Uganda

Uganda Famine
Associated Press, Feb. 14, 2000

Famine in northeastern Uganda has claimed 138 lives since October, when the region's single annual harvest failed because of drought, a newspaper said Monday. Another 2,000 inhabitants of the Moroto district, 480 kilometers (300 miles) northeast of Kampala, have fled west to neighboring regions in search of work following the crop failure, said the independent Monitor newspaper. The district is inhabited mostly by the livestock -herding Karamojong tribe, who plant crops once a year to supplement their income. "Karamojong have a single cultivation season, March to September, but did not harvest any food in 1999 after a long drought that ... destroyed the crops," district official Aloysius Aloka told the newspaper. Lack of grazing pastures and increased frequency of cattle rustling, especially between the Karimojong and warrior pastoralist tribes across the border in western Kenya, have further diminished food security in the region, he said. The U.N. World Food Program has begun distributing food to the most vulnerable people in the area, said WFP regional head Burkard Oberle, who described the situation as critical.

Sabiny Eating Leaves
New Vision (Uganda), July 2, 2000

Over nine thousand people are facing starvation in Binyiny sub-county, in Kapchorwa [Uganda]. The LC III chairman Erifazi Cheptoris told state minister for Disaster Preparedness, Jane Frances Kuka, and LC V vice Chairman Sam Ngirio that the starving people now eat bean leaves. "Recently drought struck the sub-county affecting maize, the chief staple food crop. Most crops withered and we are expecting a very poor harvest," Cheptoris said.