Africa-Press – Uganda. Chief Justice (CJ) Alphonse Owiny-Dollo has tasked the Acholi District local governments to mobilise all Acholi to ensure every household plants an acre of coffee instead of their traditional cash crops.
While officiating at the Northern Uganda Coffee Cup tasting event in Kampala last week, Justice Owiny-Dollo said for some time, he has been preaching among the people of Lotuturu Hills in Lamwo District, to stop wasting time growing traditional cash crops such as cotton, sim sim and groundnuts because they are of low value and yet the area receives more rainfall compared to Buganda region where the crop is grown on a large scale.
“I have not been a fan of coffee. I met Nelson Tugume [chief executive officer of Coffee City, who organised the coffee tasting event] after he found my foot prints in Lotuturu Hills where I have been seriously engaging the community to stop wasting time boasting of harvesting 10 bags of sim-sim, groundnuts or cotton,” he said.
He explained that he has been discouraging the residents of Lotuturu Hills from growing cotton, sim-sim and groundnuts because the colonial government, without logic or scientific basis, zoned north and north eastern Uganda as cotton-growing areas to feed the British textile industries, letting Buganda region to produce high-value coffee.
Justice Owiny-Dollo added that western Acholi, which he said receives more rainfall than Buganda, should be producing more coffee, which should make the Acholi some of the richest Ugandans.
“Western Acholi has more rainfall than Buganda except Entebbe. This has been the fact for a very long time. People in Buganda plant half an acre of coffee, which requires 100 acres of cotton to match the earnings from cotton,” he said, arguing that it is the reason when he was in Parliament representing Agago County, he de-campaigned cotton growing.
Mr Tugume urged Ugandans to consume more coffee in order for them to understand the coffee value chain.
“We are trying to scale up the public-private community household model and the coffee strategy of the Uganda Coffee Development Authority to unlock Uganda’s coffee strategy for us to understand coffee from the cup and the rest will start getting itself in order,” he said.
Mr Chris Ebal the chairperson of the Board of National Forestry Authority, observed that for a very long time, northern Uganda was only associated with cotton growing, until Gen Charles Otema Awany changed the narrative by mobilising farmers to start growing coffee in the area.
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