Learn and Farm: The Peace Dividend in Africa

Slow Food & Network for Africa in Uganda

For most of her life it has been too dangerous for Anna to visit her family’s fields, just four miles from their home. During twenty-three years of war, Anna and her family were confined to a squalid refugee camp in Patongo, in Northern Uganda. Going to cultivate their land would have been to risk kidnap, rape and murder at the hands of the vicious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) who lay in wait for civilians.

As parents were killed, agricultural skills were lost. Now that the LRA has moved elsewhere, a generation of survivors needs to learn from scratch how to grow their own food and rebuild their rural economy.

Network for Africa is working with partners in Patongo to create community vegetable gardens, as part of Slow Food International’s Thousand Gardens in Africa project.  The gardens will provide a source of local, sustainable food in the midst of food shortages & skyrocketing food prices in the country.  Additionally, they will recover & incorporate traditional farming techniques that were largely lost during the war. The community vegetable gardens will serve as a model, inspiring others to ‘learn and farm’.

Last week, representatives from our N4A partner organizations attended a Thousand Gardens in Africa workshop in Kampala, Uganda.  The workshop, which was sponsored by the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity, covered topics that will equip the community leaders to successfully implement the gardens, including:

• Agricultural management
• Education & economic management
• Group dynamics in community gardening

There were representatives from the Patongo Youth Centre, Patongo Counseling Community Outreach, Gwokke Keni, Paorinher Orphanage, and Ribbe Aye Teko.  We will keep you updated on the progress of the vegetable gardens in Patongo.

Slow Food & Network for Africa in Rwanda

Last month, Peace and Jean Paul – the Aspire Project’s CEO and project manager, respectively - met with Edie, the Ugandan Slow Food coordinator.  They discussed Slow Food’s initiatives and talked about the promotion of local, traditional food in Rwanda.  Peace and Jean Paul determined that Aspire will sponsor two demonstration gardens: the first at the Aspire compound in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, and the second in the more rural area of Rutunga, where Aspire is rolling-out a rural version of the successful Aspire project, tailored for the women and families of Rutunga.

Jean Paul also attended the Thousand Gardens workshop in Uganda this weekend.  His presence will mark the first time someone from Rwanda has attended the workshop, and Aspire is Slow Food’s only active partner organization in Rwanda.