A heavy duty tractor preparing a farm to plant seed canes at Atiak Sugar Factory. Photos by Arnest Tumwesige
By Arnest Tumwesige
Amuru: When Florence Akello heard she would be given five acres of sugarcane under the Atiak Sugar Out-growers Cooperative Society, she pictured a life where poverty no longer stalked her family.
Government had promised full support from planting to harvest for out-growers. Today, Akello, a 38-year-old former Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) returnee, calls that promise “empty.”
“I started seeing myself living a better life as government had promised us. Instead the plan brought more psychological stress to me,” she told GNNA, still in disbelief.
Her unanswered questions linger: did government have the goodwill and do its best or did cooperative managers derail the initiative?
Akello is one of roughly 2,000 people registered with the Atiak Sugar Out-growers Cooperative Society as early as 2016 to grow cane for the Atiak Sugar Factory in Atiak Sub-county, Amuru District.
The idea targeted vulnerable groups many of them women who returned from LRA captivity along with persons living with HIV and those with physical impairments. Members were drawn from Amuru, Gulu, and Lamwo districts.
Through the then National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS), government invested in the production process: funding land opening, seed cane procurement, planting, weeding, and harvesting.
The strategy began in 2016; by August 2019, government had entered a memorandum of understanding with Horyal Investment Holding Company Ltd (owner of Atiak Sugar Factory), the cooperative, and the respective local governments.
One woman’s burden, shared by many
Returning from captivity with three children and producing two more, Akello never managed to locate her ancestral home. Worst of all, she had left the husband with the LRA in captivity making it hard to trace his home.
“The most painful thing is my children are at home without studying. Secondly, I don’t have money to pay rent on time and as such my house is always locked,” said Akello, who runs a fruit stall at Gulu Main Market.
With working capital of about UGX 150,000, the mother of five, who lives in Cubu Ward, Laroo-Pece Division, Gulu City, believes her situation would be different if the five-year support had been applied properly and sustainably.
In August last year, with support from Women Advocacy Network (WAN), she underwent surgery at Gulu Regional Referral Hospital to remove a bullet from her left leg yet above all, a splinter remains lodged in her head, causing recurring pain.
Akello says she was promised about UGX 20 million annually from cane sales to the factory and expected to be paid for her labor during cultivation. Brenda Ayot, 40, of For God Ward, Bardege-Layibi Division, shared those hopes only to see them collapse after nearly three months of work without pay.
Mobilization and labor
Ayot and Akello say they were mobilized in Gulu City by cooperative administrators for what was described as a life-changing plan. They submitted photocopies of their amnesty certificates and Identity cards as requirements.
To allay fears, cooperative chairperson Joyce Laker took them and others to Atiak to confirm the land’s existence. They then began work as casual laborers.
“I personally went to plant canes. Due to the hard work and inhumane treatment, some women experienced miscarriages, and since we were coming back late at 8 p.m., others skipped taking their anti-retroviral drugs,” Akello said.
LRA victims undertake own verification
To ensure rightful members were paid, NAADS in 2019 asked the cooperative to submit lists for verification a process that stalled. Under pressure from leaders in Amuru and Gulu, verification began in August 2020. Even after that, payments did not follow as beneficiaries mostly LRA war victims had anticipated.
A section of victims then renewed demands for payment through Martin Ojara Mapenduzi, MP for Bardege-Layibi Division, Gulu City. NAADS and Horyal later agreed to extract names of LRA victims from a larger file of over 2,000 people.
The file was handed to Stella Lanam, executive director of Women Advocacy Network, to conduct screening in Amuru, Gulu, and Lamwo. She found 1,250 victims, some allocated three to five acres.
Lanam, also a cooperative member, said Laker received over UGX 1 billion “for the victims,” which she says was divided among a few people. Without a clear plan to pay those owed and with each victim having been promised UGX 20 million per year Lanam warned that rising bitterness must be addressed if the project is to succeed.
Fire outbreaks spark shift in gears
Commissioned by President Yoweri Museveni in 2020, the factory suffered severe setbacks when fire destroyed 3,000 acres of mature cane.
With limited access to raw materials, Horyal’s director decided to suspend operations in May 2022 and the shutdown has continued to date.
With support from Uganda Development Corporation which owns over 40% shares, the factory then shifted to intensive sugarcane farming, adopting about 85% mechanization to grow its own cane year-round, using pivot-center irrigation in the dry season.
The money questions and the defense
Cooperative chairperson Santa Joyce Laker maintains the cooperative’s vision was to put money into community hands an aim she insists has not been achieved.
Given the beneficiaries’ circumstances, she said, it was impractical to open large acreages with hand hoes; relying on Horyal to open land was, to her, a chance to secure working capital for each member to meet their goals after five years.
Asked if money had been sent by Horyal to pay members for labor and seed cane, Laker denied knowledge. In an August 2019 NTV interview, NAADS Executive Director Samuel Mugasa said government had injected roughly UGX 20 billion into opening the out-growers’ farms through Horyal.
But how much Horyal remitted to pay for labor and seeds remains unclear. When GNNA asked Laker to disclose the sum received from Horyal, she said she had forgotten.
Attempts to reach Mohamoud Ahmed, Horyal’s Director of Planning and Investment, were unsuccessful. Lucy Acii, the factory’s media director, also could not state how much was sent to the cooperative. A source in the Internal Security Organization (ISO) in Acholi Sub-region said between UGX 1 and 3.3 billion was released by Horyal to the cooperative to 180 members who took lions share.
“We did not receive any physical cash; I was only asked to submit a list of my members for payment to Horyal,” Laker emphasized. She said persistent allegations particularly from LRA victims that she embezzled money intended for beneficiaries have tarnished her name.
“…right now, my name is so tarnished… I just want to lie low and do what I can. The way out for the Co-operative is I’m trying to look for resources and see how government can compensate the members and we start afresh,” she told GNNA.
Of roughly 2,000 names submitted for payment, only 180 who were fully registered were paid, Laker said. She acknowledged that only a handful of those paid were LRA victims because many had not fully paid up their membership.
To qualify as members, individuals had to pay a UGX 50,000 membership fee and a UGX 30,000 annual subscription amounts many could not afford.
While government aimed to improve livelihoods, the inability of intended beneficiaries to meet this requirements hindered the plan from the outset.
After Horyal paid the fully registered members, Laker said the rest of the money was converted to cover membership and annual subscriptions for remaining members a prerequisite they had not fulfilled under Uganda’s Cooperative Societies guidelines.
Laker regretted that many intended beneficiaries were returnee’s already carrying trauma stress that the cooperative inadvertently compounded.
“We gave them hope and it didn’t work out,” she said. Seeking to “settle the dust,” Laker said she wrote to the Ministry of Trade last year requesting compensation following the fire outbreaks. Another request was made about a month ago and copied to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Trade, and the Executive Director of Uganda Development Corporation (UDC), which holds over 40% of the factory’s shares.
“I am now following it personally, I need to clean up my name. Media got involved, so I need to clean up my name,” Laker said. She declined to let GNNA view the letter directly, opting instead to read it verbatim.
“Amorphous” cooperative, weak governance
“To form a cooperative, it must be formed within a domicile. But here, they formed a cooperative for the whole people who want to become members of Atiak Sugar Out-growers Cooperative Society. So it became a very amorphous organization,” said Kenneth Oketa, former Gulu District Commercial Officer.
He said the cooperative functioned more like an association: members were not trained, many did not pay for membership, and they lacked knowledge of their obligations and rules.
Section 16 of the Cooperative Societies Act (2022 as amended) states that no member of a registered society can exercise membership rights until payment is made to the society.
As a result, members looked to leaders to “bring them help” rather than building the cooperative by exercising full rights. Still, Oketa said all is not lost: members could re-organize and produce their own cane for sale to Horyal or other factories.
A new 4-acre neighborhood model
After Horyal abandoned the out-grower cooperative model of supplying raw materials, the company shifted focus to regroup families around the factory for a re-strategized support system for a four-model acre farm as championed by the government.
About two years into the shift, Bunty Seeruttun, Director of Agriculture at Atiak Sugar Factory, said the factory is surrounded by eight families; each will be allocated four acres, totaling 32 acres.
“The bigger the farm, the more efficient you are in terms of machine use and production,” he said. “We want to help them bush-clear their land, set up the garden, do the plantation, set the irrigation scheme, and we’re going to be able to bring a solar system for electricity and houses.”
A quick neighborhood survey, Bunty said, suggested most families use only about 10% of their idle land acreage which the the company hopes to bring into production up to 90%.
Oketa cautioned that because some members of the cooperative live as far away as Gulu, they may struggle to benefit from this model without deliberate engagement.
Ministry promises assessment and possible support
Following Horyal’s cutoff of ties with out-growers, the Ministry of Trade pledged consultative engagements to determine members’ priorities.
“The Ministry will come on the ground to assess the situation and establish what the members are up to, then an action will be taken accordingly. The kind of support is going to be in line with value addition for what the cooperative is already engaged in,” said David Kiiza, Industrial Officer, Ministry of Tourism, Trade and Industry.
Kiiza added that some members may no longer wish to remain in the cooperative something the Ministry expects to clarify by early March 2026 through an assessment.
For now, the cooperative has about 160 active members involved in rice threshing and bulking, and in processing shea butter into various products.
This story was produced with support from the African Centre for Media Excellence (ACME) under the Media Support for Public Accountability and Civic Engagement (M-SPACE) project.
