Uganda National Farmers Federation

Benchmarking Prof. Bukenya’s strategy in Rukungiri District;
Perspective from an eye witness

As NRM winds up two years in power since the last election, NRM leaders at all levels are grappling with questions from voters on the status of the ‘promise’. The key blue print/promise of the ruling NRM manifesto was ‘prosperity for all’ whose major objective is to empower every household in Uganda to meet its basic needs and earn an annual income of at least shillings 20 million per year. This aspiration was to be delivered through micro-policies and subsequent programs that would lift Ugandans to prosperity. In effect, this is NRM’s strategic move, to drive the country to a people owned affordable financial infrastructure. To many this is the Rolls-Royce of the Movement. It is the mothers’ milk for movementocracy. It will also be the litmus test for NRM’s re-election appeals in 2011. For the politicians where the scent of PFA is still elusive, questions are leaping skyward! The process for the conceptualization and laying of the PFA or Boonabagagawale (Luganda), lonyobotdanodocu (Luo) and Boonabagaigahare (Runyoro-kitara) implementation/ action strategy has been quite a protracted struggle that engaged everybody from the practicing farmer here in Rukungiri up to the Head of State.

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The strategy was finally launched by President Museveni himself on the 8th of October 2007. Its now time to move away from the Boonabagagawale as an aspiration to a reality. In other wards, it must now be touched and felt in people’s pockets. This simple raison d'être brings forward the concept of Boona-Bakole (let every body work) as an operational strategy towards the achievement of Boonabagagawale (wealth for all). To achieve this, leaders must do a lot in mobilizing the rural and urban citizenry along this aspiration and its operational strategy of hard work ethic as requisite software for realization of prosperity. This is important for marshaling the will of Ugandans to embrace and demand development. Henrik Ibsen, 1828-906 argued that “it’s not by spectacular achievements that man can be transformed, but by will. Where there is will, there is a way”. If all Ugandans come along to embrace this full fledged government effort to address the entire range of the value chain that encompasses production, micro-finance, marketing and processing then surely poverty will be sent to sleep.

For us here in Bwambara and Bugangari, Rukungiri district Professor Bukenya’s model amazed us because of its practicability. I must argue that Bukenya is not taken up by bookish fantasy of ideologies, concepts and complex models of bureaucrats and technocrat’s that are usually too complex but not configured to suit the reasonable basic needs of the household poor. Vice President Bukenya used hands on but rather smart formulae in his upland rice enterprise. He conducted practical studies of upland rice from his own Kakiri farm. After his pilot experiment, he broadcasted his workable findings/strategy to many districts. For Bwambara and Bugangari people it was very simple ‘Use one sack of nerica rice seed on one acre of land and you harvest seven bags’.

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