By Robert Adiga
The members of the newly revamped West Nile Co-operatives Union have a reason to hope for low-cost housing units after the union signed a 10 years lucrative deal with East-of-Eden, a technology company from Spain with branches all over Africa.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed on Friday December 2, 2022 in Arua city will see the technology firm constructing over 65,000 housing units for the 23 farmer societies and individuals across the region.
Over 2,000 housing units are expected to be completed during the first year of implementation.
Sandra Zawedde, the chairperson East-of-Eden said their major objective is to make decent housing affordable to all the farmers as they seek to spend less than $300 for materials on each square meter of land to be paid by the farmers using a long-term incremental deposit model.
Zawedde is optimistic that the partnership will come along with several benefits for the farmers such as a value added component for their local products that should be able to attract international markets.
The general manager of the co-operative union, Moses Etukibo, said the partnership is geared towards the mindset change in alternative livelihood projects from tobacco to projects such as hass avocado, coffee, tea, macadamia, apiary value chain, oil seeds and poultry.
He added that the partnership has the potential to transform the livelihood of the farmers as many of them had no hopes of sleeping in an iron-roofed house.
Christopher Adia, the chairperson board of governors of West Nile Co-operative Union is optimistic that, the benefitting farmers will not default to pay back the instalments for the houses and allays fears of rampant land wrangles and encroachments involving the various co-operative societies.
West Nile Co-operative Union has a membership of over 65,000 farmers from the 23 co-operative societies.
