By Morrison Rwakakamba
I have seen Uganda People’s Congress (UPC)’ Secretariat’s Mr. Jimmy Akena talking statistics. He talks of unacceptable 26% stunted children in Uganda. He is right.
In the UPC and post UPC days (1988–89), the Uganda Demographic and Health Survey (UDHS) recorded stunting at roughly 45–48% of children under five. Trends since then: Stunting has declined steadily — from ~48% in the late 1980s to 45% (around 2000), 38% (2006), 33% (2011), 29% (2016), and 26% in the 2022 UDHS.
Of course, @NRMOnline has been here for a while and there shouldn’t be any excuses for having any amount of malnourished children in Uganda.
There was a man in Rukungiri called Christopher Gomwe. From Kyatoko area,
Gomwe served as a district council representative for the Eastern Division under the National Resistance Movement (NRM) for many years. He was partly popular because President Kaguta Museveni used to call out his name whenever he visited Rukungiri. Gomwe was a dorm-mate to President Museveni at Ntare. The President would tell nostalgic stories about Gomwe.
But what made Gomwe a star of households and especially women voters was his relentless campaign of emboga (source of mostly vegetables). He would find dodo and cabbage seeds, distribute to households and make visits to ensure vegetable backyard gardens were up and doing fine. He would move around with a loudspeaker (ekizindaro) shouting emboga emboga emboga (vegetables, vegetables, vegetables). Nutrition may be beyond vegetables but Gomwe was up to something.
We may need a Gomwe legislation and action plan. The Gomwe Plan (The Gomwe Household Nutrition and Backyard Garden Act) would for starters concentrate on the worst-affected districts of Karamoja, Acholi, Busoga and Kigezi.
