Uganda's smart protectionism

Working smarter is no empty slogan; it is the key to modernising African agriculture. An advocate of food self-sufficiency for Uganda, Bukenya wants Ugandans to eat more homegrown rice, thereby boosting local farmers and rice millers while freeing hard cash for higher uses. Bukenya has long promoted a new strain of African rice that grows in uplands (as opposed to wetland paddies) and requires less water.

Embracing the new rice is part of the working-smarter formula. Once rice output began to expand, Bukenya and other Ugandan politicians played another smart card: they lobbied successfully for a 75 percent duty on foreign rice, which stimulated rice production further. Rice output has risen by two and a half times since 2004, according to the Ministry of Trade, to 180,000 metric tons, while consumption of imported rice fell by half from 2004 to 2005 alone.