Contextualising the emergence and impacts of the AIDS epidemic on rural livelihoods and household food security in Masaka, Uganda

Abstract

This chapter introduces the evolution of the study, general introduction and theoretical background to the study, the AID impacts as documented in the literature, problem statement and research questions, conceptual framework, study design and data collection, study area and time frame for the study, description of the methods used, data analysis and outline of the thesis. Evolution of the studyMy interest in the linkages between AIDS, food and nutrition security, and rural development arose in 1998, when I worked as a rural sociologist on the CGIAR system-wide programme on participatory research, gender and stakeholder analysis (PRGA). The International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) Africa and the African Highlands Initiatives World Agro-forestry (ICRAF-AHI) implemented the programme. During this period, I lived in a rural farming community in southwestern Uganda. There, I was often faced with the realities of AIDS-related morbidity and mortality in the communities and I observed that AIDS was a big problem. At the same time, I also realised that there were other problems, such as crop pests and diseases, seasonal droughts and floods, soil degradation, land fragmentation, and many others. All of these had important implications for the welfare and food and nutrition security of households.The problem of AIDS morbidity and mortality in the rural farming communities informed my graduate research work in 2001, which focused on the effects of AIDS on agricultural production and livelihoods (Tumwine, 2004). The major findings of that study suggested that there were growing linkages between poverty, gender inequality, natural resource degradation, and agricultural production, and food, nutrition and livelihood insecurity in the rural farming communities. These constituted a challenge to development policy and practice.As my interest in AIDS and livelihoods developed, I also became increasingly intrigued by the fact that some parts of Uganda faced bigger AIDS-related problems than others. While studies on the impact of AIDS on agriculture and rural livelihoods were accumulating, I felt that such analyses were telling only part of the story, and that the reality was more complex. I felt that the impact of AIDS on rural households, albeit important, needed to be placed in the wider context of the history of the epidemic and the communities it affected. This prompted my interest to look into AIDS more broadly, particularly through exploration of the ecological context. For this thesis, my ambition was to study the complex interactions between historical, political, demographic, socio-economic, cultural and environmental factors in which the AIDS epidemic emerged and spread, and its impacts on household food and

Making institutions viable: a contextualised understanding of bulking in Ugandan food markets

“…And a sole view on economic growth overlooks tensions in other areas. These were several, such as opposition to multi-party politics; the fact that the country was hit hard by the HIV/AIDS epidemic -the main cause of death during the 1990s, with one out of every six adults being HIV positive (Tumwine, 2018); and the ongoing violence in northern Uganda (Hickey, 2013).…”