Future growth

“The climate has been disturbing me over a long period of time. Sometimes, when I do tomato growing, the sunshine comes and wipes out everything.

“So I have been thinking, ‘How can I use the water available?’ Because sometimes, even during rainy season when I plant crops here, the flooding comes and also does away with my crops. During dry season, it’s the opposite. So I thought: ‘Let me use the water that disturbed me during rainy season… the same water that I use for feeding the fish, I will be irrigating the crops with during dry season.”

All of this information is delivered rapid-fire by a man in a high-vis vest, as he strides purposefully from fishponds to chicken coop to vegetable garden. Meet Denis: father, husband, businessman, organic farming evangelist, and a successful graduate of Anyim Maber, a Sightsavers-supported entrepreneur training and empowerment project in northern Uganda.

Throughout his life, Denis has found a way to turn challenges into opportunities. But ‘challenges’ doesn’t come close to accurately describing some of the experiences he’s lived through. As a 15 year old, Denis was abducted during the northern Ugandan conflict and didn’t return home for two years, during which time he was hit by gunfire that left him with a lifelong leg injury.

When he was rescued and returned to his family, they told him he couldn’t go back to school, because they didn’t see any viable future career for him given his disability.

“That day I cried for almost the whole day. I could not eat… Because I believed that I was brilliant, I was capable of going back to school. I felt that I spent two years in the bush, but I can still go back to school and I can learn.”

A relative stepped up to contribute money for school fees so that Denis could go back to school. He was doing well in his classes, but struggling financially, which forced him to get creative.

“I started looking at farming as an opportunity, because the land at school was there. So I started growing vegetables and the school started buying onions and tomatoes from me,” he explains. “I became inspired with the money that I was getting from agriculture.”

After completing a certificate in agriculture, Denis never looked back. He began farming as a serious career, and found he had a talent not only for growing crops, but also for leadership. He started taking on interns and apprentices, and to date has trained a whopping 400 people, including 20 young people with disabilities. His family (he has a wife and five children) also help on his farm.

The Anyim Maber project helped Denis take his business to the next level, providing entrepreneur training to grow his skills in accountancy, bookkeeping and financial access. From this he successfully applied for a loan, and he has a five-year plan for his business to grow into an agritourism attraction.

Over time, Denis has become increasingly concerned about the impact of climate change. He’s designed his farm to address its challenges and practices climate-smart agriculture, a holistic approach that addresses the link between food security, climate change and sustainable development. As well as his clever use of the fishpond runoff to irrigate his crops in the dry season, he’s working on other innovations.

“I look at the predators, the wild animals around the farm – they’re very useful in terms of pest control. I look at the benefit of the waste: we want to begin rearing black soldier flies. The black soldier fly helps to feed the chickens, the pigs and the fish. The waste from the flies is purely organic, so the manure can also be used for growing vegetables along with the wastewater from the farm. The poultry waste I use to fertilise the ponds.”

“The colour of the water turns green, which means it will provide phytoplankton – those living things that emerge under the water. The fish will feed on the phytoplankton. And the phytoplankton are a living organism. They respire, and they provide oxygen that cleans the water. So that is the thinking. We call it climate-smart agriculture, but you need to be very innovative to overcome the challenges.”

Denis is dedicated to passing on all this knowledge to the young people he trains. “The most important thing is the skills: how to grow vegetables in term of disease control, pest control; and then the management, the variety selection… And then the other aspect is to inspire them that farming, it is a business. Many people here in northern Uganda, they see it as a traditional thing… They have not been looking at farming as a business. I sit down with them, I show the cost of production… and the profitability analysis of eggplant and tomatoes: which one is more marketable; which one attracts more revenue.”

As if all of this wasn’t enough to keep him busy, Denis somehow finds time to act as chair of the Nwoya district union for people with disabilities, leading 11 members of the board to conduct disability advocacy campaigns.

“Every year we target, we select the advocacy issues. If the advocacy is about the land, we make sure that we succeed. And if the advocacy is about taking children to school, we make sure that we succeed. If the advocacy is about increasing food security in the household of persons with disabilities, we do all this together with the partners and with the local government to ensure that we succeed.”