Her Excellency Vice President Specioza Kazibwe
Historical perspective
Present situations
Future challenges
Your Excellencies,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen.
By singular coincidence, this happens to be my first address to an international African scientific conference on small ruminants since my assumption of additional duties two weeks ago.
You are cordially welcome to Uganda, where I understand your mission is to deliberate on Sustainable Small Ruminant Production in Mixed Crop-Livestock Production systems on the African continent.
I gather that among the areas for discussion are:
a) The role of small ruminants in the conservation of ecology and Africa's food security; andb) The role of women in small ruminant development in Africa.
Both these topics are central to Africa's environmental crises and gender resource development, the latter of which I am directly responsible for and wish to be advised more on the logistics.
Permit me, however, to share with you my thoughts on the past, present and future challenges we must overcome together in order to promote social and economic progress through sustainable animal agriculture and food security.
From a historical perspective, the root causes of insufficient livestock research and technology development in Africa are manifestations of misorientation of resources by colonial policies. The relationship between African people and their socioeconomic environment, including food resource development, has always been out of balance. The foreign policies, not only destroyed the traditional and sustainable methods of production but also introduced new modes of production that stressed cash crops for export and profit rather than conservation of the environmental ecology and providing for food security. For example:
(i) The goat was described as "a problem child of African agriculture causing deforestation and soil erosion".(ii) Cash crops, such as tobacco and cotton have been cultivated in the rainy season in direct competition for family labour to grow food crops and conserving fodder for livestock.
(iii) Coffee, rubber, cocoa, palm oil and sugar-cane plantations took away land that could otherwise have been used for food crop and animal agriculture.
Distinguished participants, the historical antecedents of the current environmental and food security crises in Africa should not pass unchallenged. Widespread famines on the continent are a consequence of enclave economies and export economies by foreign agencies. This indeed facilitated the exploitation of natural and human resources in Africa without due attention to the conservation and regeneration of these resources. This is why small ruminants development was sidelined in Uganda during the colonial era. Instead, massive importations of fat slaughter cattle from European settler's farms in Tanzania and beef, butter and milk from Kenya and white South Africa was pursued.
You may wish to recall from history that our pre-colonial ancestors kept goats and sheep as kingpin domestic livestock species in every home. They were housed in every hut of an average peasant family in rural Africa. They were culturally shared among the entire membership of the African family and their productivity was sustainable.
Let me now put it to you, dear distinguished scientists. Is it not paradoxical today, that most of our countries are still submerged in the historical consequences of almost four centuries of pre-independence domination? Is it not true that this domineering influence is of unequal scientific and economic relationship, which in turn contributes to environmental stresses that affect livestock and food-crop productivity in Africa?
Putting the historical perspective to its rightful conclusion, I am of the view that there is hardly any African country today without inherited colonial institution legacies and structures, be it in schools, army, research institutions or government business. Some of these legacies include urban-biased development, instead of rural farming infrastructures, and unbalanced export-oriented strategies, instead of sustainable food-security programmes. Technological over-dependence, scarcity of appropriately trained manpower, and paucity of research information about the indigenous resource base, are some of the bottlenecks to Africa's post-independence development, and indeed to the growth of small ruminant productivity in Africa.
The problems which have their roots in the pre-independence era, have today become major constraints to several major aspects of development, especially in the restructuring of the livestock and food-crop production sectors. None of these problems, however, are amenable to short-term solutions. What Africa most urgently needs, is to have a strong linkage between training, research and technology-transfer processes. African scientists must provide the information needed to formulate realistic policies and agree on the most appropriate development strategies which would be economically viable, socially acceptable and environmentally sustainable. That way, we can forget the colonial past.
Turning to the present challenges regarding food security, Uganda's average per capita food availability is adequate, although nutritional deficiencies are rampant due to shortages of animal protein sources, such as goat meat, beef, milk, mutton etc. Continent-wise, a perplexing contrast exists between Africa's population growth rate of 3.0 to 4.0% and an average food production increase rate of 0.5 to 1% per annum.
With a population growth of that magnitude, the number of mouths to feed doubles every 20 years. For example Africa's human population today is put at 500 million and is expected to shoot up to 1.36 billion by the year 2020; that means an extra 800 million mouths to feed.
The challenge is how the 400 million small ruminants in Africa with an average offtake of 20% will contribute to animal protein food security sources. Furthermore, what role can sheep and goats play in promoting investment in development of export agriculture (IDEA) after satisfying the national or regional food security needs?
With respect to ecological conservation in a mixed crop-livestock context, I urge you, scientists, to develop transferable technologies that promote intensive use of animal manure waste and recycling of crop residues, agro-industrial by-products and planted fodder resources. The technologies should be compiled in simple handbooks and training manuals for farmers, instead of hiding them away in incomprehensible and unattainable international journals.
I am aware of the bottom-line concern of research scientists. And that is the magnitude of financial resources that African governments invest into research and especially livestock research.
The colonial legacies of promoting cash crops for export led to disproportionate allocation of funds into crop rather than animal agriculture. Today African countries allocate a dismal 1% of the AGDP [agricultural gross domestic product] into research. Uganda's investment into research has been until recently a mere 0.2% of the AGDP. These negligible apportionments are largely utilised for payment of salaries rather than procuring equipment and chemicals.
This state of affairs must be addressed by governments and donor communities to fully support indigenous scientific and social research programmes. Uganda has addressed this problem seriously and we have put in place a national agricultural research organization (NARO) with three of its six institutes directly addressing livestock resource programmes. Uganda also collaborates with several international research centres including the recently concluded agreement with ILCA.
Before I conclude, let me address the future challenges by pointing out the inevitable: the gender (women) role in livestock research and small ruminant development.
The first issue is the training of women as animal and food scientists. I challenge this forum to produce before me an inventory and percentage of women researchers involved in animal agriculture. It is true in Africa that women attend to the chickens, goats, sheep and calves; they also milk cattle, make butter and ghee in predominantly male-owned herds and flocks. Participatory social development dictates that the entire family be involved in the ownership, care and maintenance of their resources. It is a motivating factor to own an animal and then care for its wellbeing. Every member of the family - man, woman and child - should share in the ownership of small and large stock as a basis for economic emancipation, be it for school fees, taxation, food security or any other family needs.
That is why I recommend, that the best gift to one's wife or one's child's birthday is a cow, goat or a chicken. I appeal to the professors and researchers to train women scientists and extension workers in animal production. I further urge the Small Ruminant Research Network to focus on the women human resource as your partners in implementing your programmes on the African continent.
In conclusion, we in the government of the National Resistance Movement do agree that the paucity of well developed indigenous scientific research capacity contributes to food insecurity and environmental degradation which is a reflection of poverty.
Uganda happens to be fortunate in that our agricultural potential is quite high. And with better appropriate scientific knowledge and environmental management we should be in a position to meet some of the needs of the eastern African region. We have substantial surpluses of grain commodities. We can equally gain surplus in meat supply including live small ruminants for inter-African trade.
Finally I would like to commend the SRNET Coordinator and his counterpart team in Uganda for their tireless efforts in bringing about this conference. I also wish to thank the distinguished delegates for devoting much of their time to the preparations of the scientific papers and for attending this conference, right here in Uganda. I wish all of you fruitful deliberations.
I have therefore the pleasure to declare this conference officially open.
For god and my country.Thank you.
