Meeting women farmers on Kalangala Islands

“Before, if you visited someone in Kalangala they would serve you a fish so big that you couldn’t finish it. These days, the only fish we see are tiny." Noelinah a resident of Buggala Island explains.

“Today, survival has become so hard for me and my family because of the increasing food prices and the changes in climate. The government sold all the forests to investors and our animals no longer have a place to graze. The little soil we have left is exhausted so we can’t harvest much.” As she looked towards the lake she adds;

I can’t even afford to buy fish anymore, which is ironic because I live on an island.

Noelinah was talking to members of Activista and Kalangala Youth Development Association (KAYODEA), an ActionAid Uganda partner, at a community consultative meeting organized during the HungerFREE Campaign. At the meeting farmers and youth from Bunyama Parish discussed ways to improve agricultural legislation, raise further awarness on food rights and proposed ways to ensure that women get more control over productive resources such as land.

Kalangala District Comprises of 84 islands scattered across Lake Victoria and faces many unique challenges. In the past few years the fishing community has experienced severe depletion of fish stock due to overfishing and pollution which has brought devastating economic ramifications to the region. As men had to travel further and further to find fish many of the small-scale women farmers living on the islands were also faced with limited access to land for food production because much of it was recently gazetted as forest reserves for palm tree plantations.

The remoteness of the region has also contributed to the district having the highest prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS in the country at five times that of the national average. Because people living with HIV/AIDS need 3 times more caloric and nutritious food intake than non-infected persons, Uganda’s current food crisis has hit the island communities particularly hard. 

The team from Activista and KAYODEA met with youth and women in Bunyama Parish, Bujumba and Mugoye Sub-counties to discuss the challenges and possible solutions to producing enough food for their communities.

“We would be having enough food and money but our crops have been destroyed by pests and diseases like black ants, cassava mosaic and monkeys. They eat the leaves of our banana plantations so we can’t even eat matooke (our staple food). This is probably because most of the forest has been cut down for growing palm trees and for making charcoal so the monkeys only have our gardens to run to.” Explains Noelinah

The issues raised at the meetings will subsequently be shared with various stakeholders and petitions and letters written by the farmers will be presented to leaders at the ucoming G20 Summit.

“In Kalangala, women are the ones who carry out farming so they should be given land, farming materials and information on good agricultural programs and practices. This will help reduce on the food crisis in the area.” She adds.

The theme of the campaign this year is ‘Let the government prioritize investment in small scale farmers to end hunger and poverty.’