Scapegoat tactics will not solve Uganda’s development challenges
From time immemorial, most human beings have blamed someone else when things went wrong and have taken credit when they went right. This is true at work, in homes and at state level. Some governments are known for blaming the “Acts of God” such as bad weather when the crop fails, population explosion to explain environmental degradation and increasingly using laziness to explain increasing unemployment.
Those who have read Uganda’s budget speeches will have noticed that when agricultural output is low and food prices go up, blame is leveled at the weather – usually drought. There is some truth in that. However, it is very well known that rain-fed agriculture carries risks which can easily be overcome. And the government knows that. It has talked about the benefits of irrigation and even allocated resources for the construction of dams to collect water for farming purposes – crop cultivation and livestock herding. That was many years ago and farming still suffers from droughts and increasingly floods.