Skip over navigaion
The campaign for the modernising of agriculture, understood as capitalist agricultural production, is not new in Uganda. At the beginning of the 20th century, when the British colonised Uganda, there were those who called for plantation agriculture, presumably on the basis of wage labour. The British, recognizing the political nature of agricultural transformation, shied away from creating plantation agriculture as this would have entailed a massive dis-inheritance of peasants in order to solve the land question. They opted for peasant forms of agriculture which did not involve expropriation of land but which also meant production for the market would be based on quasi-force. However, it should be noted that in Buganda and other kingdom areas such as Bunyoro, Toro, Ankole and Bugisu, some forms of private property rights in land had developed. Peasants who lived on privatised land were transformed into tenants with the new landowning class extracting tremendous amounts of commodity and ground rents from tenants. In the particular case of Buganda, the exploitation led to the emergence of a tenant protest movement called the Bataka Association which demanded an end to the excessive rents. Rather than abolish the private ownership of land, the colonial state opted to control the amounts of rents that landlords could extract and guarantee security of tenure for the tenants.
Just as production by peasants was based on force, trade in agricultural products was also based on monopoly. Through administrative and legal processes, competition in the trade of agricultural products which had thrived in the 1920s, and which benefited the peasants, was brought to an end. Monopoly over the trading of agricultural products was crucial in preventing the emergence of a class of local capitalists; it also allowed the colonial state to extract surpluses partly to meet its revenue needs and partly to prop up the British economy.
This structure of the colonial economy disadvantaged peasants. It is not surprising that peasants rose to protest against the injustice in the 1930s and 1940s in what came to be called the nationalist movement. Basically, the peasants were aggrieved that they were not allowed to sell their agricultural produce wherever they liked and at prices of their own choosing. Peasant struggles resulted in Uganda attaining independence in 1962.
Rural development without agrarian transformation
In post-independence Uganda, the government of the day claimed that the worst enemies of Uganda were ignorance, disease and poverty. It claimed that these problems could be tackled through improvement and transformation approaches to agriculture. The improvement approach would entail the introduction of new technologies through education or extension services to peasants. Transformation was supposed to imply large-scale mechanised production using tractors and new techniques of production by "progressive farmers". Progressive farmers were defined as those individuals who applied the advice given to them by the agricultural department. In terms of marketing, the state remained responsible for determining the prices of agricultural products and for the world market.
The reforms of the 1960s were termed rural development but did not lead to increased productivity for a number of reasons. First of all the agricultural reforms were based on the assumption that the problem of Ugandan agriculture was a purely technical problem that required a technological fix. It is no wonder that the emphasis was on the diffusion of technologies derived from the West. This strategy had potentials for failure the moment externally derived earnings (export revenue) could not match import needs (agricultural technologies). Equally important, the strategy of technological change sought to leave the agrarian structure intact, despite the rhetoric of individualization of tenure. In essence, this meant that the strategy was to bypass peasants, avoid transforming them. This created yet another bottleneck, namely the restriction of the growth of a home market and also the prevention of the expansion of capitalist agriculture (the proclaimed aim of rural development) because of a lack of individuals who could sell their labour in exchange for wages.
The issue of rural transformation, therefore, was not primarily technical but political. The very individuals that were dubbed as progressive farmers were in practice not interested in transforming agriculture. Partly because of the state's monopoly over trade and partly because of the labour problem, it did not make sense to plough surpluses back into agriculture. Thus, those individuals who co-operated in "rural development" schemes did so because this enabled them to access resources (subsidies) which they diverted to other business areas such as trade where profits were high and turnover faster. Thus, a situation developed whereby "rural" notables, through monopolizing the politics of the rural areas, were able to use that social and political power to monopolise rural resources - land and labour of peasants - in ways that did not lead to agrarian transformation. The monopolisation took on feudalistic relations such that if someone attempted large-scale production, it would be based on forced labour (prisoners) or free unpaid labour (tenants, for example). And because the market was monopolised, production in agriculture was closely tied to state connection or state patronage. For example, one could make "profit" in a monopolised commodity market by avoiding transportation costs through using a government vehicle.
Market driven agriculture
The failure of agricultural production to improve significantly was interpreted by the World Bank and IMF as arising from the interference of the state in economic matters - pricing of agricultural products, provision of subsidies, overvalued exchange rates. The initial reform efforts called for rolling back the state from the marketing of agricultural crops. It was hoped that this would lead to peasants benefiting from higher prices. In fact by the early 1990s, Uganda completely liberalised the marketing of agricultural products through dismantling the Cotton, Lint and Produce Marketing Boards. The state no longer set prices and peasants were free to sell to traders, presumably of their choice.
The problem, at that time, was that price reform was not enough to get agricultural production back on track. For example Uganda's road infrastructure was in deplorable condition. In recognition of this fact, the NRM government set about rehabilitating roads and extending rural feeder roads in the hope that this would stimulate production as price signals would be transmitted quickly to rural areas. Indeed, it is true that those who produce tradables have benefited from the liberalisation of trade. Prices have been higher than ever before. But the question remains as to who in fact benefits from this trade. Preliminary research reveals that whereas prices went up and stabilized (provided the security and weather conditions remain favourable), the proceeds from trade were gobbled up by transport and private traders. Furthermore, the situation of the farmer was not made any better because the costs of production (price of labour and inputs) kept on increasing, thereby cancelling the gains of price increases. Few people use fertilisers or adopt new seed varieties developed by the National Agricultural Research organisations because of the prices of the seeds. Credit has been advanced to people, but it is too little to cover those in need and interest rates have been too high leading to indebtness.
The most fundamental obstacle to agricultural modernization is the failure to resolve the land question. In 1998, a new land act was passed. However, the Act failed to resolve the landlord-tenant problem in Buganda, Bunyoro, Toro and Ankole and Bugisu. This was because the landowning class was sufficiently organised to put up a spirited fight against being dispossessed in favour of tenants. In addition, the NRM government was eager to maintain the support of the landowners as a way of blocking political parties from gaining a foothold in the rural areas. The effect of this political situation is that the land act creates a stalemate between landowners and tenants. Tenants occupy the land but do not own it. Landowners own the land but do not control it and cannot dispose of it. Although the land act purports to clear obstacles to the development of a land market, in reality it does not.
Furthermore, most of the land in Uganda is held under customary tenure. The land act claims that peasants are free to convert their land into freehold. However, it is extremely difficult for peasants to pay the, usually unofficial, verification fees demanded by Parish Land Committees, survey costs and, finally, buy the land from the state. It is clear that no customary tenant can ever hope to raise the resources to convert the land into freehold. In a sense, this seems to support the thesis that the act was designed to attract foreign investors rather than address the social issues confronting peasants in Uganda.
Conclusion
The NRM is sincere about its hope of modernizing agriculture - understood as large-scale capitalist agriculture. However, its approach is essentially technical without addressing the political and social dimensions critical for transforming agriculture. It is obvious that without addressing these power relations modernization cannot take place; at least that is the lesson we learn from failed modernization schemes in the past.
Literature on agricultural reform in Uganda
Ahluwalia, D.P.S., Plantations and the Politics of Sugar in Uganda. Kampala: Fountain Publications, 1995.
Bazaara, Nyangabyaki, Land Policy and the Evolving Forms of Land Tenure in Masindi District, Uganda. Kampala: Centre for Basic Research, 1992.
Bazaara, Nyangabyaki, The State and Social Differentiation in Kakindo Village, Masindi District, Uganda. Kampala: Centre for Basic Research, 1991.
Fendru, Ijoyi, A Socio-Economic Study of Access to Rural Finance in Uganda.Ann Arbor, Mich.: Univ., 1996.
Mukwaya, Augustine Bikokolo, Land Tenure in Buganda.Nairobi: Eagle Press, 1954. Mwebaza, Rose, How to Integrate Statutory and Customary Tenure. London: IIED Drylands Program, 1999.
Nsamba-Gayiiya, Eddie, Implementing Land Tenure Reform in Uganda. London: IIED Drylands Program, 1999.
Nyamugasira, Warren, "Structural Adjustment, Land Reform, and Disenfranchisement in Uganda." In Development in Practice,vol. 6, no. 4. Oxford, 1996.
Robert, Mugisha, Emergent Changes and Trends in Land Tenure and Land Use in Kabale and Kisoro Districts. Kampala: Centre for Basic Research, 1992.
Roth, Michael, Jeffrey A. Cochrane & W. Kisamba-Mugerwa, Tenure Security, Credit Use, and Farm Investment in the Rujumbura Pilot Land Registration Scheme, Rukungiri District, Uganda. Madison, Wisc.: Univ. Land Tenure Center, 1993.
Republic of Uganda. Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development Uganda Poverty Status Report, 1999.Kampala, 1999.
Xavier, Nsabagasani, Land Privatisation, Security of Tenure and Agricultural Production.The Hague: Institute of Social Studies, 1997. Zerihun, Tadesse, Smallholder Farmers and Structural Adjustment Policy (SAP) in Uganda.Uppsala: Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, 1994.
Research and analysis on Africa
The Limits of Agricultural Reforms in Contemporary Uganda
By: Nyangabyaki Bazaara, (PhD), Executive Director of the Centre for Basic Research, Kampala, Uganda
The agricultural sector remains the major source of livelihood for the majority of Ugandans. In recognition of this fact, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government has been implementing a series of reforms aimed at "transforming" agriculture in order to increase the incomes of the peasantry and, therefore, "eliminate" core poverty by the year 2017. The reforms have entailed the following.
The agricultural sector remains the major source of livelihood for the majority of Ugandans. In recognition of this fact, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government has been implementing a series of reforms aimed at "transforming" agriculture in order to increase the incomes of the peasantry and, therefore, "eliminate" core poverty by the year 2017. The reforms have entailed the following.
- The adoption of productivity enhancing technologies. This plank of reforms includes the massive investment of research and development efforts in new seed varieties by the National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO) and the movement of extension services nearer to the people through the de-centralisation programme adopted in 1993.
- The re-orientation of peasants to increasingly produce for the market. This involves maintaining feeder roads so that it is easy for peasants to sell their produce. In addition, there has been the liberalisation for the market for agricultural inputs and commodities, and of the foreign exchange financial markets.
- The provision of agricultural credit in order for peasants to acquire modern technologies and techniques.
- Legal reform of the land tenure as enshrined in the 1998 Land Act.
The campaign for the modernising of agriculture, understood as capitalist agricultural production, is not new in Uganda. At the beginning of the 20th century, when the British colonised Uganda, there were those who called for plantation agriculture, presumably on the basis of wage labour. The British, recognizing the political nature of agricultural transformation, shied away from creating plantation agriculture as this would have entailed a massive dis-inheritance of peasants in order to solve the land question. They opted for peasant forms of agriculture which did not involve expropriation of land but which also meant production for the market would be based on quasi-force. However, it should be noted that in Buganda and other kingdom areas such as Bunyoro, Toro, Ankole and Bugisu, some forms of private property rights in land had developed. Peasants who lived on privatised land were transformed into tenants with the new landowning class extracting tremendous amounts of commodity and ground rents from tenants. In the particular case of Buganda, the exploitation led to the emergence of a tenant protest movement called the Bataka Association which demanded an end to the excessive rents. Rather than abolish the private ownership of land, the colonial state opted to control the amounts of rents that landlords could extract and guarantee security of tenure for the tenants.
Just as production by peasants was based on force, trade in agricultural products was also based on monopoly. Through administrative and legal processes, competition in the trade of agricultural products which had thrived in the 1920s, and which benefited the peasants, was brought to an end. Monopoly over the trading of agricultural products was crucial in preventing the emergence of a class of local capitalists; it also allowed the colonial state to extract surpluses partly to meet its revenue needs and partly to prop up the British economy.
This structure of the colonial economy disadvantaged peasants. It is not surprising that peasants rose to protest against the injustice in the 1930s and 1940s in what came to be called the nationalist movement. Basically, the peasants were aggrieved that they were not allowed to sell their agricultural produce wherever they liked and at prices of their own choosing. Peasant struggles resulted in Uganda attaining independence in 1962.
Rural development without agrarian transformation
In post-independence Uganda, the government of the day claimed that the worst enemies of Uganda were ignorance, disease and poverty. It claimed that these problems could be tackled through improvement and transformation approaches to agriculture. The improvement approach would entail the introduction of new technologies through education or extension services to peasants. Transformation was supposed to imply large-scale mechanised production using tractors and new techniques of production by "progressive farmers". Progressive farmers were defined as those individuals who applied the advice given to them by the agricultural department. In terms of marketing, the state remained responsible for determining the prices of agricultural products and for the world market.
The reforms of the 1960s were termed rural development but did not lead to increased productivity for a number of reasons. First of all the agricultural reforms were based on the assumption that the problem of Ugandan agriculture was a purely technical problem that required a technological fix. It is no wonder that the emphasis was on the diffusion of technologies derived from the West. This strategy had potentials for failure the moment externally derived earnings (export revenue) could not match import needs (agricultural technologies). Equally important, the strategy of technological change sought to leave the agrarian structure intact, despite the rhetoric of individualization of tenure. In essence, this meant that the strategy was to bypass peasants, avoid transforming them. This created yet another bottleneck, namely the restriction of the growth of a home market and also the prevention of the expansion of capitalist agriculture (the proclaimed aim of rural development) because of a lack of individuals who could sell their labour in exchange for wages.
The issue of rural transformation, therefore, was not primarily technical but political. The very individuals that were dubbed as progressive farmers were in practice not interested in transforming agriculture. Partly because of the state's monopoly over trade and partly because of the labour problem, it did not make sense to plough surpluses back into agriculture. Thus, those individuals who co-operated in "rural development" schemes did so because this enabled them to access resources (subsidies) which they diverted to other business areas such as trade where profits were high and turnover faster. Thus, a situation developed whereby "rural" notables, through monopolizing the politics of the rural areas, were able to use that social and political power to monopolise rural resources - land and labour of peasants - in ways that did not lead to agrarian transformation. The monopolisation took on feudalistic relations such that if someone attempted large-scale production, it would be based on forced labour (prisoners) or free unpaid labour (tenants, for example). And because the market was monopolised, production in agriculture was closely tied to state connection or state patronage. For example, one could make "profit" in a monopolised commodity market by avoiding transportation costs through using a government vehicle.
Market driven agriculture
The failure of agricultural production to improve significantly was interpreted by the World Bank and IMF as arising from the interference of the state in economic matters - pricing of agricultural products, provision of subsidies, overvalued exchange rates. The initial reform efforts called for rolling back the state from the marketing of agricultural crops. It was hoped that this would lead to peasants benefiting from higher prices. In fact by the early 1990s, Uganda completely liberalised the marketing of agricultural products through dismantling the Cotton, Lint and Produce Marketing Boards. The state no longer set prices and peasants were free to sell to traders, presumably of their choice.
The problem, at that time, was that price reform was not enough to get agricultural production back on track. For example Uganda's road infrastructure was in deplorable condition. In recognition of this fact, the NRM government set about rehabilitating roads and extending rural feeder roads in the hope that this would stimulate production as price signals would be transmitted quickly to rural areas. Indeed, it is true that those who produce tradables have benefited from the liberalisation of trade. Prices have been higher than ever before. But the question remains as to who in fact benefits from this trade. Preliminary research reveals that whereas prices went up and stabilized (provided the security and weather conditions remain favourable), the proceeds from trade were gobbled up by transport and private traders. Furthermore, the situation of the farmer was not made any better because the costs of production (price of labour and inputs) kept on increasing, thereby cancelling the gains of price increases. Few people use fertilisers or adopt new seed varieties developed by the National Agricultural Research organisations because of the prices of the seeds. Credit has been advanced to people, but it is too little to cover those in need and interest rates have been too high leading to indebtness.
The most fundamental obstacle to agricultural modernization is the failure to resolve the land question. In 1998, a new land act was passed. However, the Act failed to resolve the landlord-tenant problem in Buganda, Bunyoro, Toro and Ankole and Bugisu. This was because the landowning class was sufficiently organised to put up a spirited fight against being dispossessed in favour of tenants. In addition, the NRM government was eager to maintain the support of the landowners as a way of blocking political parties from gaining a foothold in the rural areas. The effect of this political situation is that the land act creates a stalemate between landowners and tenants. Tenants occupy the land but do not own it. Landowners own the land but do not control it and cannot dispose of it. Although the land act purports to clear obstacles to the development of a land market, in reality it does not.
Furthermore, most of the land in Uganda is held under customary tenure. The land act claims that peasants are free to convert their land into freehold. However, it is extremely difficult for peasants to pay the, usually unofficial, verification fees demanded by Parish Land Committees, survey costs and, finally, buy the land from the state. It is clear that no customary tenant can ever hope to raise the resources to convert the land into freehold. In a sense, this seems to support the thesis that the act was designed to attract foreign investors rather than address the social issues confronting peasants in Uganda.
Conclusion
The NRM is sincere about its hope of modernizing agriculture - understood as large-scale capitalist agriculture. However, its approach is essentially technical without addressing the political and social dimensions critical for transforming agriculture. It is obvious that without addressing these power relations modernization cannot take place; at least that is the lesson we learn from failed modernization schemes in the past.
Literature on agricultural reform in Uganda
Ahluwalia, D.P.S., Plantations and the Politics of Sugar in Uganda. Kampala: Fountain Publications, 1995.
Bazaara, Nyangabyaki, Land Policy and the Evolving Forms of Land Tenure in Masindi District, Uganda. Kampala: Centre for Basic Research, 1992.
Bazaara, Nyangabyaki, The State and Social Differentiation in Kakindo Village, Masindi District, Uganda. Kampala: Centre for Basic Research, 1991.
Fendru, Ijoyi, A Socio-Economic Study of Access to Rural Finance in Uganda.Ann Arbor, Mich.: Univ., 1996.
Mukwaya, Augustine Bikokolo, Land Tenure in Buganda.Nairobi: Eagle Press, 1954. Mwebaza, Rose, How to Integrate Statutory and Customary Tenure. London: IIED Drylands Program, 1999.
Nsamba-Gayiiya, Eddie, Implementing Land Tenure Reform in Uganda. London: IIED Drylands Program, 1999.
Nyamugasira, Warren, "Structural Adjustment, Land Reform, and Disenfranchisement in Uganda." In Development in Practice,vol. 6, no. 4. Oxford, 1996.
Robert, Mugisha, Emergent Changes and Trends in Land Tenure and Land Use in Kabale and Kisoro Districts. Kampala: Centre for Basic Research, 1992.
Roth, Michael, Jeffrey A. Cochrane & W. Kisamba-Mugerwa, Tenure Security, Credit Use, and Farm Investment in the Rujumbura Pilot Land Registration Scheme, Rukungiri District, Uganda. Madison, Wisc.: Univ. Land Tenure Center, 1993.
Republic of Uganda. Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development Uganda Poverty Status Report, 1999.Kampala, 1999.
Xavier, Nsabagasani, Land Privatisation, Security of Tenure and Agricultural Production.The Hague: Institute of Social Studies, 1997. Zerihun, Tadesse, Smallholder Farmers and Structural Adjustment Policy (SAP) in Uganda.Uppsala: Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, 1994.