Rogers M. Wanambwa

Reflections on Green Action Week 2025: Indigenous Wisdom, Shared Futures

some of the indigenous grain species: millet, maize, gnuts

By Rogers M. Wanambwa

As the curtain falls on Green Action Week 2025, I find myself reflecting not only on the activities we’ve just wrapped up, but on the deeper lessons that surfaced along the way. Together with my colleague Racheal and the dedicated team at Participatory Ecological Land UM Uganda, I had the privilege of coordinating an online campaign designed to amplify stories, practices and wisdom shared during the week.

It was a journey that stretched across communities and platforms, drawing out voices that often remain unheard. And in those voices, I heard a truth worth repeating: sustainability in Uganda is not imported. It is lived, inherited and practiced in the rhythms of everyday life.

Lessons Rooted in the Soil

The campaign highlighted indigenous seeds, community-led innovations and cultural performances that spoke volumes. These were not museum relics or quaint traditions. They were living, breathing solutions to some of today’s most urgent challenges: climate change, biodiversity loss and food insecurity.

From Nebbi to Mbale, the message was clear:

Indigenous species are irreplaceable. They carry resilience, nutrition and cultural memory in every grain, root and leaf. To preserve them is to safeguard identity and secure a food system capable of withstanding future shocks.

Culture is more than expression, it is instruction. The dances, songs and rituals shared during the week were not just entertainment. They carried coded wisdom about coexistence, balance and respect for nature.

Community is the engine of transformation. Policies and programs are important, but they only take root when people themselves mobilize. Green Action Week reminded us that when communities are connected, whether in a rural gathering in Nebbi or on a digital platform, they can spark change no policy alone can achieve.

Stories That Stay With Me

One performance I will not forget came from a group of young people who blended traditional drumming with spoken word poetry. Their message was simple: “To forget our seeds is to forget ourselves.” It was art, yes, but it was also advocacy in its purest form, reminding us that heritage and sustainability are inseparable.

Elsewhere, farmers shared stories of how they had revived indigenous seed varieties thought to be lost. Their testimonies were practical and hopeful: yields that withstood erratic rains, diets enriched by traditional grains, and a renewed sense of pride in local knowledge.

These moments underscored something I’ve always believed but saw more clearly this week: sustainability is not an abstract framework. It is a lived reality, woven into culture, memory and survival.

A Communicator’s Responsibility

As communicators, Racheal and I felt privileged to help bridge these stories to wider audiences. We watched them travel, across timelines, feeds and digital spaces, where they sparked dialogue far beyond the week’s events.

Yet amplification is only the beginning. The larger responsibility is to keep the conversation alive, long after hashtags stop trending, long after the week’s campaign is archived. The challenge is to translate these insights into enduring practice, into choices and policies that respect indigenous wisdom while embracing modern action.

Closing Reflections

If I were to distill Green Action Week 2025 into a single truth, it would be this: a happy, healthy people cannot exist apart from a thriving, balanced ecosystem.

This year’s campaign reminded us that the future we want is already seeded in the wisdom of our communities. Our task is to nurture it, to amplify it, and to ensure it guides how we imagine and build sustainable futures together.

Here’s to keeping the drumbeat of sustainability alive, rooted in culture, shared by community, and carried forward by all of us.

Field Notes from Bugisu and Sebei: Reflections on the 9th Annual National Land Awareness Week

By Rogers M. Wanambwa

Toward the end of August, I found myself in the eastern highlands of Uganda, tracing winding roads through Mbale City, Manafwa, Bududa, Bulambuli, Sironko, Kapchorwa and Kween. This wasn’t just another work trip; it was part of the 9th Annual National Land Awareness Week, a nationwide campaign convened under the theme: “Promoting Land Rights and Sustainable Land Use for Inclusive and Sustainable Development.”

Land in Uganda has always been more than soil, more than property lines. It carries memory, identity and survival. In Bugisu and Sebei, that reality was present in every dialogue, every legal aid session, every testimony.

Numbers that Tell a Story

Over the course of the week, the work stretched across seven districts. In practical terms, this meant:

– 28 community dialogues and legal aid clinics, engaging more than 2,130 people.
– 317 individuals receiving free legal aid on disputes ranging from succession and trespass to physical planning conflicts.
– 13 radio talk shows that carried the conversations beyond meeting halls and into people’s homes.

Beyond the Statistics: The Human Realities

In Bulambuli, communities spoke with unease about the presence of cement works and the long shadows they cast on land ownership and use. In Kapchorwa and Kween, boundary disputes were more than quarrels over where a hedge or marker stone stood, they were battles tied to inheritance, livelihoods and dignity.

In Mbale, frustrations centered on bureaucracy and the high cost of legal services, which for many residents remain inaccessible luxuries. And across both subregions, a chorus of grievances kept repeating: corruption, sluggish justice systems, and entrenched cultural norms that continue to deny women equal rights to land.

These are not abstract “land issues.” They are lived struggles shaping whether a family eats, whether a widow can keep her home, whether a community feels safe on the land it tills.

Calls from the Ground

The people of Bugisu and Sebei were not silent victims. They came forward with practical, urgent demands:

1. Fast-track the Legal Aid Bill and the Marriage Bill (2022).
2. Decentralize land services to make them accessible at community level.
3. Regulate the spiraling costs of land-related fees.
4. Demilitarize land disputes that too often turn violent.
5. Hold corrupt officials and power brokers accountable.

These recommendations are not policy documents drafted in air-conditioned offices; they are rooted in lived reality, in the frustrations and hopes of people who have everything to lose when land governance fails.

Land as Memory and Identity

As the week wound down, I couldn’t escape one truth: land is never just land. It is memory carried through generations. It is identity passed down in songs, stories and rituals. It is heritage that anchors communities in place.

To govern land justly is to respect people’s dignity. To fail at it is to erode the very fabric of community.

Leaving Bugisu and Sebei, I carried not only the statistics and reports but the faces and voices of those who spoke out. Their stories remain with me as a responsibility, one that demands amplification until those voices are not just heard but acted upon.

Final Reflections

The 9th Annual Land Awareness Week was a reminder that progress must be measured not only in the number of dialogues held or cases filed, but in whether people’s dignity is safeguarded. Uganda’s development trajectory cannot ignore the realities in Bugisu, Sebei, and beyond.

Land rights are human rights. And unless the struggles of these communities find resolution in fair laws, accountable systems and cultural shifts that embrace equality, development will remain an empty promise.

As I left the slopes of Mount Elgon behind, I knew this wasn’t an ending. It was another chapter in a much longer story, a call to keep bearing witness, and to keep reminding our country that justice on the land is justice in life itself.

Field Notes From West Nile: Stories of Struggle and Transformation

Interviewing a South Sudanese POC in Bidibidi Settlement, Yumbe District

By Rogers M. Wanambwa

In August this year, I traveled across Uganda’s West Nile region, moving from Arua District to the Omugo Extension Basecamp in Terego District’s Rhino Camp, from Koboko and Maracha Districts through Yumbe District’s vast Bidibidi Settlement, and from Moyo District into Adjumani District. My task was simple on paper: document the implementation of the SASA! approach under UGANET’s LEAP Project, funded by UN Women.

But nothing about West Nile is ever simple.

It’s one thing to write about refugee struggles from behind a desk. It’s quite another to stand inside a 25-by-25-foot plot, the entire living space for a refugee family, and wrestle with the reality of survival in a world where 80 percent of Uganda’s refugee population has been shifted to Category 3. That classification means no external support, not because the need is gone, but because donor funding has dried up.

Those in Category 2 fare only slightly better. They receive UGX 10,000 a month, less than $3.

The consequences are sharp and sobering: hunger, untreated illness, and a heavy undercurrent of psychological trauma that too often goes unnoticed. In conversations, I heard refugees describe sleepless nights, recurring flashbacks, and emotional numbness. I am no clinician, but the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder were unmistakable.

Yet, amid hardship, I witnessed something profound.

Shifting the Story on GBV

In West Nile districts such as Terego, Yumbe, Adjumani, and even as far as Kyegegwa, gender-based violence (GBV) rates have consistently ranked among the highest in Uganda. For years, violence was normalized, seen as inevitable in homes already burdened by displacement, poverty, and trauma.

But the LEAP Project is reshaping that story.

Through the project:

5,288 community members, more than 4,000 of them women, have been empowered to challenge and prevent GBV.

60 community activists and leaders have been trained under the SASA! approach and embedded in both refugee and host communities. They are not outsiders. They are neighbors, relatives, and peers, people with credibility and influence to question harmful norms and support survivors.

The results are not abstract. They are lived, visible, and felt.

“Even men came out to report GBV,” a district official in Terego told me, his voice a mix of surprise and hope.

A woman in Omugo described how her household had shifted from hostility to partnership: “We now budget together as couples instead of living in violence and poverty.”

These testimonies may sound simple, but in communities where silence and stigma once protected abusers, they represent nothing short of transformation.

Why Documenting Stories Matters

Development work often lives and dies with donor cycles. Projects begin, communities adjust, reports are written, and eventually, funding ends. But stories, the lived experiences of people whose lives are touched by change, remain.

Stories travel. They inspire replication. They fuel advocacy. They remind policymakers, donors, and the public of what is at stake when funding is cut or when interventions succeed.

One senior probation officer in Yumbe underscored this point with urgency:
“Men must also be reached. We pray this work expands to more counties.”

The plea is clear: transformation must not be confined to pilot projects. It must spread.

A Collective Effort

The LEAP Project is not a one-actor play. It thrives on collaboration:

UN Women provides the funding and the belief that GBV prevention is possible in refugee contexts.

UGANET leads with implementation, grounded in heart and consistency.

Refugee Law Project contributes technical expertise and partnership.

District leaders in Terego, Yumbe, and Adjumani lend their political will.

And most importantly, the community activists and leaders keep the work alive. They are the heartbeat of this transformation.

Final Reflections

As a communicator, my field notes from West Nile remind me of something essential:

📸 To tell a story is to honor its impact.
🖊️ To document change is to keep it alive.

The faces, the voices, the testimonies, they are more than anecdotes. They are blueprints for what is possible when communities are trusted with tools to change their own narratives.

West Nile is still a place of hardship. But it is also a place of revelation. In the midst of scarcity and trauma, seeds of resilience are being planted. And if those seeds are nurtured, they will grow into something even stronger than survival: transformation.

The Power of Succinct Communication

By Rogers M. Wanambwa

We live in a world that never stops talking. Emails crowd inboxes, notifications light up phones and social media feeds churn out endless content.
In this noise, what gets remembered isn’t the loudest or longest message. It’s the clearest one.
Succinct communication is a superpower.

Why brevity matters
Being succinct isn’t about cutting words for the sake of it. It’s about precision. Every word must earn its place.
Think about the last long email or report you received. Did you read it all? Or did you skim, or stop halfway through?

Attention is a scarce resource. Studies show digital attention spans are shrinking, and most people scan rather than read closely.
In this environment, rambling isn’t just ineffective. It’s invisible. A concise message respects people’s time and boosts the odds of being understood, remembered and acted upon.

History proves the point. Some of the most powerful lines are also the shortest: “I have a dream.” “Yes we can.” “Just do it.” Brevity sticks.

What it is not
Being succinct does not mean being simplistic. It does not water down meaning.
Instead, it sharpens it. It avoids jargon, filler and meandering sentences that weaken impact.
Succinct communication is not about saying less. It is about saying just enough.

How to get there
Start with the core message. What is the one thing your audience should take away?
Cut the clutter. Remove jargon, repetition and extra detail that add little.
Use plain language. Clarity beats complexity.
Structure logically. Lead with the point. Add supporting detail after.
Edit hard. Writing is rewriting. The first draft is expression. The second is precision.

Why it matters
Clear, concise communication builds trust. It signals respect for time. It shows mastery of the subject.
For leaders, it sharpens decision-making. For professionals, it makes emails more effective. For creators, it makes content more shareable. For brands, it makes messages more memorable.
Succinct communication amplifies impact.

The challenge
The next time you write or speak, ask: Am I being clear, concise and compelling? If not, refine until you are.
In a world overflowing with words, those who distill meaning from noise stand out.
Your audience will thank you.