Uganda business prepares for peace

By Orla Ryan
Gulu, Uganda

The Lords Resistance Army regularly abducts children

For the casual visitor, Gulu does not seem like a town at the centre of a 17-year-old war.

The town is spread out and the streets are wide.

The air echoes with the noise of construction.

There are carpenters and tin smiths on the streets, people selling used clothes and boys hanging off their bicycles and motorbikes calling for business in the afternoon sun.

Child slaves

But at night and in early morning, thousands of children from surrounding villages walk into town, carrying mattresses and school books.

Only by staying in town at night can they escape the risk of abduction by Joseph Kony's Lords Resistance Army (LRA).

The LRA regularly abducts children and uses them as porters, soldiers and sex slaves.

External funding

The war has turned the Gulu district, once known as the bread basket of Uganda, into one of the poorest in the country.

Local business people have had enough after 17 years of war

Since the outbreak of the war, an estimated three-quarters of the population have fled the land in fear of rebel attacks.

Little of the money in Gulu town is generated locally.

It comes from the army, the non-governmental organisation community, central government, donors and the vast Acholi Diaspora who are said to fund much of the construction in the town.

Rejuvenation

Noah Opwonya, chairman of the Gulu Chamber of Commerce, is one of 30 rice millers in the town.

But his mill lies idle as farmers cannot bring him rice regularly or in sufficient quantities.

His construction business can face similar problems.

"You are given contracts, but you cannot complete them," he says.

Rebels chased Ms Mutesa from her village in 1989

Mr Opwonya is just one of the advocates of the Gulu Economic Revitalisation Programme (Gerp), which has been part financed by USAID.

The plan is to rejuvenate local culture, provide training, help farmers market their produce and look at the growth of high-value crops.

Funds need to be raised and a longer-term strategic plan is being developed.

Mr Opwonya says that people in the refugee camps should be encouraged to cultivate land around the camps and grow crops for sale, with a local defence force providing security.

In reality, the irregularity of supply is unlikely to guarantee them buyers, but then everyone you speak to about Gerp says that even if it does not deliver prosperity immediately, it could help people make a better living and prepare them for a time when the war will end.

Fear

Mr Opwonya remembers the heyday of the Gulu district.

It used to provide food to Kampala, to neighbouring districts and to southern Sudan and Kenya.

Now the difficulty in producing food locally has pushed prices higher and there is vast unused land, "without people, without life".

The changes the insecurity have wrought are immense.

Where once people invested their money in cows, they now invest the money they get from relatives in the Diaspora into property.

Walter Achora, chairman of Gulu district, says the town is full of entrepreneurs, engaged in business that previously they would have turned their noses up at.

Job adverts appear for builders, mechanics, electricians and plumbers and people apply for them.

"But only a few people are doing this," he points out.

"A greater percentage are unable to do any income generation.

"We can't raise local revenue because three quarters of the people are in refugee camps. We are talking of empowering people to give them a start...it is real revitalisation."

Act now

Chris Ojera, regional coordinator at Strengthening Decentralisation in Uganda ( SDU), explains the genesis of Gerp.

"Most people think a lot harder when there is hardship. There is no recourse. There is no amount of aid which will help everyone out of this situation. There is no short cut," he says.

"You can't live in the past when the present is telling you something else.

"If you are going to wait until things get back to normal, you won't get very far."

Changed lives

This goes some way to explain why business seems relatively healthy in some areas.

Little of the money in Gulu town is generated locally

The presence of the army, which is here to fight the rebels, has fuelled the local economy.

Northern Distributors, which delivers beer to Gulu, Kitgum, Adjumani and Pader for Uganda Breweries, has seen turnover rise from 4,000 crates a month in 1997 to 16,000 a month now.

It is a booming business, but also a risky one, says general manager Martin Atyama.

His three trucks have to drive through rebel territory to deliver the beer, much of it to thirsty soldiers.

Women at work

The lives of local women have also been changed by the war.

Take Rose Mutesa who was chased from her village by rebel attackers in 1989.

Had she stayed in the village, she would have tended the land and remained a subsistence farmer.

Instead, she now owns a produce store, stocked with maize, beans, groundnuts, simsim, sorghum and beans from farmers in Gulu district, who grow it around the refugee camps and sells it in Kampala.

Similarly, Cissy Charity Ojok became a business woman after her husband died in 1992 and she had to take over his Gulu Tin-Smith Workshop.

"At first when I just started, they were laughing at me, saying 'how can [a woman] do funny things like this'," she recalls.

Now many women in Gulu are involved in business they would never have been involved in if they had stayed in villages.

Ms Ojok's 10 workers make furniture and metal boxes in response to orders from non governmental organisations, schools and institutions.

In the workshop yard, men are busy finishing metal doors and window frames.

Economic revitalisation can have a political purpose too, according to Ms Ojok who has hired and trained returned rebels who now work in their own businesses elsewhere in Gulu.

"That is also another way of convincing the rebels to come out," she says.

Struggle

But not all local entrepreneurs are finding it easy.

Take William Onyabo's second hand clothes business.

In 1994, rebels killed his father and he had to leave school because he was unable to raise money for fees.

Four years ago, he started out on his own.

Mr Onyabo says he is unhappy about how he earns his living, but he cannot see himself going back to school.