Africa-Press – Uganda. The government has said it is establishing a new regional agricultural mechanisation centre at Nabwin in Lotome Sub-county, Napak District to stock machinery that will be used to periodically repair and maintain the abandoned valleys dams in Karamoja Sub-region.
“This will be a regional agricultural mechanisation centre where we shall have all sorts of equipment such that during the drought period, when most of the dams are dry, we can take the equipment to dredge and repair the dams,” Mr Boniface Okanya, the commissioner for mechanisation in the Agriculture ministry, said in an interview, adding, “The intention is that once the dams are repaired, when the rains return, the dams will be silt-free and can retain more water for a long time. We realised the designs needed improvement by enlarging the dams, Karamoja still has vast lands and requires the construction of larger facilities so that you can retain more water.”
Saturday Monitor has established that despite billions of public funds being spent to build irrigation technologies, barely two percent of the district’s inhabitants access the system.
“We have Kaomeri and Omwono dams and others, but the limitation is that it has not been fitted with irrigation equipment,” Mr Leo Amwona, the Abim District production and marketing officer said.
While Abim and its neighbouring districts already have a programme intended to support smallholder farmers with micro-scale irrigation equipment at the household level, Mr Amwona revealed that the criteria to access the systems remains a bottleneck.
“Others require one to have a water source to be connected yet we are in a semi-arid environment,” he said. “Besides the lack of water sources, a beneficiary is required to co-fund by contributing funds to install the system yet these are very poor communities that can’t afford to feed themselves a day…”
Ponds for dams
Citing Longor Dam, Mr Kalisto Aleper, the Kotido District youth chairman, likens “most of these dams [to] ponds. He adds that “the seasonality of the rains” ensures “they dry up easily and the ones that are there do not contain large volumes of water.” Attempts to have the public meet the government halfway have also hit a dead end.
“It is not easy to acquire that money, and that is how people have given up, we cannot do much or save it,” Mr Emma Okech, the LC1 chairman of Olung Village, Apok Parish, Atunga Sub-county, Abim District, says of the approximately Shs250,000 needed to co-fund the small-scale irrigation system.
Mr Alex Odyek, a resident of Locokei Village, Lolelia Sub-county, Karenga District, says they have now resorted to digging and planting their crops in the silted dams that have since been rendered unusable.
“Inside those silted dams, we grow crops like beans, vegetables that take a short time to mature because it does not dry up so badly like the other areas,” he reveals, adding that they “have petitioned our district leaders to task the government to repair the dams.”
Between 2005 and 2017, Namatata Dam, Green Firm Spring, Kodike Dam and Nangamit water plants are water projects the government has propped in Nakapiripirit District. Others are Nakicumet Dam, Lomamururak Dam, and Iriiri-Nabokat Pond in Napak District; Pupu Dam, Rupa Dam, Kanakol Dam, and Lomario Dam in Moroto District; Lobel (Katukanyan) Dam, Lomogol Dam, Nakapelimoru Dam, Losilang Dam, and Nabwalin Dam in Kotido District.
The Agriculture ministry has also since last April embarked on the construction of several dams aimed at boosting agricultural production in the region. Yet hunger and malnutrition remain at acute levels in Karamoja with the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) estimating the income poverty in the sub-region at 66 percent and food poverty at 75 percent.
“In terms of acute malnutrition in this year, we have experienced the worst that we have had in the last 10 years,” Ms Midred Orishaba, an official with World Vision, told Saturday Monitor, adding, “We are tracing this back to the issues around climate change. We have also experienced increasing pockets of insecurity, as well as common childhood illnesses.”
A 2023 World Vision policy document cites a weak legal framework put in place by the government for disaster management. While the National Policy for Disaster Management and Preparedness, 2011 is in place, World Vision reckons it is only reactive.
Trouble brewing
A separate study in Kotido found that women mixed brew with porridge for their children “because there is no more milk.” Elsewhere, mothers in Abim and Kaabong were quoted as saying alcohol helps their children to sleep, especially if they are hungry.
Whereas the average national alcohol consumption rate stands at a staggering 18 litres per capita, Karamoja’s average is at 48 litres per capita.
The paper recommends that the government enact a disaster risk management law that would be critical to addressing the perennial hunger in Karamoja while fast-tracking the development and passing of the Disaster Risk Management Bill (DRM Bill).
“The nine district local governments in the Karamoja Sub-region should work together to develop a regional water development master plan for Karamoja,” it states. “Such a master plan should capture local community voices to ensure irrigation projects have community ownership.”
In its June report, the IPC indicated that 89,011 children and 10,148 breastfeeding mothers are either malnourished or would be malnourished between February 2023 and January 2024. Of the 89,011 children, 69,356 are moderate acute malnutrition cases and 19,655 are severe acute malnutrition cases.
In addition, below-average cereal production in neighbouring surplus-producing bimodal rainfall areas of the country in 2022 reduced the possibility of sourcing cereals that are needed to fulfil the structural deficit of the region, it stated.
Mr Jino Meri, the Kaabong District chairman, says whereas unreliable and unpredictable rains continue to discourage farmers from crop production, the available valley dams have been silted and rendered unusable.
“The government came with some projects on water production like irrigation right from early 2000 but since then, only three dams have been built in the district… today, none of them exists because they are all silted,” Mr Meri said.
Mr Okanya blames the failure of several valley dams on vandalism and mismanagement by the benefitting communities.
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