From soil to soul: Uganda’s story of land, life, and renewal

I remember spending my childhood in Kamuli, Eastern Uganda, a place filled with the sweet smell of wild mangoes, the buzzing of bees around flowering trees and the happy sounds of children playfully shaking branches to gather fruit.

Those bright memories now seem distant. The fields where we grew many kinds of food are now mostly sugarcane. The fruit trees we used to climb are gone, cut down for wood or replaced by big farms. These farms wear out the soil and don’t feed us well. 

We used to have plenty, but we have lost so much.
I remember spending my childhood in hunger.
This experience became the starting point for my work focusing on sustenance.

The School Food Forest Initiative: Planting hope along with trees

When I helped to launch the School Food Forest Initiative, my intentions were bigger than just planting trees. I wanted to instill hope, respect and a sense of belonging among learners and our community. 

This project was spurred by some fundamental questions: Why were our schools surrounded by barren land? Why do our children no longer have the pleasure of eating fruit straight from the trees? Why is nature gradually vanishing from our learning places? Grounded by these questions, we got to work to make a difference.

Through the School Food Forest Initiative, students from over 11 schools in Namutumba and Kiboga Districts are actively changing dry, dusty schoolyards into vibrant, educational environments. We do this by planting guava, jackfruit, mango and moringa to supply food and shade.We’ve received high enthusiasm from over 500 students participating in these plantings. Many now acknowledge their school food forest as their outdoor classroom, instilling agency in the people who tend to the trees.

This project is about changing the relationship between communities and their land and empowering the local population, especially women and young people, to take responsibility for caring for their environment.

Community: The foundation of the forest

I have come to understand that restoring land requires educating the people connected to it. Students have started weekly Green Clubs to monitor the growth of their trees, experiment with composting and collect rainwater. Teachers are incorporating sustainable farming practices into their lessons. Parents are now volunteering to water the new trees. Mothers, who once simply passed by the schools, are now asking how they can contribute. Even motorcycle taxi drivers are helping to dig holes for the seedlings. It has truly become a community-driven project, where everyone plays a role in caring for our environment.

During a visit to Huuda Islamic Primary School, I met a young girl named Aisha. She proudly showed me her guava tree and told me, “I planted this tree, and it will provide food for my children in the future.” That simple statement had a big impact on me. It reminded me that our work is about creating a lasting legacy.

From Kamuli to Nairobi: Connecting local efforts to the rest of the world

My trip to the 2025 GLF Africa Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, felt like stepping into a larger version of our local story. I met land practitioners from all over Africa. I spoke about our journey, the difficulties we’ve overcome and our progress.

I learned how to create partnerships, involve more people in our work, especially girls and young farmers and connect growing trees with making policy changes. I found out that fixing the land isn’t just about the land. It’s about doing what’s fair. 

The GLF Africa 2025 conference taught me the importance of policies that enable us to connect our environmental work with financial support, gender equality and native knowledge. The assembly gave me a fresh outlook on my work – a reminder that restoration is essential to climate resilience, food independence and the empowerment of rural areas. 

I also had the opportunity to speak at an Action Corner, where I showed the attendees how to graft a mango tree. As I looked at the crowd forming around me, it dawned on me that our small school forests were part of something bigger, a worldwide movement of change at the local level.

Looking ahead: Rooting abundance

We are planning to expand our vision. We are discussing with small-scale farmers about creating community markets to sell produce from the school food forests, and we are linking schools with local cooperatives to turn these food forests into sources of income, all while protecting our environmental values.

I think this is how we can rebuild Uganda – one school, one community, one tree, one story at a time.
Restoring the land means restoring dignity. When I walk through a school and see the shade from the mango trees where there used to be only dust, I can hear children proudly announce, “This is our young forest.” I feel that we’re doing more than just bringing back nature; we’re creating a better future for ourselves.
We aren’t sitting back and waiting for solutions. We are creating them.

We plan to expand our program to include 10 more schools and to explore cost-effective water conservation methods. A key part of our plan involves exploring ways for schools and farmers to collaborate on growing, storing and sustainably profiting from harvests. This is still a new initiative, and we are gaining knowledge as we progress.

Frankly, I am also learning along the way.

For me, rehabilitating the land feels like personal rehabilitation. Each time I kneel with a student to plant a small tree, I feel like I am nurturing the young boy from Kamuli, who wondered why the trees he knew were disappearing. It’s not just about planting; it’s about changing a story of loss into one of renewal. I see my younger self in these students curious, hopeful, and wanting to protect things that are fragile. Together, as roots grow deep, we secure our shared future, showing that even where the land has been damaged, life can come back stronger.

Working with communities who share this vision reminds me that positive change is not just a possibility, it is already in motion. The people driving this change are not waiting for ideal circumstances; they are actively creating them.

I find peace in this work. It is satisfying to see barren schoolyards transform into green spaces and to hear children give trees names as if they were friends. It’s satisfying to know that my story is beginning to establish itself in the land and in the hearts of many.