The 

Department of Disaster Management (DDM)

, currently in the Prime Minister's Office, was

created (as the `Food Relief Department') in the early 1980s during a major drought relief

operation in Karamoja. In 1995, internal resettlement was added to its mandate and its name

(`Department of Emergency Relief and Resettlement').  Recently (1998) the department has been

moved from the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare to the Prime Minister's Office, and again

renamed as the `Department of Disaster Management' (though the department's Commissioner

commented that its actual operations and capacity do not yet match this expanded title).  The Third

Deputy Prime Minister has responsibility for disaster management, along with the title of Minister

for Disaster Preparedness and Refugees; but at the time of the study it was not yet clear whether a

separate ministry was to be created.  At District level, responsibility for food aid remains with the

Ministry of Labor (see below).

The 

National Inter Sectoral Committee on Disaster Management

, co ordinated by the DDM

and chaired (until 1997) by the Permanent Secretary of Labor and Social Welfare, convenes when

needed and forms 

ad hoc committees

 for specific disasters. The 1997 drought committee, for

example, included the Ministries of Agriculture and Health, WFP, FAO, FEWS and relevant NGOs.

Agencies convened for these 

ad hoc

 disaster committees are generally those which participate in

joint needs assessment missions.

Information sources

 for food aid targeting in Uganda are so sparse that it is difficult to talk of

 gaps . Official statistics (notably agricultural production and population) are widely agreed to be

highly unreliable even by Sub Saharan African standards,  following  years of war and disruption.

There is no functional early warning system, since the 

National Early Warning and Food

Information System (NEWFIS)

 seems to have disappeared during the recent (1998)

reorganization of the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industries and Fisheries.

The NEWFIS was established with assistance from IGAD in 1991, but apparently never operated

at full capacity:  NEWFIS has had a low profile since its establishment, probably because of the

relatively low demand for early warning information due to the food self sufficiency notion 

[Mwendya 1997a, ref 59].  Donor funding ended in 1995, but no specific funds were allocated by

the Government of Uganda to maintain the NEWFIS: its staff struggled on under the Crop

Production and Marketing Department, but by 1997 they were only able to report price and rainfall

data, in irregular bulletins with limited distribution.   NEWFIS staff participated in assessment

missions for the 1997 relief operations, but their regular monitoring information (limited as it was)

was not mentioned by decision makers and seems to have had no influence on targeting

decisions.

The Co ordinator of the NEWFIS has commented that it was, from the outset,  over centralized

(with staff only at Ministry headquarters and no direct link to the field).  He rightly recommends re 

focusing future information systems at the District level, in selected food insecure areas [Mwendya

1997a, ref 59, and study team interview]. From a technical viewpoint it may be added that the

design of the NEWFIS was perhaps too focused on detecting drought related crop failure, and on

aggregate national food production,  in a country whose worsening food security problems are

localized rather than national, and have more complex and chronic causes than rainfall failures.

In the absence of a functioning government early warning system, the DDM relies mainly on

reports from the District authorities.

NGOs and other implementing agencies (such as the Red Cross) report on their operational areas

and projects, but 

FEWS

 seems currently to be the only national level information system referred

to by decision makers  in the international / donor community.

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