Health or profit: which way for Uganda?

Bill to control tobacco use in trouble as traders, farmers denounce it

Alon Mwesigwa in Kampala

Fred Okippi’s five acres of tobacco garden in his backyard are a lush of green vegetation.

As he carefully prunes unwanted leaves, the jubilant plants whirl to the wind’s direction.

Okippi, wearing a pale black t-shirt and a red hat with a cream band, delicately bends stems to thread his way through, softly humming to perhaps a carol of glee and hope.

“This [tobacco] is my future,” he says.

“If government wants to ban tobacco use, then we are going to suffer. Where are we going to get money to educate our children?”

All Okippi’s neighbours in Lamuorungur village in the Uganda’s western district of Kiryandongo grow tobacco as their cash crop.

“Our parents grew tobacco and we took on the trade after their death, says Onen Can, Okippi’s neighbour, who has about seven acres.

Can, 56, and Okippi, 55, have grown tobacco all their lives.

They don’t understand why the Uganda can even contemplate on enacting a law that could threaten farming the “precious” crop.

Other crops like maize aren’t as profitable as tobacco, they say.

Last year, Okippi says, a kilogram was bought at Shs 4000 ($1.6) while that of maize was Shs 750 ($ 0.3).

There are estimated 75,000 tobacco farmers in Uganda. Tobacco is widely grown in Arua, Kanungu, Koboko, Kiryandongo, and Masindi districts.

In March, when a Member of Parliament Dr Chris Baryomunsi tabled the Tobacco Control Bill 2014 to restrict tobacco growing, sell, and marketing, farmers and traders were riled.

Baryomunsi said farmers had benefited nothing from decades of tobacco farming – many remain inundated in squalor and extreme poverty.

Neither Okippi nor Can has managed to build a permanent house – both live in grass thatched huts. Sometimes, they struggle to get a day’s meal.

They say their children go to school because of tobacco.

Baryomunsi, a medical doctor, says the bill seeks to protect Ugandans from illnesses like cancer.

Farmers have denounced the bill, although it has gained massive support from the medical fraternity.

The bill, expected to be passed into law later this year, this   seeks to prohibit smoking within 100 metres of any public place, work place, and means of public transport.

It puts a full ban on tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship.

Dr Sheila Ndyanabangi, a tobacco control focal person at Uganda’s ministry of Health said tobacco had no benefit other than straining the health system.

“Tobacco kills,” Nduanabangi said. “We want to make it extremely hard for one to find or smoke a cigarette.”

“At the Uganda Cancer Institute, we followed history of most patients diagnosed with lung cancer, cancer of the mouth, throat and oesophagus and found they had been smoking.”

This is how shattering a problem tobacco is, she added. 

Minister of Health Dr Ruhakana Rugunda has called for tax increment on all tobacco products to force some smokers to quit. He said it would also reduce the uptake and use of tobacco products by the youths.

Okippi and Can are aware tobacco brings cancer, but are among the 15% Ugandans who smoke.

“I hear that tobacco causes cancer, but I have not even got any problem,” said Okippi smiling sheepishly displaying his russet teeth.

Uganda’s national referral hospital Mulago says 75% of patients with oral cancer there had a history of smoking, with the number of smoking years ranging from 2-33 years, according to a 2008 study report by Fredrick Musoke, a don at Kampala’s Makerere University.

The Centre for Tobacco Control Africa says 13, 500 Ugandans die annually due to tobacco use. Worldwide, the World Health Organisation estimates five million people die per year.

Almost three quarters of deaths from lung, trachea and bronchus cancers are attributable to tobacco use.

By 2030, tobacco use will kill more than 8 million people annually.

Ugandan traders are not convinced. They have described the bill as “draconian.”

If passed, they said, it would not only hamper their profitability, but also hurt the economy.

Everest Kayondo, Kampala City Traders’ Association (KACITA) chairperson said:

“If people have invested their money, then they should be given a favourable environment to sell it.”

In 2011, Uganda earned Shs 87.5bn ($37.7m) in taxes from tobacco, making it one of the top ten revenue sources.

Yet there is more harm than good in tobacco.

A 2012 survey by a Kampala-based NGO Platform for Labour Action, (PLA) found most children in tobacco growing homesteads missed half of their school time during planting and harvesting seasons.

In 2007, Uganda ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, but it remained without a tobacco control law.

Kenya and Tanzania, Uganda’s neighbours, have tobacco control laws.

In a joint statement, tobacco producing companies in the country, which includes British American Tobacco (BAT), Ugandan Tobacco Services Ltd, and Continental Tobacco (U) Ltd, said government was likely to lose Shs 100bn ($39 million) in annual revenue.

“The law must make a distinction between the products sought to be regulated and the individual corporate entity that enjoys fundamental rights and freedoms. The law should not seek to ban legitimate trade activities,” reads the statement.

To farmers Okippi and Can, the law is nothing but out to deny them daily income.

Hitting messenger: would Africa pass test on free press

In Uganda, the state covertly intimidate and influence dismissal from duty of journalists thought to be ‘critical’ to government

Alon Mwesigwa in Kampala

Taylor Krauss, an American journalist and freelance filmmaker was last July deported from Uganda after spending three days in detention. His crime was that he was found filming Dr Kiiza Besigye, the main opposition figure to president Museveni. Government says he had entered the country without journalist accreditation.

Krauss’ equipment was taken, footage deleted, and he was interrogated for several hours by the Uganda Police in Kampala.

Krauss is just one of tens of hundreds of journalists that face attacks on the continent. A report released on Tuesday on the press freedoms in Uganda, showed that 124 violations targeting journalists were recorded last year. Eighty five of these were by the Uganda Police.

Titled Narrowing space; media under attack, by the Human Rights Network for Journalist Uganda (HRNJ-U) and Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa (OSIEA), the report says the media in Uganda faced the toughest year in 2013 as reports of attacks increased, with two journalists being killed under unclear circumstances.

“The deaths reveal the extreme dangers faced by journalists in the execution of their work. The risk is higher with journalists who work during odd hours of the night, particularly female journalists,” said the report, which interviewed victims, witnesses, and alleged perpetrators.  

“Police employed various tactics like detention without trial, roughing up journalists, barring them from accessing news scenes, and deliberately tear gassing them,” says the report.

The report says government officials influencing dismissal of reporters. Some journalists in Uganda lost their jobs after they hosted opposition figures, the government regarded as ‘dangerous’ and were inciting the violence.     

Last year, the report says, two laws inimical to free press were passed. The Uganda Communications Act 2013 and the Pubic Order Management Act 2013. The former empowers the minister of Information to give directive to the communications commission to investigate journalists and media houses thought to go against their guidelines.

The latter provides that a journalist would be arrested if found covering a gathering of more than three people without police permission. 

Uganda’s Daily monitor and Red pepper newspapers were closed for ten days after they published a leaked letter that said Museveni was grooming his son to succeed him.  

The UN Special Rapporteur to Uganda Margaret Ssekagya said: “The report highlights a worrying trend by revealing the perpetrators. The courts must adjudicate and ensure the rights of journalists aren’t violated.”

Yet Uganda is not alone.

In the East African region, reports of media coming under attack have come to the fore. After the September Westgate Mall terrorist attacks in Kenya, Police Inspector-General David Kimaiyo threatened to arrest journalists John Allan Namu and Mohammed Ali of KTN television after they aired a story that raised questions over the conduct and coordination of security forces at the time of the attack.

Kimaiyo said the journalists intended to incite the public against government.

Last December, Kenya parliament passed two laws thought to be targeting the media. Journalists went to court and on January 31, a Nairobi-based court halted implementation of the Media Council Act 2013 and Kenya Information and Communications (Amendment) Act 2013 until the court considers the legal questions therein.

The media in Kenya says the laws violate Article 34 of Kenya’s constitution, which guarantees the media sector protection from government influence.  

In Tanzania, the situation is not any better.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) last August reported that some journalists have been attacked while critical media was being shut down.

In July 2012, CPJ says, the Tanzania’s Information Ministry indefinitely suspended the leading critical weekly, MwanaHalisi; its editor Saed Kubenea said the government-ordered shutdown emanated from the paper’s in-depth coverage of a 2012 physicians’ strike.

In Rwanda, journalists have been exiled to Uganda and other countries while others have been imprisoned for allegedly defaming President Paul Kagame.

Elsewhere on the continent, Aljazeera journalists, a BBC correspondent, and Dutch newspaper and radio journalist among others are under-going trial in Egypt for allegedly spreading false news and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which was designated a terrorist organisation. The trial has instigated would outcry over flinching press freedom on the continent.

In Somalia, CPJ says in 2012 alone twelve journalists were killed while on duty. In the capital Mogadishu, four journalists were dead in a 24-hour period in September 2012. The statistic makes Somalia one of the worst places for journalists on the continent.

CPJ has also listed Eritrea, Ethiopia and Egypt as having the biggest number of imprisoned journalists in Africa.

"I think they have been on this list year-in, year-out simply because of the governments' lack of tolerance towards any kind criticism. Every time a reporter reports something critically, they throw them in jail," Tom Rhodes, CPJ’s Nairobi-based east Africa representative, told Voice of America recently.

In Libya, journalists are expected to keep tight-lipped over the excesses of government. Several journalists have reportedly been physically assaulted with government showing less effort to protect them. 

Uganda's unemployed graduates held back by skills gap

Leaders race against time to cater for disaffected generation whose qualifications do not meet the needs of the job market

• Alon Mwesigwa in Kampala
• First published by theguardian.com, Thursday 16 January 2014 15.04 GMT

Its 2pm on a Thursday and Julius Abigaba walks into a betting shop in Wandegeya, a suburb of Kampala, Uganda's capital.
Abigaba, 26, was unlucky last night. He lost his bet of 10,000 shillings ($4) on four English football teams. He could have won 220,000 shillings($90).
"Just one team – Manchester United's loss to Everton – killed my receipt but today I will bet carefully," he says."I can lose today, but tomorrow I will win." Abigaba, a development studies graduate from Makerere University, is just outside the International Labor Organisation's 15-24 year-old age range for global youth unemployment, estimated at 73 million.
As a student, he dreamed big – to finish his education, work with a large organisation and, perhaps, earn a good wage. Three years after graduating, there are no jobs, and not even the hope that there will be any soon.
In the nearby Planet supermarket, William Mugisha dusts shelves. An environmental science graduate, he counts himself lucky to at least be earning something. "I just wanted an income to live on, however little," Mugisha says.
Youth unemployment in Uganda is the highest in Africa. A recent study, Lost opportunity? Gaps in youth policy and programming in Uganda, published by ActionAid, put youth unemployment at 62%, although the African Development Bank says it could be as high as 83%.
Uganda has the world's largest percentage of young people under 30 – 78% – according to the to the 2012 State of Uganda population report by the UN Population Fund. Worldwide, there are about 1.2 billion 15- to 24-year-olds. About 200 million are in Africa.
In the past decade, Uganda has experienced strong GDP growth, averaging 7% annually, but this has not generated jobs, a trend seen across the continent. Lack of employment is causing some young people to take risks. Last July, 36 young people, who had been running motorcycle taxis, were burnt to death as they tried to siphon fuel from a truck that had been involved in an accident.
And some young women are taking jobs overseas only to find themselves forced into prostitution, according to Ugandan police. "Every month, we get reports of over 20 Ugandans stranded seeking help. If the figure is multiplied in a year, it comes to over 250 Ugandans stranded abroad every year," says Moses Binoga, co-ordinator of the Anti-human Trafficking National Task Force.
Other young people are involved in drug trafficking. Dr Paul Nyende, a senior lecturer at Makerere University's School of Psychology, says young people with nothing to do are more easily lured into crime. "They can easily be lured into drug trafficking on promise of big pay," he says. "Many young people don't want to go back to the villages and do farming after campus. They want to stay and enjoy city life."
Yet the city cannot support them. It is estimated that more than 40,000 young people graduate from Ugandan universities each year. Yet the market can provide only 8,000 jobs annually.
Professor Augustus Nuwagaba, director of Reeve Consults Uganda, believes the problem lies in the education system. He says the country is stuck with the colonial education system that trains students to be clerks, teachers and lawyers. Times have changed, Nuwagaba says, and the country needs metal fabricators, carpenters and mechanics. Foreign investors also bemoan the lack of skilled workers in Uganda.
Lack of skills is a global problem. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) says training institutions continue to produce graduates whose skills do not match what the market wants. This mismatch makes it harder to tackle youth unemployment.
"As much as two-thirds of the young population is under-utilised in some developing economies, meaning they are unemployed, in irregular employment – most likely in the informal sector – or neither in the labour force nor in education or training," says the ILO report Global Employment Trends for Youth 2013 – A Generation at Risk.
East African governments that have discovered oil and gas – Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania – are grappling with how to use this to create job opportunities.
The "youth bulge" in Uganda's population has been recognised by the UN, with skills training and job creation among the targets suggested in drafts for the post-2015 development goals.
In Uganda, the government is attempting to tackle the problem. The 2012-13 budget allocated $10m to the Youth Venture Capital Fund to supply young people with startup capital. The state has also entered into partnerships with private companies to help train young people to set up businesses.
Charles Ocici, executive director of one of those companies, Enterprise Uganda, said: "A young person has got all it takes to start a job. No one should talk about lack of experience … it's the kind of literature you read and the people you associate with that will determine your success."
As for Abigaba, he's still betting on a change in his fortunes.