In Uganda, Deadly Landslides Force an Agricultural Reckoning
As growing populations denude its slopes and heavy rain intensifies, Mount Elgon has become increasingly vulnerable to landslides. In response, Ugandan farmers are planting native trees and changing the crops they plant in efforts to build resilience against future disasters.
Nestled in Uganda’s Kamwanyi village on the lush western slopes of Mount Elgon — a vast, 24-million-year-old extinct volcano that straddles the border between Uganda and Kenya — Francis Gidegi’s three-acre farm benefits from fertile soils, cool mountain air, and steady rains. The volcano’s higher reaches are protected as a national park, but its lower slopes sustain more than 500,000 people.
Every decision Gidegi makes is deliberate. The 46-year-old delights in naming the deep-rooted indigenous trees — like jackfruit, avocado, and Cordia africana — that he plants to bind the soil. He also grows perennial crops, like robusta coffee, that stabilize the land alongside short-term crops like onions and maize. He explains that the trenches and contours he’s carved into the hillside slow water flow and prevent erosion.
It’s not the quickest or easiest way to produce crops, but for Gidegi, these efforts are necessary to safeguard his family of 15 in a landscape that offers both abundance and deadly risks. “Working like this is the only way we can stay,” he says. “Otherwise, it is too dangerous.”
In November 2024, heavy rainfall triggered a series of landslides that tore through villages in the mountains of Bulambuli district, including Kamwanyi, where torrents of mud and rock swept everything from their path, displacing hundreds, destroying roads, and leaving behind deep crevasses where homes once stood. At least 28 people died, including two of Gidegi’s brothers.
Landslides have long plagued the mountain, but they’ve grown more frequent and destructive in the last two decades as a burgeoning population alters the landscape and heavy rains, which saturate soil and loosen rocks, intensify. Hillsides once anchored by forests have been cleared for timber and housing, and fast-growing crops like maize and beans have left the soil degraded and unstable. A 2025 study found that the Mount Elgon biosphere reserve’s transition zone, where human activity is permitted, has experienced a 76.7 percent decline in forest cover.
As experts warn that landslides in the mountains of Uganda are occurring more often and are deadlier, farming these slopes becomes increasingly precarious. But rather than abandon their homes and livelihoods, many local farmers are urgently turning to new methods to build resilience against future disasters. These practices aim not only to reduce the risk of destructive landslides, but also to restore the soil before creeping degradation strips it of its ability to grow food.
As Gidegi says, “Adapting is better than evacuating.”
In 2017, a local cooperative called MEACCE began teaching Mount Elgon farmers the techniques of agroforestry, a land-management system in which trees are managed together with agricultural crops and animals. When well-designed, agroforestry increases productivity, reduces soil erosion, improves water conservation, and supports food security and livelihoods. Though difficult to quantify precisely, agroforestry is widespread — especially in Southeast Asia and Central and South America — and it is recognized globally for its role in climate adaptation, carbon storage, and biodiversity conservation.
Gidegi was aware of MEACCE’s methods but had continued to rely on farming practices such as monocropping that cause erosion and deplete soil fertility. The devastation of November 2024 marked a turning point for him.
That month, he and his family were among hundreds of people resettled to a flat, crowded area at the foot of Mount Elgon. The hot weather and unfamiliar soil were a stark contrast to the rich highland his family had cultivated for generations. In April, he returned to Kamwanyi to start over again. But this time, his farming focused on healing the land, not harming it.
Gidegi began by planting a mixture of perennial crops and indigenous trees and digging trenches to divert stormwater. “Before, we were cutting down trees, using chemicals, and burning bush,” Gidegi says. “But now we have stopped that.”
Following a spate of lethal landslides, farmers like Gidegi across Mount Elgon are transforming their farms with support from a growing network of initiatives backed by cultural institutions, NGOs, and the United Nations. But this isn’t just a fringe group of well-meaning farmers. Thousands of residents have been trained in agroforestry techniques that improve soil health and water retention; millions of native tree seedlings have been planted.
Rogers Fungo, a project officer at MEACCE, said landslides laid bare the dangers of continuing harmful farming practices and often accelerated community participation. “People lost their lives, properties, crops, animals,” he said. “They saw the negative impact, and they understood they could make a difference.”
Simon Nabwita, 42, lost his father in the November landslides but chose to stay on the mountain. Like Gidegi, Nabwita has since received training, seedlings, and tools from MEACCE. “I think this land can be safe,” Nabwita says, noting that without the cooperative’s support he would have left the mountain. “The trees are still young, but whatever you plant here can grow easily, and now we are strengthening the soil,” he adds.
But landslide prevention isn’t simple, and neither is restoring degraded land. Solutions must match the landscape and have community buy-in. Further reducing vulnerability in the long-term depends as much on communication and continuity as it does on seedlings and soil.
Tree selection illustrates this complexity. Indigenous species help stabilize the soil and support local ecosystems, while fast-growing, exotic species — often favored for timber — can worsen land degradation by drying out soil and depleting nutrients.
While the government often urges communities to plant trees, says Eria Serwajja, a lecturer in the department of development studies at Uganda’s Makerere University, it rarely specifies which types are appropriate. “They will give thousands of trees that are pine or eucalyptus for free,” he said. “But in the end, these are depleting the soils even further.”
Agroforestry is also more labor-intensive than traditional farming methods and demands patience for slower-growing perennial crops, like coffee, and for native, deep-rooted trees. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, agroforestry sees profitable returns after three to eight years, while traditional annual cropping systems normally see profits within one to two years. For families focused on survival, it’s difficult to embrace approaches that don’t deliver immediate benefits. And while NGOs and individual projects can make a meaningful difference in the present, their impact can be short-lived if funding ends and farmers slip back into old practices.
Frank Mugagga, a geography lecturer at Makerere University, believes a community-driven approach can address these challenges. “If you work with the communities in the identification of the problem, in the design of the solutions, they will be part and parcel of the whole initiative,” he said. “Then there will be continuity beyond the programs.”
In the Bududa District of Mount Elgon, where torrential rain triggered a 2010 landslide that killed at least 350 people, that collaborative, bottom-up approach is now taking root.
Common Ground, a Wageningen University development project implemented by the nonprofit Integrated Seed and Sector Development Uganda, starts by asking communities to map out their problems on posters, visualize their future in drawings, and pinpoint what needs to be done. Once the community identifies a need, Common Ground provides practical training.
The project’s so-called Participatory Integrated Planning approach (PIP) also relies on collaborative peer-to-peer training for a better chance at continuity should project funding stop: first, the community identifies 30 people for training in techniques that restore the soil, such as intercropping, mulching, and constructing “trash lines” — horizontal barriers made of sticks, branches, and leaves—to slow and distribute rainfall on steep slopes. Then, each of those 30 trainers goes on to train 10 others.
“The landslide is not the problem,” said Aad Kessler, a researcher at Wageningen and an expert in PIP. The problem, he said, is that living in poverty traps farmers in short-term perspectives, which can lead to damaging land practices. “Our approach is really how to engage farmers in this change in mindset, so they realize the urgency to really change land use.”
Kessler says Common Ground, which began in 2022, targets 50,000 households for training and aims to have 28,000 acres “sustainably managed” — measured by using at least three of the “best practices” they are taught — across Mount Elgon by the end of 2026. The goal is to build enough local capacity that the work continues long after Common Ground is gone.
Mugagga praised the efforts of Common Ground and its predecessor, the Manafwa Watershed Project, which began in 2019. “In terms of where we started from, you see a lot of change in terms of the areas being safeguarded against soil erosion,” he said. “People are safer in terms of being protected, but also their livelihoods are better.”
Still, serious challenges remain, including external pressures beyond the control of even the most committed communities. In 2021, the World Bank warned that climate change and heavier rainfall could escalate the risk of landslides in Uganda’s mountain regions by loosening mud and rocks. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also projects that East Africa will see more frequent and intense rainfall as global temperatures rise. In Uganda alone, average temperatures have already increased by 1.3 degrees C since 1960, and a 2020 study reported “record-breaking extremes” during East Africa’s spring rains.
Makerere University’s Serwajja said restorations efforts were becoming “more important as we head towards more extreme weather,” and that the impacts of climate change were “already unfolding” on the mountain, referring to recent disasters. “Population pressure and erratic climate patterns, when the two march together, the intensity, the ferocity of landslides, also increases,” he said.
Unpredictable weather also complicates planning, especially for small-scale farmers depending on rain-fed agriculture. “It’s harder to plan and to be as strategic as these resilience methods require,” said John Sembera, a PIP supervisor. “Climate change has messed with our national planting calendar.”
Bob Nakileza, a geographer and the executive director of Uganda’s Mountain Innovations and Research Institute, said restoring soils could “save lives,” noting that there was “definitely some reduction in the occurrence of debris flows and shallow landslides” in areas where agroforestry and tree planting have been practiced. Still, he called for more research into which interventions are most effective and whether they can prevent future catastrophes.
Despite the ongoing risks of living on the slopes of Mount Elgon, hundreds of thousands of people remain here, often because they have few alternatives. For subsistence farmers like Gidegi, leaving isn’t an option. And so he continues with his mitigation efforts.
“The place you were born is the place you prefer,” Gidegi says. “If we continue to work like this, we are going to benefit. We shall not face the same problems again.”
Cover photo: Francis Gidegi now grows crops that will slow the erosion of his land on Mount Elgon in Uganda. Freddie Clayton
