Redefining the Community Development Practices through Sustainable Urban Farming.

SAI has continued to align its vision and community development strategy with intent upon restoring hope among the Ugandan populace. The corporate initiative gives precedence to developmental approaches that consider male gender at the centrality of spurring a fundamental change of households as well as the community. It’s driven by a refined notion that men being involved in community development programs would irrefutably translates into uplifting the welfare and amplifying the dignity of females in the society. The underlying practical based conviction is that systems that render man powerless in the lenses of the community or induce his dis-empowerment ruin the position of man in spearheading change. 

In our culture it’s regarded as a form of belittlement that lowers man’s esteem, and affects his self-image, man intuitively feels incapacitated and lacks the motivation to forge a congenial environment that addresses the needs of his family and the community; this ultimate effect is misconstruing and branding him as a stumbling block to the transformation process of the female race as well as the community at large.

SAI adheres to its goal through a spectrum of operational programs unfolded in different spheres of life; health, education, entrepreneurship, leadership, and environmental conservation. These programs focus on gender based training and community awareness through different multimedia platforms geared towards reminding man to fulfill his legitimate role to modify, nurture, impact and transform his family and the community. Usually this is achieved through various partnership with institutions and agencies and any other concerned parties at individual or organizational level.

SAI has gone ahead to create Male Action groups (MAGS) that build capacity purposed to create platforms that bring back man on board and motivate him  to renounce his irresponsible behavioral nature and to help him not to revert to his deviant attitudes and  personality that constantly paralyze institutional efforts to raise the status of the woman in the society. By virtue of these interventions, man’s mind is configured and overfilled with new streamlined perspectives, he is empowered to revalue himself as an icon of change, he adopts an outstanding personality with a strongly transformed character that oblige him to partner with the community and other institutions to create systems that institutionalize and knit the beautiful fabrics of the mother and author of all nations. Our course of action is climaxed by catalyzing him to embark on executing his inalienable responsibility to magnify the beauty of the community by ensuring harmonious co-existence of his family and the community.

Currently SAI is heeding the recommendations of the global community to address the countless challenges that are ravaging our communities and have accelerated the degradation of humanity especially in under-developed and developing countries. Global statistics unveil that countries in the Sub-Saharan region of Africa such as Uganda register cases of higher nutritional deficiencies and alarming malnutrition levels are continuing to impose a lethal threat causing high child mortality rates, and this is mostly prevalent in urban setting. It’s unfortunate that despite of the good fertile soils that Uganda is blessed with, it is alleged that the African pearl is still limping in agricultural production, and is critically unable to address the dualistic challenge of food insecurity and food safety especially during times of hardship.

This is owed to the exponential increase in the demographic statistics of the country and inadequacy of a well consolidated national food security plan to mitigate the challenge the most affected individuals being the urbanites. Case in point is Kampala being a capital city is historically known for enticing many people from different social and economic backgrounds and from different regions  who are dragged by the economic waves into the city in search for lucrative job opportunities, due to stiff competition and lack of professionalism that qualify them to secure jobs in either the government or private sector, many of them barely get jobs, unfortunately, a predominant number never concede and reiterate their plans to pursue town life which is assumed to improve their standards of living, they end up establishing permanent settlements and overpopulating the amorphous suburbs of the city, while the lucky ones who eventually manoeuvre and  get infiltrated into the job market mostly do casual and low-wage jobs.

Because of their low income base and high cost of living, they lack the momentum to adopt a saving culture, they prevail in a very critical state, and starvation is at its peak among the victimized households, whereas a big fraction of the afflicted groups averagely survive on a single carbohydrate meal of posho and cassava daily, their counterparts hardly get anything to ingest, and in such a pathetic situation, some succumb to death in the course of struggling to obtain nourishment. Our critical observation is that besides Kampala city, town dwellers in other densely populated areas especially those inhabiting the central region like Luweero and Masaka are also subjected to similar challenges, they decry the overwhelming poverty levels marginalizing their homesteads, majority of the poverty stricken families subsist under abject poverty, and unable to satisfy their basic needs, this has intensified conjugal conflicts, forced child labor practices, destitution, high criminalization rate, family disintegration and ultimately leading to oppression and marginalization of households , more so, it has raised the number of people with special needs who are constantly seeking community intervention and institutional response to address this penury.

To complement locally based farming practices, SAI fronted an incredible idea and shared an insightful blueprint to promote sustainable urban farming practices in the country. This has witnessed a social impact of offsetting the crisis and deep income repression in the community. Its strategic plan not only aims at confronting the challenge of food insecurity but also conceived as an income enablement strategy for households projected to propel the community out of the vicious cycle of poverty. Ultimately the goal is to oversee the implementation and sustainability of urbanized food production systems, improving household income, reducing high child mortality rates due to starvation and nutritional deficiencies, reducing over-dependence syndrome at individual household and community level, promoting environmental conservation practices since the photosynthetic process of green plants decreases the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere thereby cleaning the air and minimizing the impact of global warming caused by greenhouse effects. We envisage that our efforts will play a pivotal role in enhancing and strengthening community networking systems, scaling down household and community poverty levels, increasing resource utilization as well as contributing to growth and development of national economy through urbanized agriculture.

Despite of its prevalence for decades, urban farming has been a shrinking farming practice in Uganda hurdled by several factors, the minority urbanites who picked interest and ventured in its practice launched functional food supply systems that address injustices and diverse challenges of food insecurity. These optimize profits in perpetuity hence alleviating poverty and improving their standards of living much as some still experience challenges that cripple their progress in the sector. We therefore intervened at the splendid time to ensure renaissance and intensification of this lucrative urban farming practice, currently, the program is operational in diverse areas of Kampala and the greater Luweero triangle, the assumption is that when our capacity grows, it will be rolled out throughout the country. Our main focus is on growth of annual crops such as vegetables through effective olericultural practices that have been adopted across the globe. Olericulture is a science of vegetable growing, it deals with the production, storage, processing and marketing of vegetables because of the over-increasing market and demand for vegetable both locally and abroad.

We advocate for growing of all the nine classes of vegetables; bulb crops (onions…), legumes (beans, peas), solanaceous crops (tomatoes, peppers, potatoes…), Cole crops (cabbage and cauliflower), salad crops (lettuce…), potherbs and greens (spinach…), cucurbits (melons, cucumber…), root crops (potatoes, carrots…) and sweet corn. We prefer growing these crops because of their striking production attributes; input and production costs are extremely low, require limited operational skills and expertise, highly nutritious, have ready market and require limited space and can thrive in different environments especially under containers; for instance, tomatoes can grow and flourish in the ground, in a container, in raised beds, in hanging baskets, and at the rooftops. With increased resources we hope to intensify the project with a blend of other farming practices such as growing oranges, avocados, cassava and bananas, investing in pisciculture also known as fish farming, floriculture (growing flowers), poultry farming and dairy farming.

All these farming practices complement each other at certain production levels and this ensures sustainable farming practices; for example farm yard manure can be reapplied in the city vegetable gardens to supply the nutrients required to proliferate and increase production. We fervently believe that many individual households can own small gardens, we train them to utilize their vacant lots indoor and outdoor in their yards to create enough space to support any type of farming they prefer to adopt, with time, we plan to partner with public institutions to seek a legal force to validate our operations and to allow us commission public city farms which can later translate into model or demonstration farms.

We conduct several community awareness programs on a rotational basis where we hire model farmers with adequate knowledge and expertise in urban farming to train and empower a cohort of our Male Action Groups - MAGs from different households with urbanized agricultural skills. These men later reciprocate the knowledge and train their wives and children to jointly apply the acquired skills to start and sustain their farming practices. They continue to heed to our programs and always pop us with their positive feedback about how our programs benefit them. We continuously monitor the progress of their gardens in order to advise them on ways to better their produce. Those with bumper harvests always inbox us expressing how their household income has been boosted after marketing their surplus farm products. With increased corporate support and investment, our future prediction is to start and grossly invest in value addition as strategy to enhance production and create more market space.

We have fully fledged monitoring systems and a consolidated management and retention plan that help us to monitor, supervise and keep track of our clients and maintaining our network and supply chain. The ultimate goal is to architect capacity building programs that reposition man at a focal point where he is adequately trained and empowered to play a catalytic role of improving the livelihood of his family members, ensuring a democratic environment through consensus and participatory involvement in conjugal decision making process as well as being conscious of his society and the need to pro-actively get involved in its transformation.

Demonstration Gardens:

Stage one: SAI team trainee of trainers practical session for demonstration gardens at SAI office.

Stage two: Loam soil mixed with manure in the filled sacks before planting vegetables.

Two weeks after Planting Vegetables.

4 Weeks After Planting.

A small demonstration garden that doesn't require sacks. One week after planting.

4 Weeks after Planting a Variety of Vegetables on one sack.

4 Weeks after Planting a variety of vegetables on different sacks.

Waiting for harvesting both for home consumption and sale the excess for income generation.