By David Rupiny

Once known for its remoteness and underdevelopment, Kalangala District, comprising 84 islands, is now brimming with improved household incomes and opportunities, thanks to the oil palm project launched in 2002.

An initiative of the Government of Uganda, in partnership with IFAD and the World Bank, the oil palm project also includes Wilmar, a global plantation company, through its subsidiaries Oil Palm Uganda Limited and Bidco Uganda Limited.

Under the project, swathes of land were put under oil palm growing by OPUL, which supplies BUL with crude palm oil for the manufacturing of soaps, detergents, edible oil, and other products.

To ensure local content, the project also established a trust – the Registered Trustees of Kalangala Oil Palm Growers’ Trust – running a network of over 2,500 oil palm out-growers, manning seven huge farming blocks. For over two decades, they have been supplying the OPUL palm oil mills in Bwendero on Bugala Island.

In 2018, after registering lots of successes, the government started to wean off the out-growers, and the trust transformed into the Ssese Oil Palm Growers Cooperative Society (SOPGCO), with David Mukasa Balironda as the general manager.

“The area just out of Kalangala Town used to be grassland and forests, but they are now oil palm plantations,” says Mukasa.

According to Mukasa, they created the cooperative society because the government said the out-growers had grown rich and now have the capacity to grow on their own.

“So, they supported us to set up the cooperative, built our capacity to run it through training, tours, fertilizers, and seed capital to keep us doing business,” says Mukasa.

Journey as a cooperative

According to Mukasa, SOPGCO has come of age and is supporting the members with capital, fertilisers, other inputs, and capacity building.

The cooperative runs a savings and credit scheme for the benefit of the members. For every oil palm sale, the cooperative deducts 33 percent, which money is pooled and channeled to the government’s Consolidated Fund.

SOPGCO members are also benefiting from the Agricultural Credit Facility by the Bank of Uganda, through Stanbic and Finance Trust commercial banks.

Money galore

Mukasa says oil palm is flowing money into the local Kalangala economy, revealing that “every month, we pay five billion shillings to farmers”.

He says six years ago, a study found that oil palm production in Kalangala contributed 2.2 trillion shillings to the Ugandan economy annually, with 800 billion shillings going to non-oil palm farmers and other businesses.

The cooperative is commissioning a new study to see how much of the oil palm money is going into the local economy, for both oil palm farmers and non-oil palm farmers.

Expansion and sustainability plans

The general manager, Mukasa, says they are increasingly becoming business-oriented and putting in place sustainable measures.

For example, the cooperative is recruiting new farmers and is expanding its out-grower networks on other islands.

They have embarked on replacing the 25-year-old oil palm trees to ensure a new “generation” of trees and boost productivity.

They have also set up a nursery of 250,000 oil palm seedlings to ensure a steady supply of seedlings to farmers. They brought an oil palm consultant all the way from Cameroon to establish the nursery and transfer skills to local technicians.

“The oil palm nursery is the first of its kind established by Ugandans, and it will ensure a constant supply of seedlings and palm oil for the market,” says Mukasa.

The cooperative is also setting up a petrol station to support oil palm transportation. Mukasa says transportation is key in oil palm production, and sometimes the members don’t have money for fuel, so they decided to set up the pump station.

“Members will be issued fuel cards which they can use, and the money is deducted at the end of the month when they supply oil palm,” says Mukasa. The petrol station will also serve retail customers.

The station has a service bay, a lubricants store, a waiting room, an ATM booth, offices, a boardroom, space for mobile money and bank agents, a shop, a kitchen and restaurant, washrooms, and an entertainment garden.

Role of UIA

Mukasa is full of praise for UIA, noting that from the word go, UIA has been walking the investment journey with them.

“We had a UIA representative on the governing body and another member on the impact monitoring team,” he states. Mukasa says the UIA monitoring and evaluation role has played a pivotal role in keeping them on course.

Great socioeconomic impact

According to Mukasa, oil palm production has contributed significantly to the socioeconomic transformation of Kalangala.

At the household level, there is efficient utilization of family labour, employment, improved incomes, improved education standards, with some families sending children for studies in good schools in Kampala and even abroad, improved health wellness, and improved housing.

“Kalangala used to be the last in education in the country with high failure rates, but now we are on top”, says Mukasa.

“Even our housing has improved. We used to have many people living in shacks, but now we have modern housing with piped water, electricity, and amenities like TV sets and radios”, Mukasa adds.

Mukasa says there is significant financial inclusion and deepening, with all the farmers having bank accounts through which their financial transactions are carried out.

The government has created a network of roads that reaches every oil palm farmer to enable them to receive inputs and take their oil palm to market.

“The fishing communities used to be accessible only by water, but because of oil palm production, roads reach all fishing villages,” notes Mukasa

“What used to be small fishing villages are now towns with roads, electricity, clean water supply,” says Mukasa. “Businesses, schools, churches, and nice houses are popping up everywhere”.

At the district level, notes Mukasa, the road unit is constantly opening up and maintaining roads. He says the district is now served by three ferries that ply at short intervals.

“Can you imagine at the ferry piers we now have a traffic jam because oil palm has brought in modernization and rapid urbanization, and most farmers and others now have cars,” observes Mukasa, smiling ear-to-ear.

At the national level, Mukasa says the oil palm investment was an import substitution strategy to reduce the increasing import bill on edible oils. He says the project has reduced the edible oil import bill by between 15 and 20 percent.

Mukasa concludes thus:

“Oil palm production has improved our wellness and made us happier. It’s very difficult for a broke person to smile, but here in Kalangala, smiles are on many people’s faces. People smile here because the oil palm has put money in their pockets. For us, the farmers, we are now in a middle-income status. If it weren’t for the oil palm project, we would be at zero. Given a second chance, we would still go for oil palm growing”.

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