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Adjumani leaders want more land for refugees to fight hunger
South Sudan refugee Joseph Taban irrigating his vegetables in Adjumani District on September 27, 2023. PHOTO/MARKO TAIBOT.
Adjumani District leaders are lobbying for various landlords to offer more land for refugees to engage in agriculture to fight hunger in the settlements.
This comes after some of the refugees from Pagirinya and Maaji settlements claimed they were faced with hunger due to cuts in food supply to the district.
Over the years now, the refugees have been relying on food supplied by the World Food Program (WFP) but the support has significantly dwindled.
Richard Maku, the refugee welfare councillor for Pagirinya block D which has 7 clusters, said: “Apart from the reduction in the food ratio, more refugees are facing climate induced hunger and there is need to avail more land for refugees to spur the growing of food crops.”
“Our refugees have demonstrated through the Optimum Land Use Model (OLUM) implemented by Action Against Hunger (ACF) that,” he added.
Currently, some of the refugees rent land from the community for between Shs70,000 to Shs 200,000 per acre.
Under the right to grow project which is also being implemented by ACF, many of our refugees have been helped to access land but still this is not enough for all the refugees in the nineteen refugee settlements,”Maku observed during a round table strategic dialogue on the impact of climate change and limited access to land for Agriculture production on food and nutrition security in humanitarian and development response.
Last year, ACF in collaboration with Adjumani local government through the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), signed a memorandum of understanding with landlords and acquired more than 2,000 acres of land, but the refugees and members of the community did not utilize the land fully.
But now, West Nile ACF Regional programme coordinator Moses Lukwago says they want to ensure that refugees and the host community become self-reliant in food production for subsistence and commercial purposes.
“We are helping them with opening land and supporting them with Agricultural input like seeds and other needs, then we tailor and support them with other technical advisory services,” he noted on Wednesday in Adjumani District.
The Adjumani Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Richard Wambi told a gathering that area authorities are still committed to securing more land for refugees to enhance food production.
"We are willing to support and we need to speak to the landlords so that more land is given to refugees to do farming,” he revealed.
Meanwhile, Adjumani District deputy refugee desk officer John Sentamu Bosco expressed concern over the fast-reducing donor support for refugees.
FYI
The multi-sectoral humanitarian response to the deteriorating nutrition situation, focusing on severely affected crisis contexts in sub-Saharan Africa that is being implemented by ACF, is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office Funding 2021-2024.
