, but, in the context of Uganda, is also truly Machiavellian. Let me explain, using one of the job creation programmes included in that story, the “Green Jobs Programme,” which was described as: “The… Continue reading Kadaga’s push for green jobs Machiavellian
As you can see, our Alinga Farms’ model, Valerie Alinga III, my niece who is named after me, Alinga II, and I named after my paternal grandmother, Joyce Mary Alinga (RIP), is not taking chances. While protecting herself by wearing a mask, she is also bringing to you important food items that help in ensuring… Continue reading Do Agribusiness while Culturally Rooted
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 Ugandan smallholder farmers as peasants and or as subsistence farmers. It is long over due that we detoxify our discourse of culturally imperialistic descriptions that denigrate us.
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 produce for sale in as much as and or even more than they produce for own consumption. And for many that is likely their major source of livelihood.
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” are required to transform into landless labourers and service providers and to be like the majority of the British, who are landless labourers.
