‘It’s radical’: the Ugandan city built on solar, shea butter and people power

Level: Advanced

1
  Warmer

Choose the best answer for each question.

1. Uganda is a country in East / West Africa.

2. The capital of Uganda is Nairobi / Kampala.

3. Kenya / South Africa is one of Uganda’s neighbours.

4. The currency of Uganda is the Ugandan dollar / shilling.

5. Shea butter comes from animals / trees.

6. Shea butter is used to make cosmetics / food.

2
  Key words

Fill the gaps in the sentences using these key words from the text.

advocate ambitious breaktime disillusioned endeavour

     harness     indigenous     instalment      radical    rampant
rarity   revenue    sustainable    thriving unique

1. is a rest between school lessons.

2. A / an change is new and dramatic change.

3. A / an plan is one that is difficult and will require a lot of

effort to succeed.

4. A / an business or community is very successful.

5. A / an project is one that uses methods that do not harm

the environment.

6. A / an is something that does not happen or is not found

very often.

7. If a disease is , it exists, occurs or spreads in an uncontrolled way.

8. A / an is one of several payments that an amount is divided

into and they are paid regularly over time.

9. If you are , you feel disappointed because something is not as

good as you thought.
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 ‘It’s radical’: the Ugandan city built on solar, shea butter and people power
Level: Advanced
10. is income from business activities.

11. A / an is an effort to do something, especially something new

or difficult.

12. people lived in a place for a very long time before other
people arrived.

13. A / an selling point is the thing that makes a product or service

different from others.

14. If people a resource, they get of control of it in order to use it

for a particular purpose.

15. If you for a particular policy or way of doing things, you

publicly support it.

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 ‘It’s radical’: the Ugandan city built on solar, shea butter and people power
Level: Advanced
Ojok Okello is transforming
his destroyed village into a
green town where social
enterprises responsibly
harness the shea tree
Caleb Okerere
3 March, 2021
1 The village of Okere Mom-Kok was in ruins
after more than a decade of war in northern
Uganda. Now, just outside Ojok Okello’s
house, final-year pupils at the early childhood
centre are noisily starting their breaktime and
a market is clattering into life, as is the local
craft brewery, as what has become Okere
City begins a new day. “I think what I’m doing
here is radical,” says Okello, who is behind
an ambitious project to transform the
destroyed village of 4,000 people into
a thriving and sustainable town.
2 Okere City began in January 2019. Its 200
hectares (500 acres) feature a school,
a health clinic, a village bank and a community
hall that also serves as a cinema, a church
and a nightclub. Electricity is available to all,
generated from solar energy – a rarity in the
region – and far from the many outbreaks of
cholera, which were rampant years ago, there
is now clean water from a borehole.
3 Pupils at the school pay half their fees in cash
and the rest in maize, beans, sugar and
firewood. The clinic lets people pay their bills
in instalments. The local security man carries
a spear, an unusual sight in an area where
many men sit around as women do most of the
paid and unpaid work.
4 Okello is funding the project from his own
pocket. In 2020, it cost 200 million Ugandan
shillings (about £39,000). The London School
of Economics graduate and development
expert had worked for several international
charities and NGOs but grew disillusioned
seeing projects fail because, he says,
communities were not involved in decisions
about their own future.
5 When he returned a few years ago to Okere
Mom-Kok, the village he had left as a baby
when his civil servant father was killed in the
bush wars of the 1980s, he decided to put
what he had learned into action. He wanted
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to create a project that was truly led by the
people who lived there. Okere now generates
revenue. Every project, from the school to the
local bar, can fund itself, something that has
been possible because the project is being
built not as a charity but as a social enterprise,
Okello says.
6 While comparisons could be made to Akon City,
the futuristic smart city in Senegal, Okere is,
in essence, the opposite, according to Amina
Yasin, an expert in city planning, who works
in Vancouver, Canada. “Akon City is going
to be a walled city for the wealthy,” she says.
“It sounds like a capitalist endeavour on the
African continent. It is to benefit mostly
non-indigenous Africans, unfortunately.”
7 Okere City will pioneer green energy, but its
unique selling point is its shea trees. Okello
says the inspiration came to him as he sat
under a shea tree outside his house one
afternoon in early 2020. “I looked at the shea
tree and realized that we have this important
natural resource and we were not harnessing
it,” Okello says. “So I thought, ‘Damn, I’m going
to invest everything within my means to use
this resource, to protect it and to use it to help
my community.”
8 In August, Okere Shea Butter arrived on the
market. The whole city smells of shea butter,
and Okello has advocated for the protection
and regeneration of shea trees, classed as an
endangered species threatened by extinction.
9 Once a week, an investment club meets in the
community hall. The majority of the more than
100 members are women, mostly farmers, but
some also run small businesses. “I got a loan
from the club to buy shea seeds, which I sold
at a profit,” says member Acen Olga.
10 Members’ financial contributions are carefully
recorded before being redistributed as loans
to members who need them. When borrowers
repay the loan, the cycle continues. This style
of banking is particularly important because
it’s original to Africans, Yasin says. “The way
in which Africans have thought about money
has always been outside of the central banking
system,” she says. “It’s been about community
and caring for each other, and patience, and
long-term investments. We’ve always known
a lot earlier than the Western world that money
was out of fashion and it was not a sustainable
way to live.”
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 ‘It’s radical’: the Ugandan city built on solar, shea butter and people power
Level: Advanced
11 But rural-to-urban development projects
only work if they are created by and include
the communities they are working to serve,
says Yasin. “Okere City is being intentionally
developed with the community in mind,” she
says, “whereas what we often see in cities
across the world that do something similar is
individuals who are kind of running away from
larger cities and settling in smaller communities
that they aren’t from.”
© Guardian News and Media 2021
First published in The Guardian, 03/03/2021

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 ‘It’s radical’: the Ugandan city built on solar, shea butter and people power
Level: Advanced

3
  Comprehension check

Answer the questions using information from the article.

1. Why was the village of Okere Mom-Kok in ruins?

2. What is Ojok Okello’s ambitious project?

3. How do people there pay their bills at the clinic?

4. Why is the local security man an unusual sight?

5. Who is funding the project?

6. Why, according to Okello, do projects fail?

7. How does Okere City differ from Akon City?

8. What is Okere City’s unique selling point?

9. What is the African style of banking based on?

10. According to Amina Yasin, when do rural-to-urban projects work?

4
  Using key language

Match the adjectives in the left-hand column with the nouns or noun phrases in the
right-hand column.
1. endangered a. city

2. green b. resource
3. natural c. investment

4. smart d. people

5. small e. species

6. long-term  f. work

7. indigenous g. business

8. unpaid h. energy

5
  Discussion

Discuss these statements.

• “Local is always best.”

• “Money makes the world go round.”

• “Solar energy is the answer.”

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 ‘It’s radical’: the Ugandan city built on solar, shea butter and people power
Level: Advanced

6
  In your own words

The article describes some of the radical steps taken to transform a small Ugandan village into
a sustainable town and also mentions a futuristic city in Senegal. Look up examples of futuristic
or smart towns or cities on the internet and find examples of what makes these towns or cities
different from those that exist today. Using the information you have found, prepare a short report
on the town or city of 2050 and what it will look like.

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 ‘It’s radical’: the Ugandan city built on solar, shea butter and people power
Level: Advanced – Teacher’s notes
Key:
Article summary: The article describes 1. breaktime 9. disillusioned
how a ruined village in Uganda has become 2. radical 10. revenue
a successful town. 3. ambitious 11. endeavour
4. thriving 12. indigenous
Time: 60 minutes 5. sustainable 13. unique
6. rarity 14. harness
Skills: Reading, Speaking, Writing
7. rampant 15. advocate
8. instalment
Language focus: Vocabulary

Materials needed: One copy of the

3. Comprehension check
worksheet per student
The answers given are only suggested answers and
students may correctly answer the questions in different
ways, e.g. in number 4 they may say ‘because most
1. Warmer of the men don’t work’, and in number 9 they may say
‘patience and long-term investments’ or similar.
The purpose of this activity is for students to learn a bit
about Uganda as it is probably not a country that many Key:
will be familiar with. Two of the questions also lead to 1. because of more than a decade of war
information about shea butter. Students may not be 2. to transform his village into a thriving and
aware, but shea butter has a wide range of uses in sustainable town
everyday products. 3. in instalments
4. because most of the work is done by women
Key: 5. Ojok Okello
1. East 6. because communities are not involved in decisions
2. Kampala about their own future
3. Kenya 7. Akon City is a walled city for the wealthy.
4. shilling 8. its shea trees
5. trees 9. community and caring for each other
6. cosmetics 10. when they are created by and include the
communities they are working to serve
2. Key words
4. Using key language
Ask students to do the exercise individually and
then compare their answers in pairs or small groups. Students could be asked to do this exercise individually
Encourage students to use some of this vocabulary and then compare their answers in pairs. Note that both
actively by asking them questions such as ‘What are the ‘energy’ and ‘city’ could collocate with ‘smart’ but ‘energy’
advantages and disadvantages of paying for expensive can only go with ‘green’. Point out that plants as well as
purchases in instalments?’, ‘What is the unique selling animals can be classified as an endangered species.
point of your town or city?’ and ‘What is an example of a
sustainable city?’ Point out that ‘disillusioned’ can also be Key:
followed by the preposition ‘by’, as in ‘I was disillusioned 1. e 5. g
by the lack of job opportunities’. In sentence number 2. h 6. c
15, the verb ‘advocate’ is followed by ‘for’, but it is more 3. b 7. d
usual to use this verb without the preposition, as in 4. a 8. f
‘He has advocated the protection of shea trees.’
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 ‘It’s radical’: the Ugandan city built on solar, shea butter and people power
Level: Advanced – Teacher’s notes

5. Discussion

Allow students time to note down their ideas about each

statement and encourage them to say why they agree
or disagree with each one.

6. In your own words

Students should search on the internet using the

phrases ‘futuristic city’ or ‘smart city’ and note down
some key features of the town or city of the future.
They should pay particular attention to how it will be
different from the towns or cities of today. If they require
guidance, ask them to concentrate on key areas such
as energy, transport, employment, housing, education
and recreation. They could either write a short report
with their findings or present them to the class in the
form of an oral report.

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