Opinion: We cannot leave fighting poverty in Busoga to politicians anymore

The task of fighting poverty in Busoga is humongous but we have to continue hammering at it relentlessly particularly us who are not vote hunting. 

We are the ones who have everything to lose if our sub region continues to wallow in these dire straits. The vote hunters care less.

To make matters worse, the threshold for any elective political position has progressively been lowered to an extent that the leaders whom the society would look up to for solutions, are actually turning out to be  the problems themselves with little or no faculty competence to even be able to diagnose a problem let alone suggesting a solution to any problem. So relying on such people will definitely be fruitless.

As it is emerging, we are coming to a consensus that the fight against poverty in Busoga must be multi-pronged and simultaneous as each intervention will seek to compliment the others.

(1.) For instance, we do recognise the fact that the explosion of population in Busoga is a  result of rampant illiteracy (not necessarily in terms of not being able to read and write but rather outright ignorance about many dimensions of life), lack of productivity (idleness can only breed impoverishment and the impoverished person only sees reproductive activities as his or her only consolation).

(2) We have also noticed that the absence of access to grid power in the sub region has been a big contributor to accelerated poverty. 

(3) Another factor that is identified as contributing to the poverty scourge in Busoga is the increasing disease burden due the greatly reduced or inadequate government service delivery in the sub region in areas of mitigating health challenges such as malaria due to absence of the spraying of mosquitoes.

(4) Poor school environment in terms of lack of sufficient school infrastructure such as classrooms and latrines, lack of enough teachers and teaching scholastic materials,  lack of supervision and inspectorate coupled with the parents' neglect of their roles in supporting both their children and the school have all contributed to the increasing rate of early school drop outs, early school pregnancies and poor school performance.

All the above factors aggregated do contribute to the rising number of impoverished populace in Busoga. 

Therefore, there is a need for appropriate interventions to be employed systematically and consistently in order to reverse the worrying trend.

These interventions should include:

Mindset sensitisation: Our people need to be awakened to the fact that household poverty will only be fought individually and in order to succeed everyone must engage into some activity of production.

Population explosion- a deliberate effort should be made to encourage family management while pointing to the dangers of having large unplanned families with very little income outlay. Practical steps should be undertaken to revive the Jinja based FLEP program under Church of Uganda. Similarly, the Catholic social development program called CARITAS should be strengthened in order to carry out the mass sensitization about family planning.

Productivity - The government's current effort to increase productivity in the villages through the PDM program need to be supported and monitored closely.

(a) However, it is important that in operationalising this program, proper, suitable and realistic enterprise selection must be observed, knowing that no single shoe size fits all.

(b) In the PDM program, the component of extension services to the farmers should be emphasized. 

(c) Also to be emphasised must be the provision or enabling of the provision of proper quality planting materials at the right time, access to affordable genuine pesticides, fertilisers and vaccines for animal husbandry.

(d) In order to be able to adequately handle the potentially expected increased put yield of the farmers, community primary agro processing centres should be set up at least at Sub county level.

Industrialization - In order to encourage both medium and small enterprise industrialization which will be vital for both value addition and job creation, government must offer preferential power tariffs to Busoga. This deliberate affirmative action will serve to make Jinja plus other in towns of Busoga attractive to the potential local and foreign investors. 

Busoga being in a current situation of having no available free public land to give to potential investors as part of the incentives as it is the case in other areas of the country where land is readily available, the only viable incentive that the region can leverage on in its drive to bring manufacturing to the region is the aspect of cheap electricity under the preferential power tariffs action.

Diversification of Enterprises

There is a need to encourage the farmers in Busoga to consider high yielding farming enterprises such as coffee growing, cattle diary farming, and food production at household level to ensure food security.

-- Edward Baliddawa