Uganda: Urban agriculture thriving in East Africa during COVID-19
“One of the reasons urban agriculture will continue to do well and remain resilient in the post COVID-19 period is because Kampala’s governing authority has integrated it into the city’s slum development plans,”
By Richard Wetaya
Alliance Fro Science
AUGUST 3, 2020
Excerpt:
Janson Mugabe is one of those urban farmers. He said Kampala’s peri-urban agricultural sector has become an important source of food for many of the city’s low-income earners, who feared they would have nothing to eat when restrictions on movement were imposed.
In an effort to allay those fears, the Ugandan government distributed food rations, including corn flour and beans, to about 1.5 million low income residents of Kampala and its environs. But by all accounts, not everyone in need in got food.
“For some families, the food supplied by the government has not been suffice. To that end, they have had to make do with fresh food supplies from urban farmers and urban farming groups,” said Mugabe, who is also the director of Mushana Agribusiness School, one of Kampala’s peri-urban agricultural training schools.
“As an alternate nutritional and food security safeguard, the urban and peri-urban agricultural sector has helped to maintain and diversify the city’s food supply chain,” he continued. “In many ways, it has filled the food gap which was created by the lockdown.”
