Families left ‘roaming like weeds’ in Uganda, forced to make way for commercial farming
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Kiryandongo, Uganda — People came from all over Uganda to Kiryandongo, uprooted by disaster and dispossession.
In recent decades thousands have settled in the district, about 200km north of the capital Kampala, hacking away the undergrowth on cattle farms abandoned after the fall of former dictator Idi Amin in 1979.
But thousands of families who had settled on the vacant land are now being displaced from their homes to make way for commercial farms, land activists warned in a report published this week.
“People are crying, people are beaten,” said Richard David Otyaluk, a resident who said he was born on the land and would not make way for a sugar plantation. Those who have left, he added, are now “roaming like weeds”.
Tensions often arise on abandoned land concessions in Africa, researchers and activists say, with landless people settling in these areas, only to be moved out when new owners acquire the land.
Farming accounts for more than 20% of GDP, with about three quarters of Ugandans working in the sector, according to the International Labour Organisation.
A report by civil society group Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, Barcelona-based charity Grain and Ugandan nongovernmental organisation (NGO) Witness Radio accuses three foreign agribusiness firms of “violently evicting people ... without notice, alternatives or even negotiations”.
“Small farms that once fed local communities and even the markets of Kampala are being destroyed to make way for plantations owned by foreign companies,” Susan Nakacwa of Grain in Uganda said in e-mailed comments.
One of the companies is Agilis Partners, a US-owned producer of grains and oilseeds, which received an award in 2019 from the US government for building “a thriving agriculture business in Uganda” that pays above-average wages and provides training for workers.
The others are Kiryandongo Sugar, a Kenyan-owned sugar business, and Great Season, a Sudanese- and Ugandan-owned grower of coffee, maize and sesame, among other produce.
All three companies, which operate separately, deny any forced evictions or human rights violations and say they bought the land legally. People left voluntarily after receiving compensation for crops and buildings, the firms told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Agilis said in an e-mailed statement that its investment in Kiryandongo has created 75 permanent jobs and more than 400 temporary ones, and that it sources supplies from 15,000 local farmers.
It described the report as “lies” which are “an abomination to Agilis’s core values ...
In recent decades thousands have settled in the district, about 200km north of the capital Kampala, hacking away the undergrowth on cattle farms abandoned after the fall of former dictator Idi Amin in 1979.
But thousands of families who had settled on the vacant land are now being displaced from their homes to make way for commercial farms, land activists warned in a report published this week.
“People are crying, people are beaten,” said Richard David Otyaluk, a resident who said he was born on the land and would not make way for a sugar plantation. Those who have left, he added, are now “roaming like weeds”.
Tensions often arise on abandoned land concessions in Africa, researchers and activists say, with landless people settling in these areas, only to be moved out when new owners acquire the land.
Farming accounts for more than 20% of GDP, with about three quarters of Ugandans working in the sector, according to the International Labour Organisation.
A report by civil society group Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, Barcelona-based charity Grain and Ugandan nongovernmental organisation (NGO) Witness Radio accuses three foreign agribusiness firms of “violently evicting people ... without notice, alternatives or even negotiations”.
“Small farms that once fed local communities and even the markets of Kampala are being destroyed to make way for plantations owned by foreign companies,” Susan Nakacwa of Grain in Uganda said in e-mailed comments.
One of the companies is Agilis Partners, a US-owned producer of grains and oilseeds, which received an award in 2019 from the US government for building “a thriving agriculture business in Uganda” that pays above-average wages and provides training for workers.
The others are Kiryandongo Sugar, a Kenyan-owned sugar business, and Great Season, a Sudanese- and Ugandan-owned grower of coffee, maize and sesame, among other produce.
All three companies, which operate separately, deny any forced evictions or human rights violations and say they bought the land legally. People left voluntarily after receiving compensation for crops and buildings, the firms told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Agilis said in an e-mailed statement that its investment in Kiryandongo has created 75 permanent jobs and more than 400 temporary ones, and that it sources supplies from 15,000 local farmers.
It described the report as “lies” which are “an abomination to Agilis’s core values ...