SUBSISTANCE FARMING

A DISASTER
FOR AFRICAN FAMILIES

H.E. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni

PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF UGANDA

11th August, 2019

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To all Ugandans, especially the Buzzukulu,

Greetings. I have concluded my countrywide tour of the 20 zones.

My idea of using these 20 zones for sensitization comes from the
19 Independence Districts, which themselves had grown out of
the 15 colonial districts. The colonial districts were: West Nile;
Acholi; Lango; Karamoja; Teso; Bugisu; Bukedi; Busoga; Mengo;
Mubende; Masaka; Ankole; Kigyezi; Tooro; and Bunyoro.

This is according to a clockwise movement from West Nile.

At independence, on account of the cultural and linguistic

considerations, four new Districts were created. These were: Madi
out of West Nile; Sebei out of Bugisu; Kasese out of Tooro; and
Bundibugyo (Bwamba) out of Tooro. This brought the total to 19.
Kasese and Bundibugyo were created during Amin's time,
responding to the resistance by the Bakonjo and Baamba to the
mistakes of the managers of the Tooro kingdom, before the
abolition of the kingdoms in 1967. During the NRM time, in
addition to further decentralization for ease of service delivery, we
also created the Kampala zone out of the colonial Mengo district.
Hence, the total of 20 zones. During this sensitization campaign,
my staff handled Kampala with Wakiso, out of the former Mengo
district.

These 20 zones are convenient for communication on account of

the dialects used. In each zone, I either speak in English or in the
local dialect if I have good command of it and there is only one
translation for most of the zones. However, in a few, we are forced
to have multiple translations. In, for instance, West Nile, we must
have translations into Lugbara, Alur and Kakwa. In Bukedi, we
must have translations into Lugwere, Japadhola, Ateso, Samia
and Lunyole. In some areas, like West Nile and Bukedi, I use
Swahili.

On this tour, my message was, again, to continue to assault the

bottleneck of the archaic tradition of subsistence farming -

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okukolera olubuto lwokka, okukorera enda yoonka, erikolera
erirya riisa, tic me cam keken,aisoamaikin akoik) etc. etc.

In the pre-colonial, pre- capitalist times, Ugandans mainly

worked for food, ensuring simple shelter such as the traditional
huts (ebifuuha), collecting firewood (okusheenya), collecting water
from the well (okutaha amaizi, okussena amazzi), raising cattle or
goats for bride price, using cattle or goats to come to the help of
a friend in need (munno mu kabi, kushumbuusha), using cattle
or goats for empaano (friendship gifts) and using goods (ghee,
hoes, pangas, bark-cloth etc.) for barter-trade (okuchurika).

There was very little use of money and families or communities

were self-sufficient but at a low - level of technology, as seen
above. The families would build their own houses etc, because,
technologically, it was possible to democratize the skills of house
-building. However, even at that time, the need for specialization
(emyooga) was becoming clear. While everybody, together with
family members and neighbours, could build the traditional huts,
not everybody could be a blacksmith (omuheesi); not everybody
could be a mubaizi (carpenter); not everybody could be a
munogoozi (clay workers -potters); not everybody could be a
mukomagyi (bark-cloth maker); not everybody could be
Omutanagyi (the maker of bows and arrows); not everybody could
be a omuriimbi (lake men - that operated canoes or rafts - ebiba);
etc. etc.

Therefore, even in the pre-capitalist, pre - colonial times,

specialization had started. You did not have to do everything that
you needed for life yourself. You only needed to have the means
to barter or buy for everything you needed. They were using
cowrie-shells (ensimbi) as currency.

With colonialism, in some isolated instances, technology

advanced. More sophisticated houses, using cement, steel bars
(mitayimbwa), mabaati, matafaari (bricks), mategura (tiles) etc.,
were introduced. That meant that not everybody could be a
builder. It is the civil engineers, the brick-layers etc. that could
build those modern houses. The rest of us, therefore, had to have
enough money to pay the specialists to build the modern houses
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for us. While it is still easy for almost everybody that can walk to
go to the well and collect water, or go to the forest and collect
fire-wood, it is neither convenient nor efficient. It is more
convenient to use gas or electricity for lighting and cooking and
to have the National Water and Sewerage Co-operation to bring
water to us through pipes and take away sewerage through other
pipes. We no longer have bachuura - the people that would come
at night in towns to take away people's faeces that had been
deposited in buckets (obulobo). The bucket system in the pre-
modern towns all over the world was, of course, some sort of
improvement on the open- defecation that was common in
villages - just easing oneself in the bushes.

Therefore, with modernity where you no longer build your own

house etc., the need for money is accentuated.

You need money for a good house; you need money for some of
the foods (sugar, coffee, tea, meat, salt etc.) even when you grow
your own food; you need money for the education of the children
that do not get Government bursary; you need money for the
household non-food needs (clothes, furniture, etc.); you need
money for clean water( piped or not); you need money for
electricity; you need money to buy a modern means of transport
(pikipiki, car, etc.); etc., etc.

Therefore, the traditional way, where you only work for the
stomach (subsistence farming), is a disaster for the African
families. Subsistence farming in the modern times is like a fish
out of water. It cannot survive. It is out of place and in danger.

During the colonial times, the traditional mainly non-money

economy had a modest change that mutated it into an "enclave
economy". "An enclave economy" means an island of pseudo -
modernity surrounded by a sea of backwardness. The Island of
pseudo - modernity was comprised of the 3Cs and 3Ts, as the
colonialists themselves described it.

The 3Cs stood for: Coffee, Cotton and Copper; the 3Ts stood for:
Tea, Tobacco and Tourism. These represented a very small

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proportion of the Ugandan families. In Ankole, for instance, only
a few families in Ndeija grew coffee and maybe some in the Igara -
Sheema area and some families in the Kyamuhunga area grew
tea. Certainly, in the two parishes of Kikoni and Nyaburiza in
Ntungamo Sub-County, I do not remember anybody (any family)
that was engaged in cash-crop growing. They were all,
democratically, working for the stomach only. It could be that
some coffee farmers in the Buganda area got some reasonable
money from coffee. There were a number of good permanent
buildings in that area. That must have been on account of getting
good money from coffee, most likely. In Northern and Eastern
Uganda, where the main colonial cash-crop was cotton, there was
some progress especially in paying for education, buying bicycles
etc.

However, housing remained mainly the traditional grass-thatched

houses. Why? Was it because the people did not want better
houses, or was it because the money from cotton was not enough
to cover the education costs and improved housing? In 1969
when I made a personally sponsored study tour of the Northern
Uganda, some women in Arua town were still walking around
with only leaves tied around their waist but, otherwise, totally
naked; at Kalongo Hospital, I found about 50 women, waiting to
deliver, in the courtyard of the Hospital, all bare - breasted. I do
not have to talk of Karamoja because for that area, there was no
attempt to introduce any cash crop at all.

With coffee, you can make good money even in a small acreage.
With cotton, you can only make money if you have a big acreage.
In the North and East, in those years, the populations were still
small, and, therefore, the land could not have been the problem.
What, then, was the problem? Why were people not building
better houses? In the Ankole area, the people were staying in
grass-thatched huts because there was no cash-crop production-
no coffee, no cotton, no dairy industry, no serious beef industry
beyond the monthly cattle auction markets that, again, only
catered, where the parents were enlightened enough, for school
fees, like in my family's case. By 1954, I can only remember 3
mabaati-roofed houses in the two parishes of Kikoni and
Nyaburiza - two belonged to local colonial chiefs and one
belonged to a trader. Apart from the mabaati roofs, the three

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lonely houses were made of the flimsy wattle, reeds and mud
walls (emuli- emiingo and ebikondo). The bricks or the Cement
blocs were unheard of. Yet, many families had a lot of land,
cattle, big banana plantations etc. It was, however, all for,
mainly, traditional purposes of subsistence - erikolera erirya
riisa, okukolera ekidda kyonka, okukolera olubuto lwokka,
okukorera enda yoonka, tic me cam keken, aisoamakin akoik.

Therefore, by independence, there were two social-economic

problems for the population of Uganda: Continued living under
the social formation of primitive self - sufficiency at low
technological and organizational levels and where cash crops had
been introduced, engaging in cash crops for the benefit of the
colonial industries such as the textile factories of Manchester in
the U.K but without taking the homestead economics as the
primary factor. The primary factor, should be to make the family
rich and not just the factories rich. Therefore, by independence,
many families had no source of sustained cash and the ones that
had some sustained sources, the amounts were small except,
probably, for coffee.

In comes Idi Amin in 1971. He destroys, almost completely, the

small modern economy, the cash economy of the 3Cs and 3Ts.
Cotton and copper disappeared completely. It is only coffee that
continued to limp on at 2 million, 60kgs bags per annum. Tea
declined from 23million kgs per year to only 3million kgs per
year. Tourism disappeared. Tobacco continued to limp on but
with reduced volumes. By 1986, therefore, when the NRM finally
came to power, the economy of Uganda had become more
subsistence than it had been in 1971 but, of course, with a
bigger population.

This is where the NRM played a decisive role in reviving and

propelling forward the economy of Uganda. First, we had to bring
back the small “enclave economy”, the small island of modernity
surrounded by the sea of backwardness. Tea has gone from the
3 million kgs of 1986, passed the 23 million kgs of 1971 and is
now at 60 million kgs. Coffee has gone from the 2.392million
bags in FY 1985/86 to 4.305.million bags FY 2017/18. Even
cotton has gone from almost zero in 1986 to now 189,444 bales

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in FY 2018/19. Tobacco is still being produced and in FY
2017/18 Uganda exported 21,393 tonnes. Tourism has grown by
leaps and bounds from the 16,950 of 1968 and the almost zero
numbers of 1986 to now 1.5million tourists bringing in US$1.5bn
per annum. It can and will grow more. Of the original 3Cs and
3Ts, therefore, it is only copper that has not yet been revived.

In addition to reviving the 2Cs and the 3Ts, the NRM has
successfully commercialized many completely new products as
follows: maize, milk and milk products, beef, fish, timber,
bananas, fruit, cocoa, vanilla, palm oil, flowers, sim-sim, sun-
flower, cassava, etc. etc. All these are agro-based with factories
being fed by them. Many of these agricultural products have been
transformed by factories into final products: textiles from cotton,
fish products, cooking oils and soaps from palm trees and sun-
flower, plywood from timber, juices from fruits, starch from
cassava, powdered milk and other dairy products from milk,
tyres from rubber, etc.etc. There are other factories that are not
based on agricultural products. These are: cement from
limestone (einooni); plastics from oil; steel products from scrap
and now from iron ore (obutare); fertilizers from phosphates; gold
bars from gold ores; batteries from recycled batteries; etc.etc.
Some of the factories use imported raw-materials such as PVC.

This spectrum of the sources of the raw-materials – agricultural,

forest, fresh water, minerals or imported, as well as the peaceful
atmosphere, has already attracted a total of 4,900 factories
employing a total of 700,000 workers. Therefore, sector one,
commercial agriculture, is already linked with sector two –
industries - in some significant ways. Also mining, to a limited
extent, is also getting linked to industry.

Then, there is the services sector comprised of the hotels,

transport, banking, insurance etc. with a total of 200,000
companies, employing 1.5m persons. This is sector III.

Finally, there is the ICT Sector with 1,200 companies employing a

total of about 10,000 persons. These ICT companies include
companies like Techobrain, iSON Technology which do BPO

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operations which involve, among others, linking businesses
across the World.

Therefore, the Ugandan economy is one of the fastest growing in

the World on account of the NRA/UPDF ensuring peace, the NRM
ensuring reconciliation and democratic empowerment of the
Ugandans, the NRM ensuring macro-economic stability as well as
the NRM ensuring some limited infrastructure rehabilitation and
development. It would have grown faster if the 6th Parliament
had not delayed the construction of Bujagali dam and if we did
not have corrupt actors asking for bribes before delivering
services or those corrupt officials doing shoddy jobs and inflating
costs. The corruption issue, however, is a software issue and not
a hardware one. Given our transparent democratic system, the
corrupt always get exposed and, on account of our massive
educational system, nobody is indispensable.

In 2006, I put my foot down with the 7th Parliament and we

prioritized the roads, defence, electricity, health, education and
ICT. With adequate electricity, the economy will roar.

There is, however, one structural problem in the society and that
is the residual pre-capitalist phenomenon of subsistence farming
(okukolera olubutto lwokka, okukolera enda yoonka, okukolera
ekidda kyonka, erikolera erirya rissa, tic me cam keken,
aisoamaikin akoik) already mentioned above. It is this continued
disabling factor that I have been battling eversince 1966 after my
A levels. Tropical Africa is very deceptive and dangerous for those
that do not sharpen their insight. The good climate means that
even the lazy can survive. I used to see two madmen in
Ntungamo – Katukuuza and Kaboogyi. They would go round
completely naked but they would not die immediately. In the cold
climates, you cannot survive like that. In the Tropics, you die
slowly and without drama. By not dying dramatically, however, it
does not mean that the Ugandans’ quality of life is good; not at
all. How do we measure this? We have a number of
measurements such as: the infant mortality rate; the average life-
expectancy; the percentage of people with stunted growth; etc.etc.
Infant mortality rate in Uganda was 122 per every 1,000 infants
born alive in 1986. It has now fallen to 43 per every 1,000

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infants born alive within the 1st year of life. In Sweden, however,
the infant mortality rate is 3 in every 1,000. The average life
expectancy in Uganda was 43 years in 1986. It is now 63 years.
In Japan, however, it is 86 years. In Finland it is 81 years.
Therefore, this abstaining from modernisation has got a cost to
the society. Yet, some people refuse to see this.

You get religious people preaching on how “God has called” the
deceased. My question is always: “Why does God like to call
Africans more than calling the other people e.g. Japanese?” It is
not God calling Africans; It is Satan calling them on account of
the Africans failing to use the “talents” (in the Book of Mathew
25: 14-30) God gave them.

This inadequate quality of life is on account, in part, to the 68%

of our people refusing to get out of the tradition of only producing
for the stomach. It is the failure of the leaders that live near
these people, to tell them how to improve their lives by going
commercial in their production efforts. In 1966, when we
confronted the phenomenon of the stagnation of the Banyankore
Society, we proposed 4 steps to be taken: step one – stop
nomadism. The Banyankore, like the Karimojong, had that
additional problem of nomadism that I analysed in the Booklet:
“From Obwiriza (grass thatch) to Matafaari”, which captured that
campaign. As a result of that campaign, the Banyankore settled
down and started fencing their lands and doing semi-modern
animal husbandry.

Unfortunately, Amin came in, in 1971 and we had to embark on

fighting that lasted 16 years, until 1986.

When I came back in 1986, I found many of the Banyankore

settled but still in the phenomenon of only working for the
stomach. After some detailed analysis, I proposed 3 steps. Step
one, go out of only producing for the stomach and also produce
for the pocket (money). Step two, as you work for money, do so
with ekibaro (cura, aimair, otita). Step three, once the families
have started earning incomes, the new danger is when the head
of the family dies and, then, the children descend on the property
and destroy it by fragmentation, just like white ants. In step
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three, we, therefore, de-campaigned inheritance by fragmentation
and recommended inheritance by shares (emigabo). In this way,
we divide what comes from the property, surplus income, rather
than dividing the property. In that way, what the late property
owner left will be preserved and it will produce new companies for
each of the descendants of the late owner.

On the issue of cura (ekibaro), our recommendation is that for

somebody of four acres or less, the following activities are
recommended:

Coffee;

Fruits (oranges, mangoes, pineapples, grapes,

apples, straw-berries);

Food-crops;

Pasture for dairy;

Poultry farming for eggs in the backyard;

Piggery in the backyard;

Fish-farming in the periphery of the wetlands

(emiiga), but not in the centre of the wetlands.

Therefore, the aim of my recent campaign is to wake up the

sleeping 68% portion of our homesteads to join the
transformation efforts. If each of the 8million homesteads of
Uganda earned Shs.20million per year, that effort would add an
extra US$44bn to our economy. The size of the economy would,
therefore, jump to US$74bn by the foreign exchange rate method.

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In 1966, before we started the anti-subsistence farming
campaign, I had some disagreement with the Banyankore elite.
Their view was that the traditional Banyankore could not change.
They were “impossible” (tibarikubasika). My question, then, was:
“What, then, should we do?” Their answer was: “Obarugyeho”;
“okore abyaawe” (“leave them alone; do your own personal
things”). I could not believe in this line because I was living with
my mother, originally a traditional woman herself, but who had
been transformed by the limited Church efforts and oburokore
(being saved). She had learnt the hygienic practices of boiling
milk instead of drinking it raw; she taught us to abandon the
unhygienic Banyankore practice of eating from the same big plate
(orusaniya) or a heat - treated (kubabura) banana leaf (olulagala,
orureere) in favour of each individual having his own plate, his
own cup, his own kyanzi (milk - pot). She had learnt the knitting
of sweaters. She could even read the Bible. This was all influence
by the two self -sponsored six months’ courses each of oburoonde
(baptism and confirmation courses) which, at personal expense
and staying with the Katungyis (family friends of my grand-
parents), “abroad” at Kinoni (25 miles from Ntungamo). All this
was in addition to the great personal discipline of no alcohol, no
smoking (okureetsa), no kikaambi (chewing tobacco), no loose
living etc. I, therefore, believed that the Banyankore could
change; but we had to undertake the efforts. Besides, we had to
try.

Recently, I was in the Sub-county of Kanyaryeru. 70% of the

homesteads have food security and are in commercial farming
with good ekibaro (cura, otita, aimar) of dairy and bananas. In
the 9 Villages around Kisozi, the percentage is 85% for the 1,997
homesteads.

How do the 68% move forward, following the present campaign?

My answer is that there are already four funds for Wealth and
Job creation. These are: the Operation Wealth Creation (OWC)
Fund; the Women Fund; the Youth Fund; the Micro-finance fund
and the Innovation Fund. This is a total of Shs437.2bn. This
money has been there every year, in some cases, even since the
year 2001 as NAADS money. The complaints are now that, this
money is given to the ones “who already have”. The have-nots do
not get. It is the “haves” that access this support. This cannot be

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a big problem. The big issue is that the money is there. If the
routes through which it is passing have a problem, then we shall
get better routes.

Besides, we shall add an additional 3 funds: the value addition

fund for the 20 zones depending on the locally available raw-
materials; the myooga funds; and the leaders’ SACCO fund. We
have already supported the youth of Kampala, Rukungiri etc.
with metal cutting and bending common-user machine tools, the
common-user machines for carpentry etc. We supported some
youth with grain-milling and animal feeds’ mixing machines. We
are now to aim at the whole spectrum of value addition, area by
area. The immediate industry I am about to launch is leather -
tanning at Kawumu, Luwero, using the skins of the meat-packers
so that Uganda is self-sufficient in leather for shoe-making,
making leather-bags, making leather-covered car-seats etc. We
shall, then, target the whole spectrum of industries.

There are, then, the myooga. Omwooga (singular) emyooga

(plural) are Runyankore words meaning a specialization sector
(blacksmithing, carpentry, pottery etc.). We identified the
following myooga:

Boda Boda Association;

Women Entrepreneurs’ Association;

Carpenters’ Association;

Salon Operators’ Association;

Taxi Operators’ Association;

Restaurant Association;

Welders’ Association;

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Market Vendors’ Association;

Youth Leaders’ SACCO;

PWDs’ Association;

Produce Dealers’ Association;

Mechanics’ Association;

Tailors’ Association;

Media Operators’ Association;

Fishermen’s Association;

The Performing Arts’ Association.

Each of these will have a district-wide SACCO with branches at

convenient points (Parish or Sub-county).

These mwooga - specific and district-wide SACCOs may be better

than the katogo (mixed grill) ones that were, moreover, numerous
and not covering specific geographic areas. These myooga
SACCOs will cover all the miscellaneous activities that are not
agriculture. Agriculture is still being covered by OWC and
Uganda Development Bank (UDB), the latter for the rich. These
myooga SACCOs will also cover some of the social groups:
Women, Youth leaders, PWDs and some are suggesting the
Elders.

The final and also district-wide will be for the elected leaders of
the Local Government or the political Parties. Many of these
either get no pay or low pay. Yet, they are not allowed to access
the other Wealth funds on the grounds that they are leaders.
This is not fair, especially, since they use their time for the

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benefit of the community and, sometimes, they do not have
enough time for their own affairs. The leaders SACCO will fill
this gap and they should remain members even when they retire.

All this is choo (waking up) from working for the stomach only
(tic me cam keken) using Government money. The people of the
parish of Rwengaaju, Kabarole, however, demonstrated that you
did not have to wait for Government money. As soon as they got
my message in the year 2008, they formed their SACCO and
raised money from among themselves starting with Shs.3million
from 60 members. You can, on this, contact Mr. Richard
Nyakana on telephone who is the leader of these farmers and
other wealth creation warriors.

I invite all of you to join in this sensitization effort so that our

society is transformed. We cannot go on with a society that still
accommodates irrational archaic practices in the modern times
when the Americans are celebrating 50 years of going to the
moon and coming back. It is suicidal.

I thank you.

Yoweri K. Museveni (Gen. Rtd.)

PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF UGANDA

6th August, 2019

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