Israeli pioneer introduces the kibbutz concept to Uganda to feed the hungry

An Israeli pioneer is bringing the kibbutz concept to Uganda in an attempt to transform the fortunes of a region where more than a million people go hungry every day.

It took agricultural expert Rony Oved three years of knocking on doors to persuade government officials to back his belief that collectives modelled on kibbutzim could dramatically improve the productivity of farms in the country’s north-east.

“They looked at me like I had come to take their land, so they refused,” he told the JC.
But attitudes changed after he led a delegation from the African nation to Israel to see how kibbutzim operated. Now seven agricultural community settlements are operating in Uganda and more are planned.

They are in Karamoja, in the north-east, which has an estimated population of 1.4 million and covers about 27,000 sq km. Upwards of 91,000 children there suffer from acute malnutrition.

Under a partnership between Mr Oved’s company, AgroMax, and the Ugandan government, the settlements are empowering local people to undertake large-scale mechanised farming through drip irrigation.

The settlements have been created on land belonging to surrounding villages, and are entirely owned and operated by locals, who also benefit from its profits.

Uganda Kibbutz

Two members exchange produce grown on the settlement

The first and largest settlement is the 700-acre Omora Akiyiar farm, established in 2019 and run by 378 households. John Aguma, who lives and works on Omora Akiyiar, said: “I am very happy with this project because my life has changed. Before I was dressing in local fabric, now I can buy clothes.

“Before I would go for cattle rustling with my elder brothers or grazing cows, but now I am focused here.”

Omora Akiyiar is now completely self-sufficient, employing modern horticulture techniques and up-to-date science to grow grain, maize and vegetables, and produce milk and honey.

But the road to self-sufficiency was not an easy one.

Mr Oved said: “In the beginning, for a long time, three years or more, I was knocking on the doors of the Ugandan government and local authorities trying to persuade them to listen to me about the idea of setting up a kibbutz. They looked at me like I had come to take their land, so they refused.”

Uganda Kibbutz

Woman wearing traditional garb employs learned irrigation methods

In 2017, he took a delegation of governors from Karamoja to visit three kibbutzim in Israel so they could see first-hand what self-sustaining community living looked like. Within a week of returning, they came up with ideas of what could work in their own districts.

When asked why he chose Karamoja, Mr Oved, who oversees the project and pays regular visits to the sites, said: “Ask Herzl,” referencing Theodor Herzl’s 1903 proposal to establish a Jewish homeland in the same region.

He said: “Where a society is most devastated, most in need, in a place where they have nothing, to live together and work together is the only option. The option of small-scale farmers, each of them individual, cannot work.

“But we don’t call it a kibbutz because it is not easy for the locals to say.”

The kibbutzim, or Settlement Based Development Initiatives (SBDI), are financed through the World Bank via the Ugandan prime minister’s office.

Uganda Kibbutz

Settlement members tilling land to be used to grow crops

For the first year and a half the kibbutzniks, or beneficiaries as they are called, are paid each day as they set up access roads, irrigation systems and infrastructure. But once production begins, and income comes with it, the settlements become independent.

As well as a site manager and at least one professional in agriculture, each settlement has a community facilitator in charge of mindset development. This role is vital in ensuring local mentality shifts away from herding cattle and towards a long-term enterprise of working collectively for the benefit of all.

“The first and foremost challenge — before water, before even the language barrier -— was the issue of mindset,” Mr Oved said.

Uganda pic 1

The collectives have installed irrigation systems on farmland

In collaboration with Uganda’s Ministry of Education, a six-month horticulture training programme is offered. AgroMax also provides training in areas such as business and marketing.

Mr Oved, who has lived in Uganda for 15 years after more than a decade in Kenya, said: “We are working with beneficiaries who, for generations, are used to chasing cows. They have never seen in their lives agriculture in terms of farming.

“My hope for the future is to continue and develop what we have started, to increase the number of settlements under the kibbutz concept.

“I also hope to sign a twin-kibbutz treaty between each settlement and a kibbutz in Israel so there can be an exchange of knowledge, culture and tourism. We can make this huge sub-region, which is larger than the whole of Israel, the basket of food in the area.

“Like Israel, which made the Negev green, we can, and are, doing it here. The beneficiaries have not given their land to this project, they have given it to their project. They have given this land to themselves.”