When they said “fake it till you make it,” Ugandans took it personally. We can be struggling financially but still behave like we live in Beverly Hills. Now, apparently, we are also expected to cook like we live in Beverly Hills. Uganda needs its trees because we cannot keep cutting forests until the country resembles your homes, a large paved compound with one struggling mango tree. But we need to be serious and realistic while at it.
You cannot tell someone whose entire kitchen budget is 5K to switch to gas, then look surprised when they ask whether the gas comes with the cylinder, the refill and perhaps a small loan from the minister.
In May 2023, the president issued an executive order banning commercial charcoal burning and trade in parts of northern Uganda, West Nile, Karamoja and Teso. The intention was to protect forests and slow environmental destruction.
Three years later, enforcement sparked alarm, and Parliament suspended it, pending a government statement on alternatives.
The question is not whether Uganda should protect its forests. Of course we should. The question is whether we have made it affordable for ordinary Ugandans to stop using charcoal.
According to figures cited in Parliament, between 87 and 94 per cent of households still rely on firewood or charcoal for cooking. You cannot declare charcoal illegal and expect millions of people to suddenly discover that their saucepan has been compatible with electricity all along.
Government has been promoting LPG, electricity, ethanol and biogas, including free gas starter kits but giving someone a free gas cylinder when they cannot afford a refill is like giving a man an empty plate and telling him food is a personal development issue.
Government says mbu smaller refill options are coming, but until they reach the villages and trading centres where people actually cook, the alternatives remain more of a PowerPoint presentation than a practical solution. Even electricity, which we are told to embrace, can disappear halfway through preparing dinner. Imagine your beans are almost ready, Light bounces and you are left negotiating with the darkness.
The irony is that we are often very good at announcing ambitious plans and less impressive at making them affordable. Imagine hiding a sack of charcoal in your house like it is contraband, yet the only crime you were planning was making dinner. That cannot be the meaning of environmental protection.