KARAMOJA REGION RICH IN MINERALS, BUT WHY HUNGER AND POVERTY CONTINUES TO RAVAGE ITS PEOPLE

• KARAMOJA REGION RICH IN MINERALS, BUT WHY HUNGER AND POVERTY CONTINUES TO RAVAGE ITS PEOPLE.
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• By Genevieve Apio
•  gennygenevieve256@gmail.com 
• Pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in journalism, media and communication
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• The following paper examines the challenges and opportunities for Karamoja and the various paths of development that exist in the Region despite the poverty.
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• Karamoja sub-region is a region located in the Northern part of Uganda. Karamoja is divided into seven districts kaabong, Abim, Kotido, Moroto, Amudat, Napak and Nakapiripirit.  It borders Kenya to the East, south Sudan to the North. The overall population is estimated at 1.2 million people, Karamoja is Uganda’s poorest sub- region, it has historically been viewed as violent, underdevelopment. The districts that have the highest poverty indices are Nakapiripirit and Moroto district having 63.5 percent and Kotido has 53.8percent
• Among the notable programs that government implemented in the region are: The government of Uganda and United Nations launched a new initiative to address food security and strengthen ecosystems in the Karamoja region, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) came together to launch a new five year food security and ecosystems resilience initiative for Karamoja region, entitled.
  
  “Fostering Sustainability and Resilience for Food Security.” The first of its kind in the region supported by the Global Environment Fund (GEF) that focuses on improving food security and environmental sustainability in the region. This initiative is funded by the Global Environment Fund to a tune of US$7 million, in addition to UNDP's US$13 million contribution, and co-financed/marched by US$24 million from the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) and US$21 million from Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries.
• The Karamoja Nutrition Program, funded by UK aid and implemented by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) to strengthen the Governments health system and ensure children and mothers across the region receive high quality health and nutrition services and are better nourished. The Programme supports all District Local Governments in Karamoja to: develop the skills of nutritionists and health workers; improve the treatment of acute malnutrition in hospitals, health centers, communities and provide more effective nutrition leadership and coordination across all government departments.
  
• Karamoja Integrated Disarmament and Development Programme. The government undertook a disarmament exercise during 2001-2002, and over 10,000 fire arms were collected judged by performance in terms of arms collected against the estimated holding of 30,000-40,000 firearms in the hands of Karimojong warriors, the exercise was not altogether a resounding success. The main reason for this was abrupt re-deployment of the UPDF troops from Karamoja to deal with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) Rebel incursions in 2002. This undermined Government’s ability to effectively protect the disarmed Karimojong. A number of other factors, however, also constrained the implementation of the disarmament exercise. These included, among others: inadequate planning, ineffective coordination, insufficient Government funding, inadequate involvement and mobilization of the local communities. As a result of the above factors, many Karimojong have since questioned the ability of the Government to protect them, and have continued to re-arm and cause insecurity within Karamoja and neighboring districts 
• Government also proposed SACCOs “Savings and Credit cooperatives in rural areas to fight household poverty. The proposal is to be implemented this financial year.
  
• When MS. Janet kataha Museveni was appointed the  State Minister for Karamoja in 2009, she declared that her mission would be to improve the  food security situation, the key interventions that happened over her five year period under her watch included construction of  80 parish dams, and five large water reservoirs, as well as the distribution of oxen and ox ploughs heifers, goats, grinding mills, and sewing machines under the Community Empowerment program to strengthen household food security and income generation
• The Northern Region shows the 2nd highest levels of Gender based discrimination. In Uganda traditional attitudes towards women are highly patriarchal. However, Karamoja ranks third out of ten sub-regions for women civil rights, women now play an important role in the politics of the sub-region as represented by First Lady Janet Museveni role as State Minister for Karamoja Affairs from 2009. She was later promoted to Minister for Karamoja Affairs from 2011-2016
• However with all these Government Programs there is still slow progress in the region:
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• The region is rich in minerals such as  gold and marble, currently gold is mined on a small scale in the mountains bordering Kenya. Gold mining is not a primary source of livelihood, but often subsidizes income during periods of hardships and is an available income-generation strategy for both women and children, who have a much harder time accessing primary livelihoods like cattle. Uganda has recently made a major investment in their mining sector with reference to gold. The Government opened a gold smelting operation in Entebbe in February 2017 that can refine gold to 99.9% purity, the standard for export to international markets. In Karamoja, roads and industrial electric transmission are both being developed specifically for the mining sector indicating a desire on the government’s part to industrialize the mining sector in the sub-region. It is however, unclear that local peoples could benefit from these jobs. Educational opportunities in Karamoja are poor, with low literacy. In December 2015, it was estimated that 13,000 people were involved in the mining of marble. In Karamoja, marble is integral to cement production: however, there’s no cement industry within the sub-region. This was raised as a grievance by several key informants, who complained that the product is taken out of the sub-region to Tororo cement factory, Uganda’s largest producer of steel and cement, if cement is produced closer to the mines near Moroto, a key value-added industry could secure livelihoods and bring ancillary benefits to the region. The region is also famed for artisan gold mining in Rupa, Acherer in Nakapiripirit and Amudat other minerals like gypsum, Uranium, graphite, iron ore, wolfram, copper and Tin. With all this mineral wealth it’s sad to believe that the region is still lagging behind economically. Again. However, the issue of proper training and education is a constraint on future development of value added industries such as cement production. 

• A Karimojong woman mining marble with poor technology. Photo by Kara Tunga
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• The people of Karamoja are traditionally cattle keepers, reliant on the open savannah and free movement between the regions dry belt and the area known as the “green belt,’ a Rainer zone running through Napak, Kotido, and Kaabong district that have been undergoing increasing settlement for Agricultural exploitation. The people of Karamoja are not the only Pastoralists who use the region, however. Before colonialism imposed artificial boundaries there was no real division between Pastoral groups. The Turkana in Kenya still move their herds into Karamoja to take advantage of better pasture in the dry season, for example. These migration patterns remain relatively unchanged even as pasture and climate have degraded, some Turkana have remained in Karamoja far longer into the season than was historically the case.
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• Karimojong grazing their cattle in very harsh climate and dry pasture.
• For decades the Karamoja region has been characterized by violent conflict, high levels of poverty and food insecurity, its vulnerable to severe natural disasters with frequent droughts and historically has been isolated. An estimated 82 per cent of the population lives in poverty. As a result the region has been dependent on food aid and Donor assistance with numerous emergency aid programs. On a sad note, there is marginalization of mostly women in the development circles and especially in the Karamoja region, leading to high levels of unemployment coupled with limited support to attain high levels of education.
•  Human welfare, living conditions and quality of life of the people in Karamoja is terrible considerably due to various factors such as environmental issues, insecurity, marginalization, illiteracy, poor health and poor infrastructure. Poverty is increasing and according to the karimojong, the main factors responsible for poverty include persistent poor harvest as a result of dry spells and drought, cattle rustling and insecurity, high bride price for marriage, lack of skills and unemployment, limited sources of income and poor governance. 
  
   
• Uganda’s Minister for Disaster and Preparedness, Minister Ecweru estimates that most of those living below the poverty line in Karamoja face the brunt of food shortage in the semi-arid region. “between 49 and 80 percent of the 1.2 million people in Karamoja are already in acute food shortage and depend on relief supplies from World Food Program(WFP)  and the population facing food shortages has kept increasing,” he said compared to the national average of 37.5
• From this background therefore, we see that most families in Karamoja have resorted to alternative measures in order to survive. The most prominent one is begging and as children get more sympathy than adults, on the streets of Kampala the highest population of street beggars are from the Northern region of Uganda, including Karamoja. Numerous street children are used as sex slaves or forced into prostitution. As many are impregnated because of this there is a tremendous number of single mothers aged 12-23 years old. Most of the children go for more than 11months from their families and only return during the Christmas period when they have accumulated enough items from begging for their families .
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• Child beggars in streets looking for a way to survive.
  
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• The extreme poverty in Karamoja also has serious impacts on health, wellness and the societal fabric of the region. Migration has been increasing out of Karamoja to major cities including Mbale and Kampala, migrants leave in search of economic opportunities that are not easily found in the sub-region. However, migration also puts them at risk of trafficking and exploitation. According to the US State Department in its 2015 trafficking in persons report women and children are “particularly vulnerable to domestic servitude, commercial sexual exploitation and forced begging."
• Fully 75% of the sub-regions population is considered destitute under the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) reliant on food aid for decades the regions only path to sustainable development is through providing livelihoods, growing incomes, and reducing reliance upon foreign assistance through crop and livestock production and the possibility of new tourist, mining and industry revenues 
• According to the inter-Agency Regional Analysts Network their key observations on Karamoja were; farming and pastoralism will continue to play a predominant role in Karamoja livelihoods. Agriculture is not a livelihood sector that will change quickly or dramatically; though mining and Tourism may improve state revenues and personal income the two sectors are not robust enough to generate many jobs or livelihood opportunities; a transition from Pastoralism to settled Agro-pastoral livelihoods has been taking place in the last decade and will continue. However the transition is painful in terms of cultural and traditional resistance to changing ways of Life and in particular gender roles.
• There are so many pastoralist communities in the world. For example, The Fulani in Nigeria, Fulani pastoralists or herdsmen are semi nomadic herders whose primary occupation is raising livestock, they are largely located in the Sahel and semi-arid parts of West Africa. However after recurrent droughts in the arid and Sahel regions, Fulani pastoralists have gradually moved southwards to guinea savanna and tropical forest areas resulting in competition for grazing routes with farmers, they keep on moving from one place to another. The Nigeria’s implementation of the land use act of 1978 allowed the state the right to assign and lease land and also gave indigenes the right to apply and be given a certificate of occupancy to claim ownership of their ancestral lands. The Nigerian Government designed some areas as grazing routes but this has not reduced clashes as a result of conflicts between Pastoralists and farmers. Other pastoralist communities are the: Turage nomads of Botswana, red Indians of U.S.A not to mention other communities that are still underdeveloped such as the tribes in the Amazon forest, and Jarawa ans sentinel tribes of India .
• In conclusion still Karamoja remains Uganda’s poorest sub-region, largely dependent on cultivation and animal husbandry to provide livelihoods in an environment known for harsh climatic variability, a lot still has to be done by government to help the people of Karamoja region get out of the poverty they are facing. 
• @Product of Development Initiatives Initiatives Africa