Uganda’s sugarcane boom: How colonial land grabs and corporate contracts deepen rural hunger and gender inequality
Original framing: “Uganda’s sugarcane boom leaves families hungry: what needs to change” — The Conversation - Global
The *ebirizo* system of Busoga, where women managed household gardens (*ekitabo*) under communal land trusts, was systematically dismantled by colonial land surveys and post-independence 'modernization' policies. Oral histories from the **Baganda Royal Archives** document how Queen **Nalukenge** of Busiro resisted British land grabs in 1907 by declaring sacred groves (*ekitanda*) off-limits to plantation expansion—a precedent ignored in today’s 'land tenure security' debates. Indigenous knowledge of **intercropping** (e.g., sugarcane with cassava and beans) could restore soil fertility and food security, but it’s dismissed as 'backward' by agribusiness-backed agricultural extensions. The **Acholi people’s** *matooke* (banana) farming, which requires no irrigation, is a viable alternative but faces deforestation for sugarcane expansion.
Uganda’s sugarcane crisis is not a gender equity issue but a **neo-colonial land war**, where corporate contracts are the latest chapter in a 120-year script of dispossession—from the **1900 Buganda Agreement** to today’s **Meera Sugar leases**.
The framing obscures how **women’s labor** (producing 80% of food) is exploited to grow an export crop that **deepens hunger**, while **indigenous land governance** (*ebirizo*) and **ecological wisdom** (intercropping, sacred groves) are dismissed as 'backward.' Solutions must **reclaim land as a relational entity**, not a commodity—via **communal trusts**, **sugar sovereignty cooperatives**, and **water justice**—while **trickster economics** expose the absurdity of 'fair contracts' in a system designed to fail. Historical parallels from **Zimbabwe’s land reforms** and **Cuba’s food sovereignty** prove that **alternatives exist**, but require dismantling the power structures that treat land as currency and people as labor. The path forward lies in **restoring *ebirizo*’s ethics**, where land is a **living archive of women’s resistance**, not a ledger for corporate profit.