Persistent malnutrition undermines milk surplus story

Such developments point to regional economic imbalances driven by inefficiencies underlying in implementation of National Development Plans.

Otherwise, how do we continue to pride in record milk production amidst persistent UN warnings that in Uganda, 26.8 percent of the children under the age of five years are stunted due to undernutrition, which is also reported to be responsible for four in 10 deaths of our children?

Like dairy products, there are several other foods being produced in abundancy in Uganda like fish, beans, ground nuts, beef and others which have essential nutrients to avert undernutrition but hardly accessed in regions where malnutrition has become a life-threatening disease among children and women. 

This also explains our low consumption of milk reported at 64 litres per person annually compared to 200 litres recommended by World Health Organisation.

However, such regional economic imbalances and consumption gaps could be exploited positively to widen the market for dairy products and others if the surplus output could be availed to the disadvantaged regions at subsidised affordable prices with the help of the state intervention and its development partners.

This would certainly enhance domestic consumption of dairy products in non-cattle rearing areas and also raise productive people capable of delivering productively in future labour markets.

For example, how shall a total of 22,740 children reported in the latest UNICEF report (July 2022) as severely malnourished and in need of urgent treatment in north eastern region become future productive Ugandan innovators, consumers, tax payers, labourers of Uganda without interventions like the one I am emphasising?

It is  estimated that child undernutrition costs Uganda an equivalent of a staggering 5.6 percent of the country’s GDP annually (UNICEF 2019). Five refugees settlements in Uganda, according to International Rescue Committee, have been found with the most life-threatening form of malnutrition that rose nearly by 50 percent in 2022. Globally, around 45 percent of deaths among children under the age of five years are linked to undernutrition and 80 percent of the children suffering from acute undermatron can’t access treatment.

To reverse the status quo, government through relevant ministries, departments, and agencies, must embark on seeking sound partnership with traditional development donors and allies not only to fundraise for treatment of the malnourished but also sponsor milk consumption at subsidised prices in disease-hit areas, in nursery and primary schools.

To provide the daily recommended 200ml of packed milk at Shs800 to an estimated nine million pupils in primary schools (2018 ministry of Education and Sports) who roughly spend 198 days (three terms of 66 days each) at school in a year would require each pupil to spend Shs158,000 to consume 39,600 ml (40 litres) annually. Budgeting for nine million pupils would therefore create a market of 360 million litres of milk, generating close to Shs1.425 trillion for stakeholders. Such a campaign should also address the plight of children outside school and more especially ones from poor households in all regions of Uganda. 

With intensified public awareness raising, guaranteed financial support from the mentioned key sector stakeholders to enable provision of milk at subsidised prices, and incentives to smallholder farms to ensure sustainable supply, malnutrition would be history and Ugandan milk traders would forget unnecessary physiological torture at Kenyan borders.

Mr Andrew Bakoraho is a writer, researcher and an advocate for equitable and progressive policies. [email protected]