Museveni: African President Who Laughs Off Global Food Crisis with Open Arms
“Khotso, pula, nala.”
“Peace, rain, prosperity.”
When there is peace and rain people live happier because they will not be fighting; they will plough their fields and will have food. - African proverb.
Listening to Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni at any forum has never been boring. He can make his audiences jeer and laugh at the same time but not without drama at times. Museveni is both loved and hated by many because of his straight talking. But that is not to say he does so all the time.
One such time was at a recent Commonwealth leaders meeting in London where he happily laughed off the current global food crisis.
What seems good riddance for his small landlocked nation in east Africa has been boggling minds elsewhere and governments from Argentina to Senegal, from Egypt to South Africa, have grappled with riots of sorts over high prices of food. In Haiti, it cost the political life of a prime minister who had to vacate office for failing to soften the hunger pangs of his people.
But the current global food crisis should should have passed without the political antics of the Bull of Ankole, for he gets to relish and maximize every bashing opportunity that comes his way. For one to understand Yoweri, you have to read Ronald Kassimir’s candid essay on the man, Reading Museveni: Structure, Agency and Pedagogy in Ugandan Politics, to get a glimpse of his thinking.
At the London meeting, Museveni said the global rise in food prices was good for Uganda since the country has a food surplus and is, therefore, well-placed to exploit the situation. “We are very happy with the food crisis. Why? Because we produce a lot of food, and our problem has been the market.”
He continued with his ranting: “We produce 10 million metric tonnes of bananas, but 40% of it rots because we have nowhere to sell it, we have been producing so much milk and pouring it (away) until recently when we had a processor from India and now we are selling it.”
It is true that Uganda exports more food than it imports, but it is also true that there is a perennial famine in the north of the country. Only last month, Musa Ecweru, the Ugandan State Minister for Relief and Disaster, said the rising food prices were threatening emergency food relief efforts in Uganda’s drought-stricken north.
“The population has no purchasing power, they rely entirely on relief. We are conducting an operation with the WFP (World Food Programme) to feed the one million people there, but rising food prices is a problem.”
But Museveni could be right when he suggests that the food crisis would only be properly resolved by removing unnecessary trade barriers. Trade barriers are choking the developing world, Africa included, because Western markets are a virtual “commerce curtain”, except only when sourcing for cheap raw materials unavailable in the developed world.
At a UN/ FAO food summit in Rome last week, world governments pledged some US$6.5 billion to be committed to halving global hunger by 2015 as part of Millenium Development Goals. And Uganda is surely not potentially placed to refuse a fraction of this money to feed its own people.
Why Museveni is so happy about Uganda exporting bananas is because his Banyankole tribesmen prize bananas so much that a traditional wedding cannot be said to be complete without a sumptuous serving of a banana dish to the guests.
Translation: the Western world must enter into a marriage of convenience with the developing world and let free trade flow, and food will flow more easily to the world’s most vulnerable.
Image courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
Well, I am glad that someone is able to laugh about it.
JT
http://www.Fireme.To/udi