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President Museveni yesterday rebuked the Speaker of Parliament, Ms Annet Anita Among, regarding a statement she made earlier that the four-acre model —a poverty alleviation pet project—is not ideal for northern Uganda.

“The four-acre model may not be vital in this area because we have only land. All we need to do is mechanisation, provide some funds in societies, create markets for these products, identify the cash crops to be grown in this area to have a participatory approach to what is being done in the area, and have a microcredit scheme by adopting such programmes of local realities in order to achieve meaning change,” Ms Among said during the regional plenary sitting at Kaunda Grounds on the outskirts of Gulu, which the President attended.

Her remarks were an attempt to underscore what had been expressed earlier on Wednesday by the area MPs who are reluctant to embrace the much-vaunted poverty alleviation programme. But President Museveni, who was piqued by her remarks, accused the Speaker of attempting to deviate from a government alleviation project, which could sow confusion.

“I heard the Speaker of Parliament, don’t bring your new confusion by saying that the four-acre model does not apply here, it does. I don’t agree with that line. In this booklet, I made it clear that the four-acre model was a rescue operation for the parts of the country that had already fragmented land,” Mr Museveni said.

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