Food distribution wrecked by conflict, minister says

Armed conflict means Uganda is suffering chronic food shortages despite the country having a big surplus of food, according to Uganda's Agriculture Minister Dr Mugerwa Kisamba. He told IRIN that conflict had disrupted the means for distributing the excess food grown in Uganda’s productive areas. The minister was reacting to a pledge by the US government (USAID) on Thursday of 20,000 mt of food, valued at US $8.9 million, to feed over 1.6 million people at risk of severe famine in northern and northeastern Uganda. The pledge came in response to a joint appeal by the World Food Programme and the Ugandan government for aid for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs), mostly in the north. “The population of the north has been reduced to eating the most basic foods, like posho [corn flour dough] and barely enough even of that,” Kisamba told IRIN. “I feel ashamed that Uganda is one of Africa’s most agriculturally productive countries yet we cannot feed our people.” When the government’s appeal for food aid was first launched, it caused controversy, with some MPs objecting that Uganda does not need food aid because it is one of the most plentiful countries on the continent. MPs said what was needed was not food but a better system for getting food to parts of the country in need. But Kisamba warned that this would not be solved while the conflict persisted in the north and east of the country. “I have done my best to ensure our farmers are productive to the point of having a surplus," he told IRIN. "But the surplus they produce doesn’t go where there is no profit to be made, and how can you profit from parts of the country that are at war?” Kisamba pointed out that in many cases, development of transport infrastructure - which is vital for distributing food - had not happened because of the instability.