Prime
Karamoja dreaming, on a hot sunny day
Mr Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”.
What you need to know:
- The numbers they would get trading the bamboo forests for carbon points, were insane, dwarfing Uganda’s real earnings from oil. They envisaged the first bamboo field would cover about 12 square kilometres.
On Monday I read one of the most uplifting feature stories I have seen in a Ugandan paper for a long time. “How livestock markets are changing economic landscape in Karamoja”, in Daily Monitor, which came to us via the adept veteran hand of Michael Wakabi, told the story of a corner of Karamoja rising from the ashes after decades of violence, poverty, and marginalisation.
An economic and cultural transformation partly sparked by the construction of Karita Livestock Market, Pokot County in Amudat District, has seen cattle-rustling ebb, a restructuring of the cattle economy that is creating new local wealth, and diversification into honey.
The status and economic independence of women in the embarrassingly patriarchal Karimojong society are looking up a little, and they are making their own money in small trades and saving for their children’s education. And more brick-and-mortar buildings are coming up as urbanisation makes baby steps.
Make no mistake, there’s still a very long way to go. Karamoja remains the poorest region of Uganda. Additionally, the funding for some of the life-changing programmes is coming from international organisations like the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), not our resources, but finally, a light seems to have come on in Karamoja.
It can be hard to see Karamoja for more than the violence, the exploitation by mining cartels, environmental degradation, regular episodes of deadly famine, and the thousands of its people driven out to be street beggars in Uganda’s towns.
These tragedies obscure great richness. A few years ago, during an East African scenarios workshop in Nairobi, the room fell into dead silence as (the late) Prof Dani Nabudere made a presentation on the alternative traditional structures that once existed between the Karamojong and their Kenyan Pokot cousins for resolving cross-border conflicts arising, especially, from cattle rustling.
It was sophisticated, and based on codes developed over generations, but had been fractured by state violence and militarisation of cattle-rustling on both sides.
At the end, someone, feeling bad that he had been so ignorant, told Nabudere; “It’s a shame we have never heard of all this wonderful stuff before”.
Typically, Nabudere put it down to the neo-colonial education and political systems, before he regaled us with how Ugandan and Kenyan border communities historically have quietly regulated their circumcision calendars. Again, we didn’t know that that social mechanism existed.
When we were young and lived in Teso where our father worked, we had our first close contract with the Somali community. Our Somali playmates always told us that their families “came from Karamoja”. I for one was totally confused. I knew there was Somalia, but at the same time had to contend with the fact Somalis came from Karamoja.
I got a little better educated later, but it took the late comrade Omwony Ojwok, one of Karamoja’s and Africa’s finest sons, to give me the deep stuff. He explained to me the pre-colonial cattle corridor sand trade routes that brought early adventurous Somalis to Karamoja, things you won’t find in any textbook.
In more recent times I read about the “Reformed Warriors”, young armed cattle rustlers who give up the ways of the gun, become nice guys, and how they use dance to spread peace.
It’s not only lucrative minerals that are buried in the soil in Karamoja. There is a long rich history, a trove of indigenous knowledge, and a creative culture, waiting to bubble up again.
And there is a whole new green economy that can be built there. At the risk of spilling business secrets, I will steal a little from the plans of an enterprising Ugandan. He and his partners had done their numbers and were looking in future to grow a particular type of bamboo in Karamoja. He gave me the scale at which it could be grown, it could replace all the wood used in big and small industries in the country, and be enough to supply the brickmakers who cut down precious forest to make their blocks.
The numbers they would get trading the bamboo forests for carbon points, were insane, dwarfing Uganda’s real earnings from oil. They envisaged the first bamboo field would cover about 12 square kilometres. It would be fenced, and within it thousands of goats and sheep would roam, fertilising the field with droppings, and “weeding” it as they ate.
“We would have so many goats and sheep, we could take over the lucrative Middle East and Gulf market for Ramadhan”, he said. “And build a water system and value chain that ropes in thousands of Karamojong families.”
Why Karamoja, I asked him.
“Because Karamoja is the only place in this Africa, where something on that scale is possible, and can be profitable”, he said. The kind of Karamoja economic eroticism, we pray will one day become reality.
Mr Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”.
@cobbo3
