Part of The New Forests Company’s corporate social responsibility programme; construction of schools in the plantation’s environs.
…and inside a classroom at the school. (Photos: The New Forests Company)
this year, NFC will have planted 9,400 hectares of this target. The company is looking for large tracks of land all over the country to meet this target. In Uganda currently, NFC’s plantations are in Namwasa in Mubende, Luwunga in Kiboga and Kirinya in Bujiri. NFC would be interested in exploring land in northern Uganda but has decided to delay this expansion due to the communal land tenure system in use in the area. Trees are a long-term investment. Some tree investors are discouraged by the long periods required before an investor records revenues, not to mention a profit. The New Forests Company, in a bid to generate early revenue as well as add value to its products, commissioned a pole treatment plant in Mityana District in April 2010. The plant, with a capacity to treat 120,000 poles annually, will reduce the cost of importing poles from South Africa or as far as Paraguay, thus reducing the cost of rural electrification, as well as generate much needed revenues to finance the running of the company. This is apart from creating employment, among other benefits. On the social responsibility front, The New
Miti July-September 2010
Forests Company has made big leaps already. The company has built a secondary school, Forest High School, constructed six primary school double classroom blocks and supplied more than 150 desks. Surely, the communities around the NFC plantations have reason to smile. NFC fully understands the concept that a healthy mind lives in a healthy body. Therefore, peer education, health fairs, HIV/ Aids counselling and testing are provided to ensure that the beneficiaries fully optimise the education offered. NFC is also currently constructing private clinics on its plantations for its workers to receive quality health care services to improve productivity, morale and retention. NFC also subsidises seedlings for the communities, provides technical advice to the out-growers and guarantees them competitive markets for their products, to ensure improved livelihoods in the surrounding communities. The company will also begin a bee-keeping programme in August as another way to help farmers in the neighbourhood of the plantations. Now, NFC has constructed 135 kilometres of forest roads to improve transport and ease of access
across the plantations. On top of all that, over 1,380 jobs have been created in Uganda alone. In every plantation, NFC has set aside conservation zone where the area’s flora and fauna is conserved. Each of these conservation areas has a conservation plan, which is readily available on the NFC website. In badly degraded natural forests, NFC has done enrichment planting in the company’s conservation areas. Indigenous species such as musizi (Maesopsis eminii), mvule (Milicia excelsa), indigenous fig and indigenous yellow wood, among others, are planted to counter the possible effects of their foreign commercial species. However, industry standards are increasingly moving away from enrichment planting in conservation areas and instead promoting natural regeneration. In May 2009, NFC received the Forest Stewardship Council Certification on two of its three plantations in Uganda, an important indicator of the sustainable way in which NFC deploys its resources. However, like any good cause, challenges exist. The major one experienced in the last one year has been illegal encroachment on the Central Forest Reserves that NFC was licensed to plant. According to unverified information, encroachment currently stands at 800,000 in the 506 forest reserves nationwide. Although the Namwasa plantation has eradicated encroachers, some illegal cultivation continues in unplanted areas of the Luwunga plantation. NFA has made significant progress in dealing with encroachment in the last year, and looks forward to using the voluntary vacation processes at Namwasa and Luwunga as a model for dealing with encroachment in other areas around the country. Another challenge identified by Ms Bates is opportunists who extort money from the encroachers, promising to get them legally settled. This is a heart-breaking story. Instead of using the money to move off the land and establish themselves elsewhere, encroachers end up paying these instigators and then have to move off the land subsequently when the relevant authorities like NFA become involved. NFC co-operates with other forest entities such as the Sawlog Production Grant Scheme (SPGS). The latter offers NFC technical advice as well as funding on some of the plantations. NFC is also working with SPGS to uplift its commercial out-grower programme. The writer is the Miti Editorial Coordinator, Uganda. Email: joshua@mitiafrica.com
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