Skip to main content

OIL IS COMING BUT LET US NOT FORGET OUR GOLD


The country is operating on a time table that first oil will be seen in 2020.

There is a lot of frenetic activity around building supporting infrastructure, getting investment approvals, ensuring local participation and any number of other things to ensure readiness the moment the oil starts gushing down the pipeline to the coast.

And so we should.

I was intrigued the other day to read in the Kenyan press how Kisumu County, just across Lake Victoria from us, has set upon an ambitious project to ensure egg and poultry meat self-sufficiency for the county within the next few years.

Under the plan Kisumu County will train 100 farmers every month over the 12 month pilot period. The intended aim is to be able to satisfy the county’s demand for 25,000 broilers and 75,000 eggs daily.

Whereas I would prefer that this was private sector driven deal, I like this plan for a number of reasons not least of all that it shows leadership by the county and secondly, it relies on locally sourced materials and thirdly, that the production of such volumes can very well set up Kisumu, over time,  as a hub for all that is poultry.

And for Uganda an agricultural initiative like this would suit as to a tee, as we are ideally suited for agriculture with nearly half the region’s arable land here and a fifth of the land under a water, it does not take a rocket scientist to see our competitive advantage staring us in the eye.

We can borrow a leaf from them.

What if we trained 1,200 farmers for poultry in Busoga another 500 in Masaka for goats, 500 farmers for mangoes and oranges in eastern Uganda and any number of agricultural products from around the country.

Some attempts are underway in that direction, but we need to be a bit more systematic and include the private sector more fundamentally to ensure sustainability of the project.

I propose we rethink our current model and go beyond just supplying farmers with inputs to organising, educating and facilitating them to penetrate established and new markets.

I have no doubt that our farmers are not productive for lack of application or good lands but because they do not know what to do.

We are still using the hoe to till the land and even there according to agriculture ministry statistics we do not have enough hoes in the country.  Our farmer is seeing his sweat disappear in post-harvest losses, which can be as high as half the crop. And our farmers because of the measly amounts they produce have little to no bargaining power in the market, losing more value to middlemen and the general market.

It is no wonder they continue to wallow in poverty despite the general growth in the economy over the last few decades.

It is a linear logic: Our farmers need to produce more and lose less during postharvest as a way to enhance their bargaining power in the market.

And another important outcome of increasing our farmer productivity is that it will form a good foundation for a robust agroindustry.

A cursory search on the internet for a tomato paste making plant indicate that you can get one for between $10,000 (sh36m) and $600,000 (sh2.2b). Not out of this world numbers. The catch is the capacity. The smaller one can manage a load of a ton of tomatoes an hour!

I also discovered that in 2007 Uganda produced 14,000 tons of tomatoes, most of which went to our own kitchens. But let us assume we converted all our tomatoes into tomato paste, using 50 small plants (one for every two districts) we would go through Uganda’s annual crop in under two weeks.

To keep the plants working at at least 50 percent capacity all year around, we need to produce at least 12-times as much tomato as in 2007.

It is within the realm of possibility. We have the manpower. We have the land. We even have the capital.

And that is only for tomatos. The same principles can be applied to matoke, coffee, fruits, vegetables, goats.

There are issues of markets, as markets will not just lap up all you produce, but if we can begin to ramp up production we can address the other impediments as we go along.  That’s how you do business. I should know.

(FEBRUARY 2018)

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

UMEME A RECOGNISED SUCCESS BUT …

  Recently the World Bank did a survey of the power utilities on the continent. Of the 39 utilities surveyed only two, in Uganda – Umeme and in Seychelles, were able to cover their operating costs and capital expenditures – maintenance and expansion of the grid. The report went on to point out that only 19 or about half of the surveyed utilities were able to meet their everyday costs like salaries. Essentially most of our power utilities on the continent are technically bankrupt. This has far reaching ramifications for the industry as a whole. When you, the client, pays your bill, Umeme then passes money up the line to pay the transmission and generation companies. If Umeme does not collect the revenues due to it or does not price the power at an appropriate rate, the pain will be felt up and down the sector. The transmission company would not be able to maintain and extend its network and the generation company would not be able to generate efficiently or build new
Post a Comment
Read more

REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT CAN BE KEY IN OUR TRANSFORMATION

I have been around long enough to see real estate development, or maldevelopment, lead to the sprawl that is Kampala today. From atop the Skyz Hotel in Naguru, one can see as far as Mukono to the east, Entebbe to the South and Bombo to the north. At night the lights from traffic, streetlights and from residences makes it a sight to behold. But we were here in 1986 when Kampala’s outer limits were Kibuye roundabout, Rubaga, Wandegeya, Ntinda and Nakawa. The NRM did the smart thing and removed restrictions – rent controls, on real estate and spawned a real estate boom that has led to the dramatic expansion of the capital city’s boundaries to what they are today. During the same period the government’s National Housing & Construction Company (NHCC) has not kept pace with private developers, be they individuals or companies developing a few dozen units. "Official statistics suggest that there is a 550,000 deficit of acceptable quality housing in Uganda of
Post a Comment
Read more

LET US GIVE SMEs A CHANCE

Something is wrong when most of Ugandan business is shut out of the government procurement process. This is happening in Uganda today. Micro-, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) account for 90 percent of the private sector. These account for 65 percent of national output (GDP). On the other hand 75 percent of our now sh32trillion national budget is earmarked for public procurement but the MSMEs’ share of this action is only 15 percent. It does not take a rocket scientist to see that such numbers are behind the huge inequalities in our society and why the majority of us do not have hope of a better and brighter future. Thankfully this is not an insurmountable problem. If MSMEs had access to more opportunities accruing from the national budget the benefits to themselves and to the nation as a whole would be huge. These would include increased production which would lead to job creation, raise incomes at household levels, leading to reduced income ine
Post a Comment
Read more

THE MUKWANO I KNEW

We have lost the greatest Ugandan entrepreneur of our time, Mr Amirali Karmali, more popularly known as Mzee Mukwano. I have known Mzee Mukwano for more than 40 years and most of what I am today is due to him. And I am not alone. "He has helped countless people through school – as he did me. Helped countless more in business – as he did me. And he has been a steadfast friend and source of support to countless more – as he was to me.... I first met Mukwano around about 1977. My mother was the secretary for the chief of operations at Uganda Airlines, a man I knew only as Hamid. Mukwano had come to charter the Uganda Airlines’ Hercules plane and I happened to be around the office then. He was a short man, an unassuming man, but clearly a serious businessman who would charter the plane to bring in goods that were in high demand here. He run a popular whole sale shop in Nakasero – Egesa Commercial Agencies, a beehive of activity and the go-to place for anythin
Post a Comment
Read more

DEAL WITH PLASTICS BEFORE ITS TOO LATE

The first rainy season seems to have passed. Not too soon for some of us. It has become standard now that with the rains come the floods and with every season these become not only more and more daunting, but spread all over Kampala. While KCCA has done a lot of work in improving drainage, we are undoing the good work with our bad habits. Everyday we dispose of tons of plastic improperly, these find their way into the existing drainage systems of this city. These cause blockages, which we go about blissfully unaware of until the rainy season begins. The rainwater not only struggles to go past existing blockages but comes along with its own load of plastics to reinforce the existing blockage. The water, which should be finding its way to Lake Victoria, swells out of the drains and finds its way onto the road, into our offices and our homes. That’s the simplified version of events.  This is before we even start examining how we are building in the wetlands into
Post a Comment
Read more

GIVE OUR TRAFFIC POLICE A CHANCE

Last week during an investor interaction   Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) officials called on police to stop overriding traffic lights while directing traffic. KCCA argues that the traffic lights are large investment and it makes no sense for police to countermand them. In a classic case of “The importance of the river was not known till it dried up” on Friday the traffic police desisted from directing cars at the traffic lights leading to the worst traffic snarl-up in the city’s history. People were stuck in traffic jams around the city for hours and long into the night. Maybe it was the unhappy coincidence of the traditional Friday traffic and pre-Christmas excitement but without the traffic police directing traffic it was a mess. They made their point. It of course points to the bigger issue of a revamping of Kampala’s road network, which has remained   largely the same since independence but with an exponential increase in cars in the last three decades.
Post a Comment
Read more

KEEP UP PRESSURE ON CORRUPTION

There has been a flurry of activity surrounding corruption in recent weeks, with a few public officials caught red handed taking bribes. The public deprived of services because of a few greedy individuals are understandably gleeful.  However they are also those who are a bit sceptical, wondering whether this campaign will last or will peter out along the way. It is heartening to see that President Yoweri Museveni has put his full weight behind the latest attempt and provides a positive signal to all parties concerned. He should be supported by every well-meaning Ugandan so that this drive does not fizzle out in a few weeks. I choose to be optimistic about this anti-corruption drive, because rolling back the endemic that corruption has become, is one of the first steps we need to take towards attaining middle income status as a nation and for any other meaningful development we hope to see in the future. We see it in our daily lives. Beyond the morality of
Post a Comment
Read more