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BY RICHARD DRASIMAKU
ARUA: WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2025
Monday, December 1, 2025 was a unique day for Ziribabeli Azabo, a resident of Orivu village in Ezuku parish, Arua district where River Enyau flows out of the earth’s crust.
On that day, Azabo accompanied by a colleague went to the riverbank to craft beehives after collecting reed from across the border from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The crafted hives were smeared with cow dung to block air and covered with spear grass and then placed on trees. Within hours, the first four hives were colonized by bees as Azabo watched.
Excited by this event, Azabo, the leader of 24 former miners of pit sand from the bank of River Enyau, vowed that each member would craft five local hives and put all the 120 hives in the Ezuku forest reserve that suffered 13 years of degradation from their sand mining activity.
The former degraders now turned wetland protectors have a standing pledge from the ministry of water and environment that once they show commitment for bee keeping, the governments big foot will step in to fund them to scale up their sustainable livelihood project.
As such, the group members have now said they will also utilize a government offer to rent parts of the forest reserve at sh10,000 annual fee per person in order to do agro-forestry and protect the ecology of the area.
Their new approach is a complete turnaround from 2013 when the group clashed with officials from the Ministry of Water and Environment and chased the district water officer of Arua when they attempted to forcefully evict the group from the sand mine which had rendered large swaths of the river bank bear of vegetation cover. Huge trees were uprooted in search of pit sand.
At the height of the tension, pillars that were erected with the authorization from the ministry of water and environment to demarcate the wetland in order to protect the source of River Enyau were uprooted and destroyed by the sand miners.
So popular was the Ezuku sand mine that construction workers and builders from the sprawling Arua town would go and line up tipa lorries to get sand cheaply at sh25,000 a trip.
The builders, sand traders and real estate developers minded little about water scarcity that frequently hit Arua town and suburbs as a result of the human activity upstream.
To worsen the situation, other residents would dig in the mashes of the river to grow horticultural crops and vegetables during dry season where they would divert the water into the gardens and block the water from flowing by erecting earth barriers.
Enter RICE West Nile
In a move towards safeguarding water security in West Nile and especially in Arua City, the Rural Initiative for Community Empowerment in West Nile (RICE-WN), a local civil society organization moved in to engage the community on behalf of the Ministry of Water and Environment that had turned into a hated entity among the community.
Pax Sakari, the Managing Director of RICE-WN, said they conceived a Sh576,234,000 Ecosystem based adaptation project to restore degraded catchment areas and cause behavioral change.
The aim was to give alternative projects to the wetland encroachers and degraders and transform them into allies of the environment and environmentalists.
“River Enyau is the life-line of Arua and West Nile. But we saw the approach by government agencies of using force did not yield the intended result. We wanted to use a peaceful approach instead,” he said.
The Ministry embraced the idea of reaching the communities through third parties from the civil society and funded the project whose results after two years have been phenomenal.
Sakari’s project report card indicates that 77.21 hectares of degraded crop and livestock grazing areas have been restored with draught tolerant tree species, 27 hectares of degraded wetlands including the Ezuku sector has been restored, 24 hectares of degraded hilltops reforested with multi-purpose tree species in places like Kuluva, Giligili among others.
Azabo said they received 3,000 seedlings of tree species of different types including tik, mahogany and others but about 800 have survived since the area had lost fertility. Group members also planted 10 trees each at their home and they were given 10 goats which have multiplied to over 30.
Two years on, the River Enyau bank in Ezuku is looking green again with grass having reconquered the area and the planted trees growing blossomy.
RICE-WN also trained eight livelihood farmers’ groups in construction of energy saving stoves to facilitate transition from excessive use of firewood and charcoal.
There were 18 farmers’ groups supported with alternative livelihood options to move them out of wetland zones along Enyau and its tributaries in Arua district and Arua City. These included enterprises like apiary, piggery, goats, chicken and rabbits and fish farming in ponds.
One of the groups that got the apiary and stove making knowledge and technology was the Uleyimva apiculture association of 22 members headed by James Arionzi in Kebu Cell in Urugbo parish.
The group was supported with modern bee hives, protective gears, and honey pressing machine for processing, airtight buckets for storage and seedlings of calliadra, gravellia and other tree species for forage. They were also given a machine for making energy saving stoves and trained on how to utilize them.
Harriet Nyokaru, one of the first four group members trained in stove making is now an expert who is hired to construct energy conserving stoves at prices ranging from Sh25,000 to Sh90,000 for portable stoves for individuals and families and between sh150,000 to sh250,000 for non-portable stoves institutions like schools.
“We have moved out of the wetlands of the streams – Iga, Ariomva and Uleyimva all tributaries of River Enyau – that used to frequently dry because of silting,” Nyokaru said.
“Honey is more valuable than growing small plots of vegetation on the river bank and the stoves take little firewood and charcoal that we only prune the branches of our trees to use for cooking,” she explained.
Rachael Mirembe, a sociologist at the ministry of water and environment asserted that they are intentional about women participation in the protection of Enyau River because women are more depended on the river for livelihoods.
“We want them to be fully responsible, that is why we give them fruit trees and encourage participation. Any increment in cost of treatment by NW&SC comes back to women in form of big water bills,” added Mirembe.
The Uleyiva Apiculture Association harvested honey worth sh7.9m in February 2025 of which they spent sh2.8m to increase the number of the hives and for maintenance in their agro-forestry sites and their three apiary sites that have 75 hives, 65 hives and 38 hives respectively.
To maintain the high quality of honey that they are already associated with, Arionzi’s group only harvest honey once a year (Between February and March) when there is low moisture content in the atmosphere and their clients are from banks, hotels and reputable organizations who are always pressuring them and RICE-WN for honey.
They sell a 20-litre jerrican of honey ah sh250,000 while a kilo of comb honey goes for sh19,000. They also make wax and other honey products to augment their earnings.
Sakari said out of the farmers groups, 18 model farmers were selected to receive capacity building in climate smart agriculture techniques so that other farmers can learn from them.
Relatedly, RICE-WN is concluding implementation of a one-year full-scale source protection measures project aimed at restoring 19.6km buffer zone of River Enyau.
The sh509,819,000 was funded by the National water and Sewerage Corporation in partnership with the Worldwide Fund for Nature Uganda to improve water quality of the Enyau River from where the water treatment plant draws water from for supplying the urban population .
Under the project, over 30 community sensitization meetings were organized, 2,000 farmers recruited and 12 community groups and 1,200 locals trained in catchment protection and management, strengthening 169 water user groups within the Enyau River catchment area.
Information, communication materials were developed and disseminated as well as radio and mass media campaigns.
Other organizations involved in the save Enyau project are Api-Works doing livelihood components, and West Nile foresters that addresses the environmental restoration and conservation and WML Consult and Engineering that is fixing the demarcation pillars and constructing water channels and abridge protection gauge to protect the Enyau bridge in Ajono-Yivu village, Vurra sub county in Arua district.
“As a result of the projects, the entire catchment and river bank zone in Arua district and Arua City has been demarcated and marked with pillars. Many people have moved out of wetland zone and communities are protecting the demarcation pillars instead of uprooting them,” he said.
However while pit sand miners are moving out of wetland zones, river sand miners are moving into the river valley to look for sand for construction, some community members are still taking time to absorb the sensitization. Car washers are still washing cars inside the river in Arua City.
“We call upon the local governments of the district and City to take up from where we are ending and continue to sustain the protection initiative,” said Sakari.
Paskuale Kerudong, an official from the Ministry of Water and Environment has extended the call to action to all developers, religious, cultural and civic leaders in the catchment area to sensitize the community to protect the river from silting.
Kerudong explained that silting occurs when the communities encroach into the wetlands that feed the river as tributaries or when they degrade the river’s shoreline through cultivation, diversion of the river flow and construction of houses, pit latrines and deforestation.
There is also contamination as a result of dumping plastics and other waste matter into the river and washing of cars in the river such as at Euata, Ediofe Bridge and Onduparaka area.
The river’s water levels can sometimes go so low, especially during dry seasons that it affects the operations of the main water treatment plant operated by the National Water and sewerage cooperation which is the sole source of water for the growing urban population of Arua City.
Accordingly, the ministry and its lead agency, the National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) has embarked on drilling of industrial boreholes and solar powered gravity water schemes to supplement the water source and increase the production capacity.
other concerted efforts of protection through community awareness also include the Save River Enyau marathon which has become an annual event.
On November 29, 2026, the ministry held the second run that brought together corporate bodies in the private sector, government departments, nongovernmental organizations and community members.
Ronald Batte, the Arua Manager of the NW&SC acknowledged that the law provides for buffer zone protection but communities are ignorant and negligent.
The Constitution mandates the government to protect Uganda’s natural resources. “Through the Save Enyau Run and other activities, we want communities to understand and identify with the initiatives to protect Enyau for their own wellbeing,” Batte emphasized.
He called on the people to embrace investment projects driven at conservation, saying that the plan is to relocate all car washing bays away from the river and give alternative businesses to the people involved.
Sand mining along the river bank affects the velocity of runoff rain water, increases salinity and therefore increases the cost of treatment of the water for human consumption.
“When river levels go down too low, we ration intake of the water by allowing the river to recharge for four to six hours. That also affects the output of water that goes into the distribution pipes,” said Batte.
