By Witness Radio– Uganda Team
Communities in Uganda whose land is targeted for industrial agriculture, mining, carbon credit tree planting, infrastructural development projects, and others will take decades to understand the ‘true’ meaning of the word “development” due to sufferings associated with forced land acquisition
To them, the development-financed projects mean kidnapping, causing disappearance and torturing of landowners that resist violence from the time of acquiring land for investments, gang raping of women by companies’ workers, and destruction of properties worth millions of dollars among other human rights violations/abuses.
Kikungulu, one of the villages affected by harmful investments in Kiryandongo, a Mid-Western District in Uganda, was once a community of budding smallholder farmers. Gifted with fertile soils, and hospitable culture attributable to its cosmopolitan fabric is no more.
Between 2017 and 2018, Kiryandongo Sugar Limited, a subsidiary of Rai Dynasty based in Kenya, under the guard ship of soldiers cladding Uganda People Defense Forces (UPDF) uniforms, forcefully evicted communities in the Kiryandongo district without prior consultation, compensation, or being offered alternative resettlement.
Tusabe Emmanuel is one of the farmers whose land was forcefully taken by Kiryandongo Sugar limited. He said before losing his land, he would harvest over 12 bags of maize and eight (8) bags of sorghum from his land, which could earn him at least Uganda Shillings over 3.6 million, equivalent to US dollar 1,100 that would cater to the needs of his family.
“I fed my family well, educated my children, and provided basic needs from the proceeds of my harvest” Tusabe, a 25-year-old, reminisced about his past.
Over 15000 smallholder farmers lost their farming land to the company and were left to gamble for life. The company is currently using land that belonged to smallholder farmers to grow sugarcane as raw materials for its sugar factory.
In May 2022, while commissioning the company’s 60 million United States Dollars Kiryandongo Sugar Plant, President Yoweri Museveni urged the evictees to maximize the low-lying benefits associated with a project by seeking employment opportunities.
From a landlord to a laborer: after losing his livelihood, Tusabe sought employment from his evictor Kiryandongo Sugar limited. In an interview with Witness Radio, he sought and got employment, as a casual laborer and paid a daily payment of 3500/= which is equivalent to 0.98 United States Dollars on which shillings 1500 is deducted for his lunch hence remaining with 2000/= that tallies to 60,000/= UGX (15.94 USD) a month.
After a year, he had to quit the job over low payment. He said because there was no other way one could survive without land other than being a slave to the evictor and getting paid peanuts.
“Our dreams were shattered by a company, which took our land for free and claimed was bringing development and employment. This was a myth. We do not have investors instead we have parasites surviving on our resources” he said.
He further revealed that after losing his land, he can not feed his family as all his children have since dropped out of school.
Another case involves New Forests Company (NFC), which plants monoculture forests for carbon credit mitigation. Between 2006 and 2010, more than 10,000 people were forcefully evicted from their lands in the district of Mubende to make way for monoculture tree plantations.
Following the forced eviction of locals from their land, exemplary villages no longer exist. Acreages of banana, coffee, and maize crops, among others, were razed down, and families were brutally evicted by the London-based New Forests Company (NFC).
NFC is currently also benefiting from a new project supported by the Dutch Fund for Climate and Development (DFCD); 160 million euros (more than 185 million dollars) from the Dutch government fund that aims to mobilize private sector finance into carbon projects. The DFCD is managed by investment manager Climate Fund Managers (CFM), NGO Worldwide Fund for Nature Netherlands (WWF-NL), and NGO SNV, and it is led by the Dutch Development Bank, FMO.
In August 2020, DFCD approved a 279,001 euros (around 327,000 dollars) grant and WWF technical assistance package for the New Forests Company (NFC) to develop the final business investment proposal for carbon certification in Uganda for sustainable smallholder growth and timber market diversification. In reality, this would translate into generating carbon finance to support expanding their monoculture plantations and land grabbing.
A 59-year-old Steven Ndyanabo still recounts the misery caused by the eviction. He said on a fateful day, he lost his garden of 35 acres in Kicucula village, houses were destroyed, and livestock was looted. His property was not inherited from his parents but bought them using his hard-earned money.
“I received no compensation after the eviction not even being resettled. My family of 14 lives in poor life. We currently live on my brother’s half-acre land in the Rakai district. My children have nothing to eat, and dropped out of school as the majority of them have been forced into early marriages because of the situation were forced into by an investor.
He added that he was one of the richest people in the area, with plantations of maize, beans, bananas, and coffee that I grew at my farm. He further said, he would earn about 5 million enabling me to live a better life.
