Exactly a week after Cabinet reportedly resolved to retaliate against Kenya’s ban on Uganda’s agricultural products, the Minister of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries – MAAIF who was meant to implement it has distanced himself from the said retaliatory ban on imports from Uganda’s eastern neighbour.
Last Tuesday, Tumwebaze’s senior and supervisory colleague Rebecca Kadaga who is the First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the East African Community Affairs informed the nation that Cabinet sat and directed the Minister of Agriculture to draw a list of Kenyan products that would be banned so that the Kenyans can understand what Ugandans have been going through.
Over the past year, Kenya has been imposing bans on Uganda agricultural products including sugar, dairy and poultry products, causing massive to Ugandan farmers who, surprisingly, import significant inputs from Kenya like young chicks and livestock drugs for producing the very products which Nairobi is locking out.
Under their umbrella body, the Uganda Poultry Farmers Association on petitioned the Ministry of East Africa Community Affairs, imploring it to intervene in the prolonged ban on the importation of eggs by neighbouring Kenya.
However, while responding to the aggrieved farmers’ petition, Kadaga pronounced that while her Ministry and the Ministry of Trade, Industries and Co-operatives, will engage their Kenyan counterparts, Government through the Ministry of Agriculture was to announce imports from Kenya on which to impose a reciprocal ban.
But now, speaking to URN during an interview yesterday, Frank Tumwebaze denied knowledge of a deliberate move to implement a ban, saying he could not comment on what was not brought to his Ministry’s attention.
Instead, he maintained part of what Kadaga also told Ugandan farmers that bilateral talks were ongoing between the two neighbouring countries, seeking an end to the prevailing tensions. But he strongly denied being party to any plans to impose a retaliatory ban.
Meanwhile, Martin Roy Lukwago, a poultry farmer in Kampala who was among the farmers that petitioned the Minstry of East Africa Community Affairs observed that the continued ban on Uganda poultry products by Kenyan Government has affected over 50,000 farmers and traders within the poultry business chain and supply.
Equally affected, is John Basangwa, another farmer from Kamuli. Basangwa asserts that he was inspired by President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni to venture into poultry but the prolonged ban on poultry products from Uganda depicts the little commitment from Government in helping them grow in the poultry business, and improve on their income status and proclaimed in the country’s Vision 2040.
Uganda exports more poultry products to Kenya because the annual per capita egg consumption internally is as low as 17 eggs per person, whereas in Kenya, the consumption per capital is three fold higher ranging from 55 to 60 eggs per person annually.
Presently, statistics available indicate that Uganda produces 150,000 trays of eggs per day out of which 70 percent are exported to neighbouring Kenya.
Kenya equally exports over three million chicks to Uganda monthly has since 2019 locked horns with Uganda over different bans on Ugandan products such as sugar, milk and maize, what many traders describe as breach of the Custom Union Protocol that established single market within the East Africa Community member states.