Jean Saint‐Geours ’11

Jean Saint‐Geours ’11 worked in Kampala, Uganda, with the United Nations World Food Program, the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. Jean worked with local farmers to improve their business and the way they run their finances. He also wrote case studies on the efficiency of the warehouse receipt system and concept notes to help the WFP plan and review its interventions from a business perspective.

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Journal #1

I arrived in Kampala, Uganda on May 30th, 2010. I am interning with the World Food Programme (United Nations).

The World Food Programme (WFP) is the world’s largest humanitarian agency that fights hunger worldwide. It is deemed to serve around 90 million beneficiaries in 73 countries by providing an average of 3.7 million tons of food every year. It aims at both continually responding to food emergencies and helping prevent hunger in a broader way.

As a matter of fact, the operations of WFP in Uganda are organized around three very distinct focus areas designed to address both emergencies and hunger prevention:

• Emergency Humanitarian Action (EHA): deals with assisting the Ugandan government when a crisis occurs that raises life-threatening hunger concerns
• Food Nutrition Security (FNS): seeks to help households manage challenges relating to chronic hunger and micronutrient deficiencies
• Agriculture and Market Support (AMS): supports local agriculture through its local purchases and its Purchase for Progress (P4P) Programme. The programme is intended to improve smallholders’ food security, notably by linking them to quality markets so that they can gain more direct benefit from their produce

I have come to Uganda to join the Agriculture and Market Support team at the World Food Programme. An essential aspect hindering smallholders’ access to quality markets resides in the country’s insufficient market infrastructure for grain. The country lacks agro-processing and storage facilities where smallholders can clean, dry, and then store harvested grain. This situation compels farmers to sell their grain right after harvest, thereby letting others garner most of the added value from subsequently processing the grain and selling it to buyers, such as WFP, interested in international quality grade commodities. The World Food Programme in Uganda is therefore looking into ways to improve the country’s market infrastructure.

My work for WFP in Uganda consists of assessing the feasibility and the modalities of partnerships between WFP and private operators in setting up agro-processing and grain storage facilities all over the country. In order to so, I will draw up business plans for two WFP-operated, agro-processing warehouses and analyze the business models of two private warehouse operators equipped with agro-processing plants. This will entail traveling to different parts of the country.

Consequently, my first few days at work involved going through trainings and traveling to several questionable areas. When I mentioned to the security officer that I would be spending half of my time in the field, he showed me on a map where I would probably go (i.e. where WFP has field offices) and, unsurprisingly, he pointed to all the places where one would not really want to go to. I especially liked his description of Karamoja where the literacy rate does not exceed 15 percent and where the men are prevalently involved in the occupation of raiding cattle. They carry AK-47s and tend to shoot at one another, which in turn contributes to raising the security level of the area to level three, which implies that, should I go there, I would have to wear a helmet and one of those bulletproof vests. The security officer said there is no reason to be alarmed, though. Despite the unruly trade Karamoja people are into, they tend not to harm WFP staff since WFP provides them with food.

Living in Uganda (the "pearl of Africa" according to Winston Churchill) has turned out to be very pleasant. At first, the place seemed as surprising as I had expected it to be. Foreseeing that I couldn’t foresee much of what it would be like was apparently a winning bet. Kampala reminds me in certain ways of Kuala Lumpur, where I worked for two years, with its tropical vegetation, the stifling heat, the left-hand traffic, and the apparent absence of any urban planning whatsoever. Exactly as advertised in my Uganda guidebook, people are very nice and walking around has turned out to be quite safe and hassle-free. Still, traffic is horrendous, and sends pollution through the roof. It feels like I can literally chew the air sometimes. My colleagues are by far my greatest source of satisfaction. So far, they have been so open and welcoming towards me. I hope the rest of my stay will be as promising as the first weeks have suggested it will be.