ALICE Alaso, the FDC Secretary General and Soroti Woman MP, in an opinion piece criticised President Museveni’s recent tour of Teso, accusing him of not having fulfilled his previous pledges to the region, such as tarmacking roads and rural electrification.
She argued that the people of Teso had become impoverished since the advent of NRM and that the ‘cow-cotton economy’ was no more. Below, the President reacts to her accusations

Dear Editor,
I read the article written by Hon. Alice Alaso, FDC, in The Monitor of September 1st 2008. It is good the Opposition is putting down its views on development instead of just opposing. In about two weeks’ time, I will answer Hon. Alaso in detail. In the meantime, I would be grateful to the Editor to publish this Article which I wrote some months ago regarding the socio-economic transformation that we caused in the North Ankole area, part of the cattle corridor, similar to Teso in some ways.

Hon. Alaso talks of the Cattle, Cotton and Education (CCE) economy of Teso in the colonial times that had brought prosperity to the area. I will answer that position as already pointed out. One question I want to leave with Hon. Alaso is: “What type of cattle?” The answer is obvious: “The indigenous Zebu cattle”. The next question: “How much yield of milk were they giving per head per day? How do they compare with the Friesian cows now in the possession of the women group in Hon. Alaso’s constituency?” More about this later. Meanwhile, kindly read my article.

There has been significant economic and social transformation in North Ankole in the last 40 years. This area is comprised of the Sazas (counties) of Kashaari, Isingiro, Bukanga, Nyabushozi, Kazo and some parts of Ibanda.

It is part of the Savannah land known as the cattle corridor that includes the sazas of Kabula, Mawogola, parts of Gomba, Ssingo, Buwekula, Rwemiyaga, Kyaka, Nakaseke, Buruli, Masindi, the districts of Lango, Teso and Karamoja.

However, the movement for socio-economic change started in the Nyabushozi-Kazo area exactly 42 years ago in 1966. At that time, I had just finished my A'’level examinations and I wanted to stop the continuous suffering of the cattle-keepers and other Ugandans that had been imposed on them by colonialism.
Although colonialism had imposed some sort of peace on Uganda by stopping the inter-kingdom wars that were being promoted by the myopic chiefs, they had also created a lot of problems for some of the communities.

These included interfering with the tribal boundaries of the kingdoms (transferring some parts to neighbouring colonies or kingdoms), promoted uncontrolled migrations, colonial wars and epidemics (small pox, rinderpest, jiggers, etc) that depopulated the area, leading to the spread of tse-tse flies from Tanzania which, further, decimated cattle, preventing the regeneration of herds following the rinderpest epidemics of the 1890s, 1918, 1933 and 1944. Even in areas that had not experienced the tse-tse flies spreading, tick-borne diseases (ECF, babisiosis, anaplasmosis and heart-water) and worms, caused by uncontrolled movement of cattle from neighbouring colonies such as Rwanda, caused very high calf mortality, low libido, etc, leading to the shrinking of herds.

H.M. Stanley had written on page 342 of his book, Through the Dark Continent, as follows:
“Hilly range, steep cone, hummock and plain were clothed with grass ripe for fire. The herds were numerous and all as fat as prize cattle, in the valley between the Denny (Buhweju) and Iwanda (Ibanda) ranges we had passed over 4,000 cattle of the long-horned species ....”
It was in this very area that herds had shrunk leading to a Diaspora of part of the population that had to go to Bukiri (Lango, Teso, Pallisa and Acholi) as well as Busoga and Buganda to look after other peoples’ cattle-Balaalo [hired cattle-keepers].

To the credit of the colonial system, starting in 1958, working with USAID, a tse-tse flies eradication programme was launched. Using bush-clearing, wild animals reservoir elimination and spraying using a drug known as Dieldrin, the tse-tse flies were eliminated by 1964.

The cattle-keepers population that had scattered all over the territory of Uganda but who, through their industry and resilience, had replenished their herds, started coming back to the area. Indeed, the former king of the area, His Highness Gasyonga II, called upon them to come back.

However, as the UPC administration in Ankole kingdom was not in favour of the peasants, they were not encouraged to acquire land titles (ebyaapa) and practice modern animal husbandry that included fencing their lands, spraying or dipping cattle to kill ticks, regular de-worming and developing valley dams to trap and retain water instead of following the water in the rivers and lakes during the dry-season like the Karimojong still do today.

The UPC administration in Mbarara wanted them to continue meandering all over the place. This also meant no education for their children, poor health especially high infant mortality (kufiisa), back breaking jobs (kuhendeka) and maiming caused by savannah thorns (kumuga) such as eye injuries (eshongo).
This is when our student group stepped in, in December 1966. Traveling with my friend Mwesigwa Black, who died in the 1972 attack on Idi Amin’s Battalion in Mbarara, moving, mainly, on foot, we visited kraals and also held public meetings.

Our message was: abandon traditional nomadism, adopt settled animal husbandry (sedentary) or become marginalised forever or, even, because of constant homelessness, perish completely.

They did not believe that it was possible to stay in one place (without nomadism) and be able to sustainably and successfully look after cattle. Indeed, traditional animal husbandry had some logic. By constantly shifting, you run away from the heavy tick and worm burden to virgin areas that had less of that disease and vector burden, had un-grazed grass or more water. Our message was: Do not run away from the diseases; kill the disease-causing agents and vectors where you are, capture and retain water instead of following it and stop bush-burning which destroys pasture. Fortunately, we had the example of the Government Mbarara Stock Farm where cattle had been looked after for half a century, successfully, without nomadism (kufuruka).

In the years following 1966, we had to encourage them to fence the land against the wishes of the hostile Mbarara Land Board. As long as there were no rival claimants, we encouraged them to fence their land.

We also sensitised them on spraying their cattle against ticks and developing valley dams. The calf-mortality shrunk and cows were able to wean the calves (kuchuutsya). This meant more weaners. The herds started multiplying. Unfortunately, our work was interrupted by Idi Amin’s coup of January 1971.

That meant eight years of no additional work. Even after the defeat of Idi Amin, in 1979, we did not get time to resume our sensitisation. Soon we were engaged in the five-year bush war (1981-1986). It was interesting, therefore, to find that after 16 years of stagnation in terms of transformation, what had been achieved by 1970 had not been lost. Many of the people, encouraged by the recovering and expanding herds of the long horn indigenous cattle, had stopped nomadic practices and were quasi-sedentary.
However, our analysis of the situation, when we came back in 1986, was that homestead incomes were not high enough to cause the transformation we needed.

Therefore, we conceived of a three-point strategy. First, for anybody (homestead) with 100 head of cattle or less, we recommended shifting to exotic high yielding varieties (Friesians).
Secondly, for homesteads with 100 head of cattle and more, we recommended a mixture of ranching (Ankole long-horn) and dairy (Friesians).

Thirdly, we recommended diversification of activities to include: goat-rearing (also as part of bush clearing because they are browsers), fruit-growing, honey-farming (apiary) and, later on, we want to introduce silkworm farming. Although we have not completed our diversification programme, the results, as you can see, are already good. If somebody is selling 200 litres of milk a day at the very low price of sh200 per litre characteristic of this area, on account of the big quantity of milk in the area, he will earn sh14,400,000 in a year. Given a household of 10 people, the per capita income will be US$850 - far above the national per capita income of $400. If you use the average household of five persons, the income per capita will be $1,700. Once we complete our full range of diversification, we expect incomes in the range of sh50,000,000 a year for a family. Suppose, for instance, in addition to milk, a family has got three acres of fruits (sh36,000,000), honey, goats and silk farming, you, definitely, earn in excess of the modest sh50,000,000 I am talking about.

This could be a per capita income of $2,900. You can judge for yourselves what all this means. However, even with the present level of transformation, a lot of social movement has already taken place. As you can see, housing has been transformed; they no longer stay in grass huts. Some have started using solar energy, doing away with the unhealthy tadoba (candle) or hurricane lamp (etaala). Some are engaged in rain harvesting. Most importantly of all, is that all children are going to school including university.
As a consequence of that, the population is moving from agriculture to industry and services in the towns, leaving less people on land, in agriculture.

There are some sub-counties (gombololas) in the area that are predominantly crop areas. These are Kashongi, Kanoni and parts of Buremba. We are developing a different packaging of enterprises for these areas.
On account of traditional culture, in some of these areas, like other areas of Uganda, land had been fragmented. You, therefore, need different packaging of enterprises. These include: zero grazing dairy cattle, chicken rearing for eggs, fruit-growing, some pig-rearing, apiary, silk farming and, where applicable, some fish farming. Again, the results here will be good. In fact, some of the homesteads, using fruit-growing, are already doing very well. The best example for this model (where land has been fragmented) is Mrs. Josephine Kiiza of Masaka whom you should visit and Mr. Nyombi of Mityana.

There is also the parish of Ruharo in Bushenyi, which we have worked on. All the areas grow bananas for food. This is a common activity. The Kazo- Nyabushozi areas are the centres of this transformation.

However, the model has now spread to Rwemiyaga, Kabula, Mawogola, Ssingo (Kyenkwanzi), Ngoma-Wakyato (Nakaseke), Bukanga, Isingiro, Kashaari, Ruhaama, Rushenyi, etc. Through Bonna Bagaggawale, we intend to transform, similarly, the whole of Uganda. In fact, this Uganda-wide campaign has been going on for the last 13 years, since 1995 when I made a country-wide tour talking about poverty eradication. The elite, unfortunately, did not pick this one up in time. Otherwise, we would be very far by now.

This rural production transformation has got implications for the whole economy. Expanded agricultural production must be accompanied with value addition for the entire surplus that is not consumed fresh. The milk, the fruits, the bananas, the beef, the pork, the honey, the fish, etc., must all be processed so as to reach the markets in Uganda, the regional and international markets. We prefer private capital to do this. If, however, private capital is not forth-coming, then we are going to use UDC to start the processing and privatise the enterprises later. This is what we did for milk, fish, tea, etc. We can do it for all enterprises. There is one factor that helped this area in the past. This was the Christian revival movement that started itself in this area in the 1930s. Families and individuals stopped engaging in indisciplined ways of life - alcohol, promiscuity, etc.

Although this did not have economic implications initially, it created a good background on which we built in the 1960s. However, some of the religious teaching of this group was anti-business, anti-profit, anti-borrowing (amabanja), etc.

The background of discipline, however, was useful for our subsequent enterprise. One factor we are now dealing with is immunising the people against further land fragmentation.

We are sensitising the people about the need to form family companies and dividing shares rather than the physical division that takes place on the account of inheritance.

Yoweri Museveni
The President of the Republic of Uganda