Starved Karimojong stare
death on World Food day
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A man attends to a starving woman in Moroto District recently. PHOTO BY STEVEN ARIONG
By TABU BUTAGIRA & JOSEPH SSEMUTOOKE
Posted Friday, October 16 2015 at 01:05
IN SUMMARY
Analysis. Despite government establishing a ministry and several NGOs operating in the sub-region, we examine
why Karamoja still suffers famine every year
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KAMPALA.
As Uganda today observes the World Food Day in Fort Portal municipality, Kabarole District, one in
every two Karimojong in the country’s northeast are officially rated in “emergency food insecurity”
situation with nothing to eat.
The theme of this year’s celebration; “Social protection and agriculture; breaking the cycle of rural
poverty,” makes the worsening humanitarian crises in Karamoja an irony because three districts there are
among 14 selected five years ago to pilot the country’s social protection scheme.
Still, more than a dozen Karimojong weakened by hunger had, by mid this year, died, according to media
reports quoting local officials.
Karamoja Parliamentary Group chairman Samson Lokeris yesterday summed it up this way: “The crops
failed due to drought. The Karimojong have been left to God; to die on their own. We shall be mourning,
not celebrating on World Food Day.”
It is not that Uganda is food deficient, except the government has no formal structure to quickly haul
produce from places of plenty to starving populations.
The 2015 Global Hunger Index report, which the International Food Policy Research Initiative released
this week, says hunger in the country has significantly declined since 2000.
So why is famine recurring in Karamoja when government established a ministry to address the region’s
problems?
First, Uganda’s agricultural modernisation programme does not cater for the government establishing
silos in each region of the country for better food storage and post-harvest handling, which would cushion
against the kind of life-threatening crop failures in Karamoja.
Without a national food storage plan, government knee-jerk response is looking out to development
partners or request supplementary funding to manage each emerging famine situation. Secondly,
agricultural output relies on what nature throws at or withholds from us. This year, the rains fell a bit
generously over only a few areas of Karamoja, leaving vast parts dry.
By June, there was a “complete pasture failure” and “no harvest and poor livestock conditions” in 14 subcounties of Napak, Moroto, Kotido, Kaabong and Amudat districts, according to a September 25 Office
of the Prime Minister’s (OPM) internal briefing document.
The ministries for Karamoja and Disaster Preparedness, are under OPM and, in effect, the frontline of
whatever goes right and wrong in the region. Titled, “Karamoja Food Security Situation”, the nine-page
report shows the government knew of the problem but delayed to act.
Mr Martin Owor, the commissioner for disaster management at OPM, yesterday said they distributed
tractors, ox-ploughs with which farmers opened large tracts of land before drought struck.
“People planted a lot of food crops, but the rains failed. Their efforts were wasted,” he said, disputing
reports that hunger took some lives.
This newspaper has established that OPM received the first verified news of food stock-outs in the region
as early as February. Two months later, on April 1, 2015, Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda wrote to the
Finance ministry, asking for Shs24 billion for urgent intervention before hunger “claims lives”.
Finance replied a fortnight later that it had no money. Government and humanitarian organisations
operating in Karamoja say one in every two people there faces “emergency level of food security”.
Finance ministry released Shs2.5 billion, out of Shs24 billion OPM asked for, enabling government to
send emergency rations to affected communities once images of emaciated Karimojong children and
elders, flooded the media.
Each district in Karamoja, MP Lokeris said, received 400 and 200 bags of maize flour and beans,
respectively. “This [relief food] is not enough even for one month,” he said. The drought never spared the
livestock, further injuring the pride of the pastoralists.
Stakeholders including Italian companies, Mr Domenico Fornara, the Italian ambassador, said, are
digging large wells and exploring other ways to store rainwater. WFP is separately distributing relief
food.
Background
The Food and Agricultural Organisation in its 2015 State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015 released
on Tuesday showed Uganda has a long way to go. The number of under-nourished Ugandans has risen
over the past two decades from 4.2 million to 10.3 million today.