By Augustine Kabooha
When the government launched the National Agricultural Advisory Services (Naads) in 2001, the aim was to provide farmer education through provision of advisory services in order to improve farming practices in rural Uganda.
The programme which was intended to help rural farmers apply scientific knowledge and research to their agricultural practices was to be implemented in three phases over a 25-year period.
After nearly 14years, in 2014 the government launched Operation Wealth Creation (OWC) and trusted UPDF Soldiers to pilot implementation of the program on claims that NAADS had failed to deliver as expected after 14 years of operation.
OWC was launched by President Yoweri Museveni as an intervention to efficiently facilitate Social Economical Transformation with a focus on raising household income and fighting poverty.
Hoverer, a research conducted by Kabarole Research and Resource Center (KRC) in 2019 indicated that 51% of OWC beneficiaries were dissatisfied after 6 years of operation in the Tooro/Rwenzori region.
In December last year our reporter visited Ruteete, Mugusu and Kicwamba sub-counties of Kabarole district and found out that the program was facing a lot of challenges hence people never benefited.
In April this year our reporter visited Kabonero sub-county in Bunyangabu district and registered similar cases of people criticizing leaders of having failed the government program.
Joshua Atuhaire a resident of Nsororo zone Kabonero sub-county in Bunyangabu district says that the program is only heard on radio but hasn’t seen it in his village. “Our leaders keep fighting; they come to us during elections but never come back to us after entering offices. I haven’t noticed any beneficiaries of the program in my village, not even in the neighborhood.
We grow tomatoes, coffee, banana and onions but everyone fight on his own without any support from the government says “Atuhaire”
68 year old woman Jonah Rwabujungu says that she doesn’t know about the program because she is not interested. I was involved in a road accident in 2015 and became disabled. Therefore I am unable to handle farming.
Nanyange Miriam a resident of Kicwamba sub-county Kabarole district acknowledges receiving 5kgs of beans under the program. She however downplays government’s mission of fighting poverty using the same.
Five kilogram of beans cannot get someone out of poverty as claimed by the government, “they should find another form of fighting poverty instead of Operation Wealth Creation” she argued!
Katusabe Felista from Kicwamba sub-county cited late delivery of seedlings, segregation, and lack of information as major setbacks of the program.
According to government Operation Wealth Creation has a major aim of distributing production inputs equitably and timely to boost production and productivity at household level and facilitating rural technological upgrading to allow smallholder farmers to transform themselves into small-scale industrialists
