Money Lenders Kicked Out of Kikuube

KIKUUBE – Kikuube local government together with the office of the Resident District Commissioner (RDC) have ordered all money lenders (Bank Etambula) operating in the district to stop operating their business in the district over their continuous habit of cheating poor people.

This order follows increasing complaints from the public, mostly women who accuse money lenders of confiscating their property illegally.

The complaints triggered an operation headed by Kikuube district boss Peter Banura and the Resident District Commissioner, Amlan Tumusiime which saw five women regaining their properties that had been confiscated by money lenders (Bank Etambula) in Buhimba town council, Kikuube district last week.

The women included; Agnes Tuhaise Baganda 45, Katusabe Muhereza 64, Kaahwa Yasinta and Olva Kiiza 44 years.

Properties belonging to these residents of Buhimba town council had been confiscated by a money lender identified as Johnson Kagoma, while Sanny Kanturaki’s property had been confiscated by Francis Ayeranga.

Tuhaise says that in 2019, she borrowed six million from Kagoma and used her three acres of land with a house on wall plate level valued at Shs 30 million as collateral.

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I started paying the loan as we had agreed, however after paying Shs 3 million in 2020, Kagoma refused to take the balance from me and decided to take my land claiming he had bought it.

“Kagoma started hiding from me whenever I would go to pay him; I went to his father and begged him to talk to his son to accept his money but my plea fell on deaf ears and when the period they had agreed to pay the loan elapsed, the man fenced my land and denied me access to my gardens,” Tuhaise explained.

She added that she moved in different offices including police and court but she did not get any help adding all offices she went to seek help, they told her that Kagoma is untouchable.

Another victim Muhereza borrowed Shs 200, 000 and used her one acre of land as collateral. She claims that when she started to pay, the money lender refused to take the balance of the money from her on the grounds that she had delayed to pay.

Muhereza explained that last year, her son who was fighting to ensure that she regains her land was arrested by police accusing him of trespassing.

In 2017, my child fell sick and I went to Kagoma and borrowed Shs 200, 000 to take my child to hospital and I was supposed to pay him Shs 60,000 every month for five months.

Within five months I had paid him Shs 315,000 but this man claimed that he was still demanding me interest amounting Shs 400, 000, I agreed to pay this money; however, when I got the money to pay him, he refused to take the money claiming the agreed date had expired.

Muhereza claimed that the man forced her out of her land and fenced it and denied her access to her land and house.

Kaahwa and Kiiza each borrowed Shs 500, 000 from Kagoma and used their plots of land as collateral. The duo claimed that they repaid all loans with the interest but the money lender refused to return their agreements and claimed ownership of their land.

All the victims of Kagoma expressed concern that Kagoma is untouchable adding that they moved to different offices seeking for assistance in vain.

“I want to tell you Mr. RDC, this man has bribed most of the officers, when you go to police to report a case against Kagoma instead of helping you, police turn against the complainant and they arrest him or her,” Kaahwa said.

Another victim, Sanny told the district officials that she borrowed Shs 1.5 million from Ayeranga last year and used her plot where her small house is as collateral.

According to Sanny in February this year, she paid all the money but Ayeranga refused to return her agreement and took possession of the plot and house.

I was forced to seek your intervention RDC after begging this man to give me my plot agreement several times and he refused. I thank you RDC, today I am very happy that you have restored my hope by rescuing my land which Ayeranga had confiscated.

It was this sudden story of the poor women that forced the district leadership of Kikuube to intervene and allowed the vulnerable women to regain their property.

RDC Tumusiime, explained that the women were evicted from their land and house without any court order.

He vowed not to tolerate such impunity and called on money lenders to use legal means of recovering their money instead of confiscating people’s property illegally.

“We have returned all the property these money leaders had confiscated from the affected women and I ask the money leaders to take the district security committee to court instead of disturbing these women. We agreed as the district security committee to rescue them because as you have heard from them, they have moved to different offices and nobody would listen to them,” RDC said.

RDC Tumusiime also suspended all the activities of money leaders in the district adding that most of them operate illegally without a license.

He warned all local council 1 chairpersons in the district against stamping on any money lending document of Bank Etambula. He threatened that any LC1 Chairperson who will be found stamping for any Bank Etambula will be arrested and prosecuted.

“The Chairperson LC1’s connive with money lenders to cheat the poor people, They take advantage of ignorant and needy borrowers and they force them to sign a sales agreement, instead of a borrowing agreement. After a short time, money leaders make u-turn and they claim ownership of the property of the borrowers. This is unacceptable, you can’t take someone’s property worth Shs 30 million for Shs 6million and Shs 500, 000!” he said.

Peter Banura, the Kikuube district boss said, that the district leadership will not allow this kind of cheating and urged people who have lost their properties to money lenders to report to the district to find a way of dealing with cheaters.

Johnson Kagoma, the accused money lender and resident of Kakooge, Buhimba town council, Kikuube district, asked Kikuube leaders to back off his property which he claims were genuinely acquired.

He said that he has all documentary evidence pertaining to how he acquired the land after undergoing due diligence from the victims, neighbors and local leaders and vowed to take legal action against the district leaders and RDC.

He vowed not to relinquish even an inch of the land saying the leaders can offer part of their family land to the said victims if they feel concerned.

Narbert Alibankooha of Narbert Alibankooha & company advocates said that currently the money lending business is regulated under Tier 4 Microfinance Institutions and Money Lenders Act 2016.

He noted that under this act, it only allows registered companies to carry out the business of money lending; adding individuals who engage in the business of lending money, do it illegally.

“All that money lending without being licensed is illegal and the borrowers are not supposed to pay interest to the lender,” he said.

Tier 4 Microfinance Institutions and Money Lenders Act 2016 was enacted after the business of money lending in Uganda became a risk as money lenders would end up taking over securities pledged for the money borrowed; the interests would be exorbitant and quite often compounded; and the borrowers would be forced to sign sale agreements and sign transfer documents in favor of the lender as part of the security for accessing credit.

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Farmers Worried About Unpredictable Weather

GULU – Farmers of Paicho Central Kal Growers Cooperative Society Limited, [PCKGCS] in Paicho sub- county, Gulu district are expecting low yields of beans this season, following a prolonged dry spell.

The farmers said last season they got low yields of beans and groundnuts because their crops were affected by sunshine and hailstones.

The sub-county has for the past three weeks gone without rain. This has caused fear among the farmers, who say their beans, which have already started flowering, might not produce much.

Josca Lacaa, a member of PCKGCS, said last season she planted an acre of beans which could have given her three bags if the weather conditions were favorable. However, the crop was greatly affected by sunshine and hailstones.

“I still plan to harvest it, but I don’t expect to get a full bag,” Lacaa said.

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Besides beans, she also planted an acre of groundnuts which would give seven sacks under good weather, but is sure she will not get more than two bags after harvesting.

Lacaa who planted an acre of beans this season, is now afraid of a repeat of the poor harvest, following the absence of rain.

“The rain is really affecting us and we cannot progress with these kinds of poor harvests because when the crops start flowering, the rains disappear,” Lacaa said.

“Now the rains have disappeared and the leaves of my beans have started yellowing,” she added.

Margaret Atoo, another member of the cooperative, planted two acres of beans in June but she is equally worried that the inadequate rain will affect its yield.

“If the rains return now and are well distributed, then the crops can improve, otherwise, we might register losses like last season,” Atoo said.

Simon Opiro, the chairperson of the cooperative said he planted 3 acres of beans but the sun is going to affect the quantity of harvest.

“With adequate rain, I can get at least 3 bags per acre, but because of the unfavorable weather, the best I might get will be two bags per acre,” Opiro said.

In March this year, officials from Uganda National Meteorological Authority (UNMA) advised farmers to start using the Weather Information Dissemination System (WIDS), an application it developed together with Makerere University to help people individually monitor weather changes.

To access weather information through the application, a user needs to either type *255*85# on any mobile phone and respond to prompts, or use a phone or computer connected to the internet and browse http://www.wids.mak.ac.ug/wids/, and respond to questions as those sent to their mobile phone.

However, the application seems to be working in reverse. In June this year, the information provided by WIDS forecasted that from June, July and August, there would be an increased likelihood of normal with a tendency to above normal rain or enhanced rainfall conditions over the northern and eastern parts of the country, while the remaining areas are expected to receive near-normal conditions.

Farmers have however said, they have not been receiving rain for the past three weeks, and fear that the prolonged drought might affect their crops like it did last season.

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Faith Leaders Call On The Gates Foundation To Drop AGRA

SOUTH AFRICA – In August 2021, an alliance of African faith leaders delivered a powerful message to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: “Stop promoting failing and harmful high-input Green Revolution programs, such as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).”

At a virtual press conference, the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI) released its public letter to the Gates Foundation, which it sent two months ago with 500 signatures from African faith and farming communities. They have received neither an acknowledgment nor a response from the Foundation.

“Faith leaders are witnessing the negative impact of industrialized farming to the land and in their communities and have come together in this letter to say to the Gates Foundation: please re-think your approach to farming in Africa,” says SAFCEI Executive Director Francesca de Gasparis.

Farmers and faith leaders speaking at the press conference urged donors to shift their funding to more effective and sustainable approaches such as agroecology.

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Crucial challenge at a critical time

Their call comes at a critical time. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 66% of people (724 million) now suffer moderate to severe food insecurity, up from 51% in 2014, according to the State of Food Insecurity report recently released by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

As food insecurity increases, intensified by the ongoing crises of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, the United Nations is convening a Food Systems Summit in September to address global failures to reduce hunger in line with commitments made in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The summit, which is led by AGRA President Agnes Kalibata, is mired in controversy, accused by farmer groups of promoting the same kinds of industrialized agricultural development that have failed to address the hunger crisis.

The letter to the Gates Foundation detailed the negative impacts that industrialized agriculture has had on the land and in the communities of faith leaders from around the continent.

At the press conference, presenters emphasized the need for the Gates Foundation and other donors to break with the current agriculture agenda and instead invest in more regenerative, agroecological approaches.

“Farmers have become wary of programs that promote monoculture and chemical-intensive farming. They have lost control of their seeds. Now, they say they are being held hostage on their own farms,” says Celestine Otieno, a permaculture farmer from Kenya. “Is this food security or food slavery?”

South African agroecology farmer Busisiwe Mgangxela reiterated that farmers practicing agroecology “do not feed the soil with chemicals, we feed it with organic matter and fertility from other companion plants.”

As the letter details, input-intensive monoculture agriculture damages ecosystems, threatens local livelihoods, increases climate vulnerabilities and undermines smallholder farmers engaged in more sustainable methods of production.

Fletcher Harper, director of GreenFaith, an international network, was direct: “The plan of displacing millions of small holding farmers, using an industrial monoculture approach to farming, lacing the soil and water supplies with toxic chemicals and concentrating ownership of the means of production and land ownership in a small elite is an immoral and dangerous vision that must be stopped.”

AGRA in the crosshairs

Anne Maina, national coordinator of the Biodiversity and Biosafety Association of Kenya (BIBA), highlights the negative impacts and lack of accountability of AGRA. Launched in 2006 by the Gates Foundation in partnership the Rockefeller Foundation, AGRA set goals of doubling crop productivity and incomes for 30 million small-scale farming households while halving food insecurity in 20 focus countries by 2020.

As Timothy A. Wise from Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) documented in a report last year, the deadline has passed, and productivity has improved only marginally, poverty remains high and the number of “undernourished” people in AGRA’s 13 focus countries had increased 30 percent by 2018.

BIBA and other groups engaged with AGRA demanding evidence to counter these findings, but Maina says they received no substantive answers. Even AGRA’s own 2020 Annual Report offers little convincing evidence of success.

According to SAFCEI, another insidious aspect of the Gates Foundation’s efforts in Africa is the foundation’s attempt to influence and restructure seed laws. “80% of non-certified seeds come from millions of smallholder farmers who recycle and exchange seeds each year,” SAFCEI reports in its press statement at the event, “building an ‘open-source knowledge bank’ of seeds that cost little to nothing but have all the nutritional value needed to sustain these communities. In contrast, the approach supported by the Gates Foundation threatens to replace seed systems diversity and the agro-biodiversity system that is critical for human and ecosystem health and replace it with a privatized, corporate approach that will reduce food systems resilience.”

SAFCEI director de Gasparis is clear on the social and environmental stakes: “What African farmers need is support to find communal solutions that increase climate resilience, rather than top-down profit-driven industrial-scale farming systems. When it comes to the climate, African faith communities are urging the world to think twice before pushing a technical and corporate farming approach,” she says.

Summarizing the demands of African faith communities, Rev.Wellington Sibanda, intern resident minister in South Africa, says, “We can’t keep quiet as faith leaders. We call on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to shift its funding into agroecological farming.”

Cecelia Heffron, media coordinator at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy is the writer of the article.

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Lack of A Moisture Tester Failing Farmers In Gulu

GULU – Lack of a moisture tester is throwing a wet blanket over the profits of a group of farmers in Gulu district.

A grain moisture tester/meter is a tool that helps to determine whether or not a commodity is at a safe moisture content for storage or processing.

Members of Bed Ki Gen Adak Farmers’ group in Owor sub-county said the group of 30 members that started last year, have already registered losses due to inability to determine the required moisture content of their harvests.

Vicky Opira, a member of the group told theCooperator that last year, she lost at least shs 300,000 because she overdried her rice harvest, and it ended up breaking during hulling.

“I had 10 bags of rice which weighed 700 kilograms. But when I went to hull it, I ended up with only 500 kilograms because the rest got broken,” Opira said.

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According to Opira, she normally determines the moisture content of her grains by biting and paying attention to the sound it makes; however, she says the method has proved to be inadequate.

Simon Loum, the chairperson of the group said, it is hard for the farmers to maintain the correct moisture content of grains, when they plan to sell months after harvest.

Loum revealed that in 2020, they planted groundnuts and waited till March 2021 to sell when the price had gained, but the 12 sacks of groundnuts developed molds, and the buyer they had got from Kampala rejected it.

“They buyer had agreed to buy each kilogram at shs 2,200 but he rejected the whole produce. We ended up selling locally at Shs 1,500 a kilogram. We got on only shs 600,000 instead of shs 1,000,000,” Loum said.

Knowing the correct moisture content of produce seems to be a countrywide problem among farmers. In March this year, Kenya rejected maize from Uganda on claims that it had aflatoxins, a cancer-causing poison released by molds.

Loum said since the group lacks a moisture meter, they manually check if their harvest is dry by biting it, or put a particular grain in a glass container, and add dry salt to it.

“When one shakes the contents and salt sticks on the grains, then it means the grains are wet, but if the grains and salt remain separate, then it implies that the grains have dried,” he said.

Loum revealed that although they were trained that the correct moisture content of peanuts is 7.5 %, sunflower 9.0%, maize 13.5%, beans 14.0%, sorghum 14.0%, millet 14.0% and soya beans 13.0 %, they can only determine the correct percentage moisture content by using a moisture meter, not by biting into a grain, or shaking it in glass bottle.

“These crude methods have also made our seeds lose viability,” he said.

According to Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), over drying grains using excessive temperatures can stress the kernels of grains, causing cracks and loss of viability, and represents a loss in the value of the crop at sale.

The food security agency cites that 10-tonnes of grain with 15% moisture content weighs 340 kilograms less at 12% moisture content.

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