The Woman Member of Parliament for Kitgum Beatrice Anywar has criticized the central government and donors for ‘imposing’ solutions to northern Uganda instead of involving the locals in decision making. This, she says is what has kept the region in chronic poverty for decades while other parts of Uganda develop.
“As a people, we have our aspirations, practices and norms that have worked for us since time immemorial. For government to work well with a people, it must not impose public policy on the beneficiaries but rather it must originates from the locals. We don’t need donors to fly from wherever to come and offer us solutions made in boardrooms,” Anywar intimated on Tuesday at the launch of the World Bank report on Poverty in Uganda.
In regard to agriculture, she apportioned equal blame on government for not investing in value addition of traditional cash crops that have worked best for the region.
In an interview with ChimpReports, Anywar said; “Amuru district is known for growing first class rice and simsim but it is surprising why government would want to steal people’s land telling them to grow sugarcane instead. You can’t tell Banyankole or the Karimajong who are traditionally cattle herders to rear pigs.”
After the guns went silent after a two decade war waged by the Lords Resistance Army, government rolled out Northern Uganda Social Action Fund (NUSAF) and Peace Recovery and Development Plan (PRDP) programs to facilitate the peace recovery process. Anywar is however not confident that the programs achieved their intended objectives.
“They (programs) have become political and campaign tools. If PRDP was meant to assist internally displaced people to catch up with the rest of Uganda, how come they were implemented in 47 districts (including those that were never affected by the war) instead of the 28?”
“As the war was raging on in the north, other parts of Uganda were developing. There’s no political will to put the north on equal footing with other regions.”