Basing on major Challenges faced by the Agricultural sector in the East African Region, the Eastern and Southern Africa Small Scale Farmers’ Forum (ESAFF) Uganda has adopted on a new strategy to call for support from Uganda’s Parliament, East Africa Legislative Assembly (EALA) and stake holders in the different governments across the region.
Commenting about the current Agricultural situation, ESAFF members called upon the different East African legislative arm to rescue the current poor conditions in the biggest food backbone of East Africa as farmers suffer; Inadequate Knowledge on new technologies in farming, poor market prices for agricultural products, lack of indigenous seeds, high taxes, exploitation from middle men, among many more.
ESAFF members also cited effects of poor support to the Agricultural sector among causes of malnourishment in children, abject poverty, unemployment, low concentration of children in schools, among others. They called for the governments of East Africa to increase funding of the Agricultural Sector.
It should be established that in June 2014, Heads of State and Governments of the African Union agreed in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea and passed the Malabo declaration on accelerated African agricultural growth and transformation for shared prosperity and improved livelihoods where the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) made a bold move on the Zanzibar Resolution on Malabo as adopted by the East African Legislative 3rd Assembly 5th session 2nd meeting on 20th October 2016.
A section of small scale farmers from East Africa on 30th October 2018, met Rt. Hon Speaker Martin Ngoga of the East African Legislative Assembly at the East African Community Headquarter in Arusha –Tanzania and applauded East African Community governments for showing political will in the development of the agricultural sector and recognising the sector as the back bone of the region’s economy. They also petitioned the speaker to implement the Zanzibar resolution, popularize the Malabo declaration and create capacity to set pressure and demand allocation of the budget to agriculture to reach the Malabo declaration target of atleast 10% annually or atleast progressively but most importantly focus to be on financing small holder (including women and youth) centred programs.
ESAFF, also informed Rt. Honourable speaker that according to the Biennial Review report on Malabo implementation of 2017, the East African Region is performing substantially well though falling short on budgetary allocation in the agriculture sector to reach the 10% target, ending hunger including malnutrition and stunting among children under 5 years which is shocking (Burundi 56%, Rwanda 38%, Tanzania 34%, Uganda 29% and Kenya 26%) and also the region is not performing well enhancing resilience to Climate variability.
The Biennial Review report (2015 and 2016 data) reads that Kenya invested only 2.3%, Uganda 2.9%, Tanzania 5.9%, Rwanda 7.9% and Burundi 13.03%. In the financial year 2018/19 Kenya allocated 1.89%, Uganda 2.91%, Tanzania 3.3%, Rwanda 7.6%, and Burundi in 2017 allocated 10.69%.
Currently, ESAFF together with other 16 partners are collecting 1 Million signatures from farmers to petition heads of State calling for allocation and disbursement of 10% national budget to the agricultural sector as agreed 15 years ago under the Maputo declaration and now under Malabo declaration goal 2.
