With increasing food prices, Ugandan parents are finding it cheaper to take their children to boarding schools than buy the food needed to feed them daily. Akullo has only her youngest daughter at home who goes to a day school; the rest are at a boarding school. During holidays, she sends her entire family to Gulu village in northern Uganda.
“They have to go during holidays. It reduces stress on me [having to] think about their daily food. At least in the village, some food items come from the garden. All I need to do is to buy enough sugar, soap, and paraffin for them to go with,” a mother explains. She is not alone - most families are now resorting to the same tactics.

A mother is happy that she remains at home alone during the day when all her children have gone to school where their fees include lunch. That is her comfort. She can have just a cup of tea for lunch and prepare a reasonable dinner for the whole family. Rising food costs forced her to fire her house helper so that she could reduce the number of mouths to feed.
Food prices have been steadily increasing since 2004, when the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) signed a peace pact with the Sudanese government, prompting trade across the border with Sudan. Uganda currently supplies all the needed food items to Southern Sudan (in addition to manufactured goods) since the desert-like climate leaves the region incapable of producing its own food.
Uganda is now feeding an area more than twice its size, while also supplying food items and non-food items to the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and Kenya.
Besides the demand for food, fuel costs have greatly contributed to the increasing food prices. The 2008 World Trade Indicators Study released in June by the World Bank reveals that Kenya is partly to blame for the increasing prices because of delays at the border. “Goods bound for Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi spend on average five days more.”

The World Bank points to other factors in the food crisis like droughts and increased demand for biofuels. It warns, “There is no relief in sight.” The worst part is that of the 36 countries faced with food crisis, 21 of them are in Africa; Kenya, Ghana and Chad are predicted to undergo severe localized food insecurity.
But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The World Bank has assigned $800 million dollars in assistance to Africa for agricultural development under the New Deal for Global Food Policy to combat malnutrition, one of the Millennium Development Goals. The funding will be used to combat adverse weather conditions like droughts, access technology and facilitate land tilling.