Mount Elgon Region Research Articles

“There is No Program Without Farmers”: Interactive Radio for Forest Landscape Restoration in Mount Elgon Region, Uganda

ABSTRACTIncrease in ownership and use of radios and mobile phones in Uganda may present opportunities for interactive and efficient agricultural extension services. Yet the impact of interactive radio on rural development has rarely been evaluated. In a participatory project, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature together with Farm Radio International and stakeholders from local government, radio, and community-based organizations promoted the increased use of forest landscape restoration activities though interactive rural radio programs, including innovative methods to reach populations not covered by radio. An evaluation found that 98% of people who listened to most or all of the broadcasts carried out one of the practices, whereas 84% of those who had listened to only one episode had used one of the practices. Inclusion of a wide range of community stakeholders from project inception was vital for presenting the project and embedding it within local institutional contexts.

Coping with landslide risk through preventive resettlement. Designing optimal strategies through choice experiments for the Mount Elgon region, Uganda

Landslides significantly affect rural income-generating activities in the East African highlands. In addition, the livelihoods of the poorest are most likely to be adversely affected. Traditionally, landslide risk is reduced by means of effective planning and management. In many regions, these measures are insufficient to offer a long-term solution because of high population density and land shortage. We use a choice experiment to investigate whether preventive resettlement could be a feasible disaster risk reduction strategy for the population at risk in agricultural areas in Bududa district, East Uganda. Our study provides the first analysis of resettlement-related preferences of people that are affected by environmental degradation. Our results enable us to assess community support for resettlement strategies ex-ante and provide valuable policy advice for future resettlement plans in a very cost-effective manner.

A social networks approach for strengthening participation in technology innovation: lessons learnt from the Mount Elgon region of Kenya and Uganda

Participatory approaches to agricultural technology development have not yet fully lived up to their promise to incorporate farmer knowledge. This paper introduces a social networks approach (SNA) to improve participatory research processes for co-innovation. Drawing upon findings from a collaborative project developing conservation agricultural production systems for smallholders in western Kenya and eastern Uganda, the paper explores farmer support networks to improve participation in technological innovation and development. Key research themes include: identifying farmers’ agricultural production networks; the local articulation of agricultural production networks and mindsets; using networks to facilitate meaningful participation in technology development; and disadvantages and advantages of using a social network approach. The introduction of SNA improved participatory research by building external and internal legitimacy for determining who participates, discouraging participatory attrition, and providing a meaningful forum for participation of all stakeholders. As a result, the introduction of SNA is demonstrated to show strong promise for improving processes of participatory technology development in agriculture.

Climate change and land degradation in Africa: a case study in the Mount Elgon region, Uganda

The aim of this study is to estimate and compare soil erosion, in the Mount Elgon region, eastern Uganda, during the last decade. Possible trends and changes in erosion are linked to precipitation/climate change as well as changes in land cover. Two different versions of the Revised Universal Soil loss Equation (RUSLE) are implemented and compared, one using slope length and the other using flow accumulation to estimate the slope length and steepness factor (LS). Comparisons of the modeled soil erosion vs. field data indicate that RUSLE based on flow accumulation is preferable. The modeling is carried out for the years 2000, 2006, and 2012, and is based on ASTER remotely sensed data, digital elevation models, precipitation data from the study area, as well as existing soil maps. No significant trends in estimated soil erosion are found to be present during the last decade. Over exploitation of land is probably compensated by improved agricultural management and no significant increase in precipitation. Even if there are reports of more intense and increasing amounts of rainfall in the area, this could not be verified, neither through the analysis of climate data, nor by trends in the estimated soil loss.

What makes a good minority Muslim? Educational policy and the paradoxes of Muslim schooling in Uganda

In spring 2011, while conducting research on the situation of Muslims in Mbale, a town located in the Mount Elgon region in Eastern Uganda, I made an observation that attracted my curiosity. Muslims, men and women, whom I asked about their conditions and self-perceptions as Muslims in Uganda would initially assert that no discrimination on religious grounds existed in Uganda. However, as our conversation moved on, they singled out education as a field in which they felt most acutely that mainstream culture, inflected by Christian values and cultural conventions, exerted a heavy pressure toward conformity. At this point, my conversation partners unanimously referred—and this was the point that piqued my curiosity—to former president Yusuf Lule who, following his enrollment at King’s College Budo, an elite school shaped by its missionary legacy, converted to Christianity. Lule’s conversion, it turned out, bears an emblematic significance for many Ugandan Muslims today. It captures their fears of, and actual tendency toward, Muslims’ conversion to Christianity, in a country in which various Protestant denominations have made great inroads in recent years in converting Ugandans (among them, President Museveni’s wife and daughter) to ‘the right way’. Simultaneously, however, Lule’s conversion was remembered by my conversation partners as a turning point in Muslim Cont Islam (2013) 7:53–70 DOI 10.1007/s11562-013-0246-y

Introducing a Transboundary Ecosystem Management Approach in the Mount Elgon Region

Abstract The Mt Elgon ecosystem straddles the international boundary between Kenya and Uganda and is a watershed of international importance, feeding the waters of Lake Victoria, the Nile River system, and Lake Turkana. The core ecosystem in the Mt Elgon area is characterized by large montane forest landscapes; it comprises several protected areas. Adjacent is a vast, heavily populated agricultural landscape supporting up to 2 million people, whose livelihoods and economic activities are largely dependent on the ecosystem goods and services of the highlands. The mountain ecosystem of Mt Elgon is thus vital to the social and economic functioning of the surrounding areas, both in the highlands and in the lowlands. To manage this important ecosystem and sustain the multiple functions and services it offers local people and visitors, there is a need for a regional transboundary ecosystem management approach and strengthened institutional collaboration between all stakeholders concerned at different levels. Th...

Formation of cave salts and utilization by elephants in the Mount Elgon region, Kenya

Abstract Herbivores such as the African elephant receive most of their nutrient uptake through digested vegetation or water. When these nutrient sources do not fulfil dietary requirements, eating and digestion of soil and rock can be a common phenomenon. In the Mount Elgon National Park on the Kenya-Uganda border, elephants have taken this activity one step further. Deposits of calcium-sodium-rich alkaline rocks show evidence of quarrying by elephants on the surface, but most of the activity takes place underground in caves. The Na-Ca-Mg-rich rocks are leached by groundwater which reacts with animal excreta in the humid environment of the cave floor to form a series of secondary carbonate, sulphate, halide, nitrate and phosphate minerals by evaporation. Additionally some salts are precipitated on the cave walls by direct evaporation of the cave waters. Inside the caves, elephants tusk and ingest the salt-enriched rock fragments. In an area like Mount Elgon, where supergene processes leach chemical elements essential for dietary requirements from the surface ecosystem, the secondary salts in the caves are potentially an important mineral supplement for wildlife nutrition. Although elephants are the principal exploiters, other wildlife species and humans (for livestock) also utilize the cave salts and surface diggings.

The secret spirit cult of the Sor in Karamoja

Opening ParagraphOver a period of some fifteen years I carried out ethnographic studies in north-eastern Uganda, firstly of the Kalenjin peoples on and around Mount Elgon, and subsequently of the Sor, a small mountain community of Karamoja.The earlier study formed the basis of a thesis on the Sebei of Mount Elgon and lasted for ten years, during which time I was based near Kampala and made intermittent journeys to spend two to three weeks at a time in different parts of the Mount Elgon and western Kenya region.

Host-plant and insect-pest compensations, and microclimate as drivers for intensity of Toxoptera aurantii (Hemiptera: Aphididae) in Arabica coffee-banana farming system of mount Elgon region, Uganda

Host-plants and insect-pests’ compensational relationships are known to enable plants and insects to survive and adopt to changing environmental conditions. In the mount Elgon region of Uganda, exists a mosaical pattern of different coffee farming systems with increasing altitudes, and their combinations create differing microclimates, which influence host-plant and pest behaviors. The objective of this study was to determine the host-plant and Toxoptera aurantii compensations in Arabica coffee cropping systems of mount Elgon region in Uganda. A two-year study on the coffee leaf biomass, T. aurantii numbers on the leaf surface, and damage intensity of T. aurantii, was conducted using 72 Arabica coffee farms with mixed coffee polycultures (farming systems). Two independent factors were considered; altitude as a major factor and the farming system as the second factor. There was evidence of significant host-plant and insect-pest compensations; host-plant/microclimates, and insect-pest /microclimates. Linear regression analysis revealed a - relationship (number of leaves /branch / T. aurantii numbers). A + relationship (number of leaves / branch infested by T. aurantii / T. aurantii abundance). Also T. aurantii abundance had a + relationship / RH or/ambient temperature). The Arabica coffee leaves/ branch had a – relationship (ambient temperature or/ RH). While the T. aurantii infested leaves /branch only had a + relationship with RH. Regarding the soil variables it was only soil temperature which had a + relationship with the number of leaves /branch. The T. aurantii infested leaves /branch had a + relationship (soil temperature or/soil moisture).