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President Museveni has challenged cabinet ministers to help him preach the wealth creation gospel to Ugandans as he has been doing for many years.
Speaking during a meeting where he led ministers to guided tours to model farms in Ssembabule and Gomba districts on Friday, the president said he started the gospel of wealth creation in the 1960s.“We started this drive as a student movement but the cattle keepers were big problem. They were nomadic and were outside the money economy. In 1966 we started our mass mobilization and people were changing to go from nomadism. Unfortunately, Amin came in and we were interfered with a bit and we had now to fight up to 1986,” Museveni said.
He said whereas he together with his group had diverted efforts towards fighting Idi Amin and the subsequent governments, some cattle keepers had got his message of wealth creation and were practicing it.
“When we came in 1986, we found the cattle keepers had settled down but hadn’t gone to level of commercial farming and with calculation. When we came from the bush, we told these people in the cattle corridor to start commercial farming. It would help them get money from whatever they were doing but with calculation.”
The president said many of those rearing cattle wanted to do ranching which he said was profitable but when being done on a large scale.According to Museveni, many of those with cows didn’t have these large pieces of land to carry out ranching.
“We therefore we had to do calculation for them. We realized it was only dairy farming that would give those in the cattle corridor enough money. They had a confusion to try to be ranchers and ranching can give you good money but you need a large piece of land. In order to get good money out of ranching you must have at least 100 cows which means over square miles in the old way of pasture development. Many didn’t have that amount of land. We said they should do dairy farming.”The president said in a bid to make his gospel effective, he sent officials from National Agricultural Advisory Services(NAADS) to teach locals what to do and within no time, many had become rich.
A good neighbour
Museveni said he spread this gospel of wealth creation to his neighbors in Gomba and Ssembabule districts.The president said these were assisted to grow coffee, bananas and dairy cows, adding that he is happy many have implemented his message and have got out of poverty.He asked the ministers and members of the NRM Central Executive Committee to ensure they assist people in their various localities get out of poverty.