The introspective debate must have started with a reflection about how come I had never seen an acre of sweet potatoes in Busoga yet Busoga claimed it was our staple food, then it meandered to how come agri-production had reduced and to whether or not resurrecting the Busoga railway would help in switching on the agri-production lights to ignite the region back to development.
It was those thoughts that led me, in late 2022, to the WhatsApp inbox of former Kigulu North MP, Edward Baliddawa Kafufu to pick his mind on an argument I was trying to build for revamping of the Busoga line.
‘It is not relevant. Busoga has more pressing needs than holding onto the past and demand for a Busoga Line,’ he argued, and for two days, we passionately exchanged about the subject. Him saying time is not now. Me saying we are late.
In his 1965 book, Railway and Development in Uganda: A study in economic development, A.M O’Connor notes that the first railway laid within Uganda was that running from Jinja northwards to Namasagali, before the Jinja-Bukonte loop was added.
Built by the Uganda government at the cost of £180,000 in 1912, equivalent to around £22,851,908 (shs103.5 billion) today, the 61-mile line gave access to the whole of the Lake Kyoga basin in addition to the area through which it passed.
With the opening of the Busoga Line, O’Connor writes, Jinja became the leading Uganda port and the industrial town we used to study about in the 90s, Busoga was cracked open to the rest of the country and East Africa in terms import and exports.
In justifying the need for the line, the Chief Agricultural Officer of Buganda at the time was recorded as saying, “a railway from Kampala to Mbulamuti would open much new land for cultivation in north Kyaggwe and Bugerere, and that the line would carry much of the 40,000 tons of bananas now moved annually by road from these areas to Kampala2.”
The Busoga Line is long gone, and the region has since limped, both in agriculture and manufacturing. Save for sugar cane growing, cash crop production has drastically reduced, land has been hugely fragmented partly due to population increase and land sales and most of rural and semi urban Busoga has resorted to small roadside kiosk businesses, Mary-go-Round rural saving groups to borrow for children’s school fees and preparation for death, and majority youth have resorted to rural idling.
Of late, a section of leaders in the region have started talking about rebooting the region’s development potential beyond political rhetoric. One of the initiatives is community farming or the Village Agriculture Model.
Production is indeed one sure way of igniting development in the region. But unlike the Busoga of the 60s and 70s where people had land, majority Basoga today are landless.
To have a meaningful Village Agriculture Model, the approach to address the question of how small holder farmers can be mobilized to be involved in meaningful agribusiness. Otherwise, majority Basoga might turn into casual labourers for the few landowners.
The first important step is to change the individualism attitude to production. Poverty has over the years driven rural Basoga to individual corners. The Akange Kakira Akaife has been at the core of people saving as a team but later borrow to go gamble in investments as individuals.
To get the juice out of the Village Agriculture model, especially for the majority small landowners, and even the landless who might have to resort to sack farming, individualism must be dropped.
Suppose a group of 30 small holder farmers in village x with say five acres between them were mobilized to grow Sukuma Wiki and another group with the same acreage were mobilized to grow eggplants. You would have created two farmer groups producing 10 acres of vegetables. The next important issue would then be market.
Most smallholders’ farmers struggle with market and they are the ones most cheated by middlemen at places like Amber court Market. Community group mobilization should be able to address the small farmer needs from seeds to market. With better market access, even a group member simply producing from say 15 sacks in their squeezed backyard will be assured of a good price for their little contribution to the five-acreage production.
If we succeed in mobilizing small holder farmers to do group farming and also device a smart route to market strategy, we would have solved managed to switch on the all-inclusive Agri-production lights in the region.
When the Busoga Line was being Built, O’Connor notes, Cotton was the key cash crop, history books capture the then governor reporting that ‘the development of the cotton industry on a great scale is only checked by the lack of transport facilities from the interior to the lake shore’, and that ‘the provision of railways or motorable roads would immediately result in an immense increase of the industry.”
The Busoga Railway indeed contributed greatly to this respect. Between 1910 and 1915 the estimates of the area under cotton in Buganda remained around 20,000 acres, but that for Busoga rose from 8,000 to 15,000 acres.
The development of road transport enabled produce from a wider area to reach the railway, and in 1926 freight despatched from Mbulamuti amounted to 4,860 tons and that from Luzinga to 2,640 tons. It is true the line was not built primarily to serve Busoga otherwise it would have passed through the well-settled country further east. It was built mainly as a link between the two lakes, Victoria, and Kyoga. However, the communities that fell in-between increased their production output of especially cotton due to access to cheaper transport.
If the Village Agriculture Model succeed, there will be increased agriculture production quantitatively. It is evident how cane growing has messed rural roads making them impassable.
Government is working on revamping the rail line network. We already have the Mukono-Jinja Line. Therefore, as we prepare the region for mass agri-business production through the Village Agriculture Model and or other methods, we should lobby to have the Busoga Line returned so that farm produce can have a cheaper means of transport from the rural parts of the region to across the country. It would even be much better if it is the SGR version. The benefits of rail transport would complete the cycle of using agri-business production to turn around the region’s fortunes
The writer is community mobilizer, farmer, and publisher of Busoga Today newspaper
