Farmers in Uganda have faced severe challenges due to droughts, which have increased food insecurity for many families. Angela, a 32-year-old Christian, has faced unemployment, domestic abuse, and hunger. Will Angela find a way to break the cycle and overcome the various trials that stand before her family?
Who is Angela?
Angela is a 32-year-old Christian from Uganda. Although she is a farmer by trade, she has experienced hunger first-hand. Angela’s husband didn’t work and became an alcoholic. One night, he came home asking for food. When Angela told him there was none, he got angry and became abusive. When she was pregnant with her fourth child, he left her for another woman.
Angela surveys the unfarmed land that needs so much work.
What are the challenges for Christians in Uganda?
In recent years, unemployment in Uganda has led to gambling, alcoholism and domestic abuse. Men often abandon their wives and children, who are left struggling to feed themselves. Angela’s family has faced all of these problems.
Christians in Uganda are also facing hunger. The staple food in Uganda is a root vegetable called cassava, which is depended upon by almost every family for their daily meals. Cassava takes three years to grow, so is vulnerable to poor weather conditions. The several droughts Uganda has faced over the last couple of years have destroyed the cassava crops. Angela, a farmer by trade, sometimes had to go to bed hungry while she was pregnant.
How did the Church respond to the hunger?
The Church in Uganda felt they had to do something about the lack of food. They tried to grow their own cassava, to reduce the price for congregants. The challenge was that due to the prolonged time cassava takes to grow, if one season was good and the next was bad, the crop would be destroyed. The efforts of the Church and congregation would be wasted, and Christians would still go hungry.
What did Barnabas Aid do to help?
Barnabas Aid works with many churches across Africa. We have been working in Uganda for many years.
The Church contacted Barnabas for help when they heard about a new variety of cassava developed overseas, which took only eight months to grow. Barnabas bought this new variety of cassava and sent it to Uganda, to be grown over the four acres of church land. This was done as part of our Opportunity Africa initiative, where we help struggling Christian communities across Africa to become self-sustainable.
The new variety of cassava was given to members of the church to farm, so they could feed their families and other Christians in the community.Angela was one of the congregants chosen to farm this new crop for her family.
Three months on, her plants are looking healthy. In another five months, she will never need to buy cassava again. She will have grown enough to both feed her family, and sell the leftover crop in the market to make a living. With the money earned, her children can go to school.
Angela and her Christian Pastor are monitoring the growth of the Cassava crop. If the crop is successful it will change their lives.
How is the Barnabas-funded cassava project helping Christians in Uganda?
This project has already helped many families: in the last harvest, Angela’s church grew enough crops and made enough money to help 70 homes in the congregation to buy food. Across Uganda, many churches have seen similar success: in total, the project has helped 800 families escape hunger so far.
Each family that grows the cassava is encouraged to give crops or money to another Christian household, so that more believers can benefit from this food source.
The Church hopes that by 2026, food will no longer be a problem in the region.
Angela's faith in Jesus leaves her hopeful for her family's future.
How can you help suffering Christians in Uganda?
The cassava-growing project is just one of many ways we are helping suffering Christians in Africa through our Opportunity Africa initiative.
Through Opportunity Africa, Barnabas Aid is helping struggling Christian communities in Africa grow in resilience, self-sufficiency and independence. This includes innovative and practical farming support, skills training, provision of materials to kick-start careers, education of children and building homes, as well as helping with essentials such as food and water.
Make a donation to Opportunity Africa
Opportunity Africa is an ongoing, long-term project, and we hope it can help many more Christians like Angela obtain food and income so they can thrive. This is only possible with the help of our supporters. Please consider giving to Opportunity Africa, using project reference code PR1700 on our donations page.
Donate now
Pray with us
We invite you to join us in prayer for Angela and the other suffering Christians in Uganda. Here are some prayer points you may wish to bring before the Lord:
- We thank the Lord for Angela’s continued faith and resilience through her struggles.
- We pray that Angela’s family will always have enough to eat, and that her children will receive all the education they need to secure bright futures.
- We praise God for the success of the cassava project until now, and ask Him that this success will continue until all the Christians in Uganda have enough to eat.
- We pray for an end to the drought in Uganda, and ask the Lord to protect all of His people who are affected by natural disasters and extreme weather phenomena.
- We ask that Opportunity Africa will be a success: that many Christians in Africa who have been suffering will gain the means to build for themselves a better future.
