Osman Guli is a 60-year-old peasant in Uganda’s Luwero district, but all of his children have left for towns and cities in search of better opportunities.
“I still attend to my garden, growing pineapple and bananas, [but] I have no one to help me,” he said.
This is because in most of rural Uganda, it is the elderly who practice agriculture while the young work as motorcycle taxi drivers, locally known as bodaboda.
Bodaboda are bicycles and motorcycle taxis commonly found in the East African country.
The term, which means moving from one place to another in the Luganda language, dates back to the late 1970s and early 80s when bicycles were used to transport smuggled goods from Kenya’s border to the Ugandan border. Motorcycles were later added.
Experts say that with young people shifting from agriculture to bodaboda and other activities, Uganda’s food security is at risk.
Only 30% of the people in the 15-30 age group reported agriculture as their first occupation, according to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics’ last agricultural survey in 2018. More than 50% of the remaining 70% are older than 50.
