By Ben Ssebuguzi
President Yoweri Museveni during his campaigning rally for the NRM candidate, Samuel Engola Junior in the Oyam North Parliamentary By-elections emphasized creating wealth as a bedrock of NRM in empowering its people.
Mr Museveni distinguished between wealth and development using a local dialect in order to drive the point home. The president was quoted saying “Lonyo” (wealth) comes as a personal initiative to create wealth in our homesteads, while “Dongo Lobo” is ours because it is government to provide roads, schools, etc for development.
To my understanding, the Fountain of Honor meant that it is awkward to achieve development while homesteads have no money to meet their own needs.
The four-acre model is premised to succeed because northern Uganda is very fertile to support smart farming. 1 acre for coffee, fruits (citrus and mangoes, pineapples, pasture for feeding the livestock and 4th acre for food crop growing is what defines President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni’s 4-acre model.
The model is very viable because the different enterprises are interdependent to support high productivity and high returns on investment because of free fertilizers. Animal manures are a valuable source of nutrients for crops and reduce the cost of production. This makes the four-acre model a self-sustaining strategy to promote household incomes.
Uganda needs to fight poverty by increasing agricultural output and that can be attained by increasing farm productivity. Profitable farming is not far from reality, for example, Crops have been plentiful in recent months for Kizito Edward, a 29-year-old smallholder who plants maize, coffee, and bananas on his small farm in Buikwe in central Uganda because he applied fertilizers in his venture which has enabled him to buy a truck and made his family happy.
In conclusion, the government has already scaled up in providing infrastructure like roads, and giving start-up capital like the Parish Development Model, it is now up to us the citizens to raise up and implement government wealth creation messages PDM will go a long way in providing financial support to aid farmers in buying inputs.
This is therefore my humble appeal to youths in the country to get to the gardens and support their women before going to trading centres to play ludo and Canisi (cards). This will not only help in ensuring our food security but will also help bring in more income to households.
Ben Ssebuguzi is a senior researcher Office of the National Chairman (ONC) of NRM -Kyambogo
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