Uganda: How Damba, a retired chef switched to urban farming
In a space less than 5×5 feet, one can choose to start with three vegetables: four tomato seedlings, three kale (sukumawiki) seedlings and three pepper seedlings.
By Abdul-Nasser Ssemugabi
Daily Monitor
Aug 21, 2021
Excerpt:
His ambition is to have at least 100 homes in Nansana Municipality producing their own vegetables such as tomatoes, onions, and cabbage, first for their own consumption, then sell to the local markets.
“You cannot produce everything you need but again you can’t buy everything. So produce some food, sell some to buy what you can’t produce,” he explains.
“Our primary goal is encouraging home to produce vegetables to boost their nutritional balance, which would otherwise cost them a lot of money,” says Damba.
In the long run, he predicts, it would reduce the food shortage across the nation, and allow large-scale farmers across the country to produce for export, hence more foreign income.
In a four-day Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development in March, delegates warned that climate change, conflicts and Covid-19 will affect Africa’s food security, increase malnutrition and limit development in the long run.
The representatives of leading international multilateral organisations, including International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and the African Union predicted “chronic hunger in the next 10 years if timely action is not taken.”
Gerald Masila, Eastern Africa Grain Council executive director, emphasised the need to increase local food production to ensure food sufficiency in the region.
