Reaching into the middle of the continent

As one of my final blog posts, I wanted to make sure I had adequately researched the whole of the continent of Africa. Therefore, I will be doing a third case study on agriculture and water uses in Uganda. Uganda is a central eastern land-locked country in Africa, which has most of its population engaged in rural agricultural activities (Chidlow, 2014). Uganda shares a portion of Lake Victoria with Tanzania and Kenya which brings up the idea of transnational water boundaries which we have studied in class. Therefore, knowing Uganda has access to one of the largest lakes in the world, I would’ve thought Uganda could rely on this resource for irrigation. However, like many of the countries in Africa water distribution is extremely unequal and farmers simply depend on rainfall (Chidlow, 2014). The good news here is that rainfall in Uganda is high, averaging about 1,000 to 1,500 mm in the southern regions of the country (Worldtravelguide). Just like the majority of countries in Africa, climate change is affecting these patterns and could pose a threat to Ugandan agriculture.

A table describing the water uses in Uganda (FAO, 2016)

After thorough research, it is evident that Uganda has an enormous potential to expand its agricultural sector which is the backbone of its economy. One of the main issues I have caught on to is that there is not enough investment going into this sector. The solution, in this case, is to invest in helping smallholder farms in getting better technology and equipment to increase crop yields(WorldBank, 2018). This is a theme I have continuously seen when researching water and food in Africa, the smallholder farms being the future of the agricultural sector. This is because the whole of agriculture in Africa depends on water, in the form of rainfall, so much that it is better to invest in the smaller farms by setting up equipment and technology that will help increase crop yield than creating large farms that will deplete resources much quicker(Chidlow, 2014). Uganda depends mostly on groundwater resources for its crop and livestock production. The way farmers and citizens extract the water from the water table comes in the forms of springs, borehole and hang dug wells (FAO, 2016).

Example of a borehole in Uganda (PeakWater)

The agricultural sector in Uganda, just like many other countries we have studied, employ enormous amounts of the population. About 70% of the population in Uganda is working within this field (WorldBank, 2018). This field contributes the most to Uganda’s economy because of exports, especially with coffee production as Uganda is Africa’s main coffee exporting country (Export.gov, 2019). However, Uganda is suffering from climate change and increasingly from deprecating land-use practices. Ugandan farmers are increasingly using extensification practices(Woelcke, 2006), where they are extending their crop production into marginalized lands which contributes to deforestation, soil erosion, and soil leaching. This path to agriculture is proving more difficult in Uganda and the rest of Africa as populations are growing and increasingly encroaching on the arable land that could be used for agriculture (Woelcke, 2006). This combined with climate change is creating more dependence for rainfall and increased water has shown to hinder full potential Uganda has for its agricultural sector (WorldBank, 2018). Uganda has low economic incentives to modernize its land management as better technological practices are not being implemented nor accepted. To add, the costs of transportation are high which means farmers are not exporting many of their goods and engage mostly in domestic and subsistence farming (Woelcke, 2006). Because of an inability to adopt better practices, Uganda is suffering from natural resource deprivation through over-harvesting and logging. According to ECOTRUST Uganda loses “up to 12% of her natural resources per year” due to negative land-use practices(Nkonya, 2002). Therefore, there is a need to implement solutions in Uganda to ensure better outcomes for the agricultural sector that would provide the most benefits to the citizens in terms of water and food.

The water and food distribution in Uganda are some of the best ones I have seen in Africa. Uganda gets lots of rainfall even with the pressure of climate change, and the majority of its population is technically food secure, according to the FAO about 89% of citizens are food secure to be exact (FAO). Thus, it could be said that water and food in Uganda is not the most important topic to be studying. However, every country could improve and Uganda could excel even more with a couple of recommendations. In order to get more investment for smallholder farms, the World Bank has identified three key points. Firstly, there needs to be more commercialization of agriculture in the sense of more trade, secondly strengthening public institutions will lead to things like better infrastructure which would allow the growth of the agriculture sector. Finally, enhancing the resilience of crop yields in order to have a better outcome, with the use of modern technologies like drip irrigation and organic fertilizers (WorldBank, 2018). With these recommendations, Uganda could be a leading example for the future of agriculture in Africa by reaching its full potential.

A woman in Uganda showing the crops she has been growing (World Bank, 2018)

This blog post has examined the problems Uganda faces in its agricultural sector in terms of water and food output as well as the solutions it could implement in the future. This has been another case study in which I learned more about water and food in Africa by focusing on a specific region to give myself a well-rounded image of African agriculture.