The Climate, Soil, and Crops of Karamoja...

• Moroto town (Moroto District)
• Mount Moroto (Moroto District)
• Kaabong (Kotido District)

Link to The Food and Agriculture Organization's
most recent update on the crop conditions for Uganda/Karamoja.

The information below is excerpted from:
Farming Systems in the African Savanna,
A Continent in Crisis
by Andrew Ker
(Copyright 1997 © International Development Research Centre,
Ottawa, Canada pub@idrc.ca / 24 April 1997)

ORDER: IDRC 1995, 176 pp., ISBN 0-88936-793-0, $20

Karamoja's dry season

The subarid savanna zone (Fig. 18) extends from Dakar to include much of central Senegal, central Mali, southern Burkina Faso and Niger, most of northern Nigeria, and central Chad. In Sudan, it widens to include a large area of the central rainlands, and some of the irrigation schemes on the Blue Nile. A large area in the north and part of the Rift Valley south of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, the Karamoja District of northeast Uganda, together with a limited area in the Kenyan Rift Valley and to the east of Nairobi, and part of central Tanzania are included. Most of western Zimbabwe and part of southern Zambia and southern Angola are also in this zone.

The predominant upland soils in this zone are alfisols, but there is considerable local variation, including dune sands in parts of West Africa, vertisols around Lake Chad and in Ethiopia, Somalia, and the Sudan, and oxisols and entisols in southern Africa (see Fig. 5).

The vegetation in much of this zone consists of mixed combretaceous and Acacia tree savanna, with Faidherbia albida and Hyphaene thebiaca as indicator species. These species, as well as Parkia spp., are protected and used for browse. Mango is planted where ground water is not too deep. Grasses include Cenchrus ciliaris, C. biflorus, Eragrostis tremula, and Pennisetum pedicillatum (Okigbo 1986, p. 98).

This is an important zone agriculturally, with heavy concentrations of population throughout much of both western and eastern Africa. In this zone, the millet system described in Chapter 5 is found on the lighter soils, but sorghum is the dominant crop on the heavier soils, with maize becoming increasingly important, particularly in eastern and southern Africa. Cowpeas, groundnuts, and cotton are also grown. Many cultivators own cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys, and horses.

Traditionally, like the Somalis, the Masai, and other pastoral peoples, the Karamojong were transhumant pastoralists. As elsewhere, the increasing human population has necessitated keeping a number of animals that exceeds the carrying capacity of the pasture under the unrestricted grazing system. This led to severe denudation of the cover of palatable grasses and other vegetation, leaving bare soil that became seriously eroded. Inedible xerophytic plants, such as Sansevieria sp. and thorn-bush, spread into some of these areas further limiting the potential grazing land.

One of the valuable series of catchment research projects started by the now-defunct East African Agricultural and Forestry Research Organisation (EAAFRO) in the 1950s was established at Atumatak near Moroto, which has a mean annual rainfall of 753 mm (Pereira et al. 1962; Blackie et al. 1979). The project collected useful data on land and water management in that area, and showed clearly that the livestock-carrying capacity of the land could be increased by some simple grazing-management practices that maintained a cover of indigenous grasses on the land. This ground cover had the effect of reducing the runoff, which was found to amount to about 14% on overgrazed bare soil, to about 7% or less under improved grazing management (Blackie et al. 1979, p. 185).

(Copyright 1997 © International Development Research Centre,
Ottawa, Canada pub@idrc.ca / 24 April 1997)