Uganda is chronically reminded that Karamoja, which suffers from the paradox of plenty, is hungry. It is this season of the year, when images of haggard, malnourished children beam across our television screens as humanitarian agencies and government launch emergency appeals. Food trucks snake across the red-rutted paths of the poorest sub-region to reach multitudes of starving Karimojong. Once the patient is resuscitated and the famine peters out, the subject of food security and sustainability in Karamoja is pushed to the back-burners.
According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Acute Food Insecurity Analysis (April–July 2026), about 473,000 people—nearly one in every three people in Karamoja—are experiencing a crisis or emergency levels of acute food insecurity, including more than 41,000 people in emergency (IPC Phase 4). Every district in the sub-region is classified at least in crisis. The report points to a combination of climatic shocks, declining crop and livestock production, rising food prices, pests and diseases, and persistent insecurity.
This is not on the premise that nothing has been done. Over the years, the Government of Uganda, together with development partners, has invested substantially in humanitarian response and resilience-building. Through its country strategic plan, the World Food Programme (WFP) supports school feeding in 320 primary schools while investing in locally procured food, school gardens and climate-resilient livelihoods. These interventions deserve recognition.
Yet if so much has been invested, why does hunger continue to cast a pall on Karamoja? Perhaps the answer lies in the way we frame the problem.
For decades, our response has focused on food security, ensuring that people have enough food to eat. That is essential. But If we know that droughts and climate shocks will continue, why do we continue to respond as though every crisis is unexpected? A rights-based approach demands preparedness through strategic food reserves, effective early warning systems, and investments that enable communities to withstand shocks before they become emergencies.
While food security largely tells us what is happening. The right to food goes a step further by asking why people cannot consistently feed themselves and what governments and other duty bearers must do to change that.
A right to food approach recognises that hunger is not simply the result of drought. It reflects deeper challenges: insecure access to land and natural resources, fragile livelihoods, weak markets, climate shocks, poverty and unequal investment. Unless these structural barriers are addressed, emergency food assistance will continue to treat the consequences of hunger rather than its causes.
Uganda has already committed itself to ending hunger through national policies and international human rights obligations. The challenge now is to translate those commitments into lasting change by investing in resilient food systems, protecting access to productive resources, strengthening social protection, supporting pastoral livelihoods and ensuring that communities participate meaningfully in decisions that affect their future.
Food aid will always be necessary when lives are at risk. But should any Ugandan community still depend on emergency relief generation after generation?
Karamoja, which is perhaps the richest sub-region in terms of mineral wealth, deserves the opportunity to thrive.
That is why the conversation must move beyond food security and towards the Right to Food. The real question is no longer “How much food should we deliver to Karamoja?” It is “What must we do to ensure that every person in Karamoja can permanently realise their right to adequate food?”
Bringing to an end hunger in Karamoja requires moving beyond emergency relief and rhetoric. It requires building robust structural systems that address the underlying causes of chronic food insecurity such as investing in climate-resilient agriculture that priorities drought-tolerant crops, irrigation and the expansion of water infrastructure, among others.
Janerose Nansubuga is the Programme Officer, Fian Uganda